I really enjoyed your essay. For years, most of my high school students loved Gatsby and didn’t see his dishonest methods of obtaining his wealth as problematic. During more recent years, they seemed more condemnatory of him and saw his obsession with Daisy as stupid. They were more interested in Nick’s sexual orientation...and what exactly happened in that elevator with Mr. McKee. One thing never changed; they were the most engaged with it of any other novel I taught. I’ll be interested to read your response to My Antonia. I used it in my master’s thesis, focusing on the food motifs.
I enjoyed reading your essay, though I must admit I do not remember this novel fondly. Having read it in high school some 30 years ago with only Baz Lurhmann's disjointed film adaptation to bring back recollections in the meantime, probably does not afford the novel a fair shake. Your review has made me reconsider giving it another read.
Great way to start the year, Joel. I didn't really read "Gatsby" until I was an adult. In high school, we could choose between it and the "Scarlet Letter," and I chose the latter, thinking Hawthorne would be an easier read than Fitzgerald. Seemed like a more interesting story. Boy, was I wrong.
It wasn't until maybe a decade or so ago, in my thirties, that I picked up "Gatsby" with an open mind, unable to remember if I had ever tried to read it. I instantly loved it. It was quick, the story fairly simple with layers of meaning, and the prose absolutely beautiful right up to the final scene. To me, it's so many things but primarily a critique on the American Dream. I love that Fitzgerald himself was an outsider, a writer earning in the top one-percent of his field but surrounded by a level of wealth he could never access. It may be this "outsiderness" made him a poignant observer of people and places.
When I was researching my own book "Real Artists Don't Starve," I wanted to include Fitzgerald as an example of a "thriving artist" whose success was short-lived, due in part to his own mindset and personal challenges. Plus, I was just fascinated with the man and era of literature. A great read on this subject is Maureen Corrigan's book "So We Read On." She writes about why "Gatsby" endured when so many works did not, crediting a number of factors to its success—not least of which was luck.
Corrigan shares, as you pointed out, how the WWII paperback edition of "Gatsby" helped the book reach many readers who likely never would have encountered it. Since a paperback could be read up to seven times before it fell apart, and soldiers were always passing around what they were reading, it's estimated that "Gatsby" reached over a million readers in its short life as a wartime read.
I read once that one of the most important factors in the longevity of a writer's work is friends who continue to write about the writer after he is gone. Fitzgerald definitely had this going for him. In fact, were it not for one of his friends being in the Council on Books in Wartime, "Gatsby" would not have ever been a part of the conversation. This, of course, continued with the admission of the book into school libraries, in spite of its mature subject matter, and subsequently being adopted into the pantheon of books most American high schoolers eventually had to read.
Why did this happen? An important, albeit somewhat arbitrary reason, was its length. For a great work of literature, it is surprisingly short. I think you could say the same for "Old Man and the Sea." These books are often read by young people, because they are not the length of a Dostoyevsky or Hugo novel. They're relatively easy to get in and out of, and time is an important factor for anyone who's choosing what, especially a teacher of hormonal teenagers.
Anyway, all of the above does not necessarily account for people reading the book, liking it, and discussing it over and over again for decades. Corrigan notes that part of the magic of "Gatsby" is the subject matter and genre itself. It is both timely and timeless. The book did, in fact, sell over 20K copies in its lifetime, which is a modest but not terrible number, as you know. People were reading and discussing the work. It had made an impact both in its own time as well as in future generations of readers. In the 1920s, when it was released, the book seemed to speak to an increasing sense of disillusionment people were feeling with the idea of America, particularly when it came to wealth and climbing the social ladder. In many ways, the work, I think, is predicting a coming Depression.
Beyond that, the book somehow is "genred" and genre-less at the same time. Corrigan makes the case that it is a lot of different books, all wrapped into one: a romance novel, a noir story, a social critique, and more. This is why you can see, over the years and decades, that its adaptation to film, stage, and more all take on a different characteristic. I think this is what it takes to create a truly great story: it has to be something that can be accessed immediately on the surface but also invites the reader deeper into layers of meaning. This is not easy to do, which is why most stories get relegated to a single genre or fall into obscurity as something too obtuse and avant-garde for the average reader.
It takes a truly great writer to weave together themes we can immediately relate to and lace them with deeper meditations on what it means to be human, and I think Fitzgerald wisely did both.
Anyway, I like this subject and appreciate your willingness to let me rant a little about it here. Hope we can go for a walk soon and talk through it some more. Pardon the soliloquy. ;)
Great essay - I always learn something new from you, even if you're writing about a familiar book. I think the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version of Gatsby is one of the best movie adaptations of a novel ever made. The Leo DiCaprio one is awful, but my high school students love it.
Here is a book that I *almost* left a comment about on your 'childhood memory' post...
I had always wanted to be an archeologist (Egyptologist, likely a saturated market even then!), but when I got to high school chemistry I was abysmal. I didn't think I could hack the science portion - always my worst subject - but what is absolutely necessary for dating artifacts.
The next year I took a required English class with a teacher I ended up loving and taking multiple courses from - Mrs. Burt. She had shock-white hair, piercing blue eyes and bright crimson lipstick!
We read The Great Gatsby and it was one of her favorite books. Just going through it and learning about 'symbolism' and metaphor - I was hooked. I knew then and there if I could understand books like this, my internal self would always get to process ideas, worldviews, etc - something I already did without really knowing I was doing it.
A few years later I graduated university with a degree in English literature. Thanks, Mrs. Burt, and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for the inspiration!
I don''t know if I'd love the book as much as I did then, if I reread it now, but it almost doesn't matter. It'll always have a spot in my heart as one of the books that I'd call a 'seed' of who I am today.
While Gatsy isn't my favourite Fitzgerald work (Tender is the Night and The Beautiful and The Damned rank higher for me), I can appreciate its impact on society. Great review, as usual. It made me want to re-read it.
Been a while since I read Gatsby and it's past time for a revisit. But I first read it in, um, high school? early college?, and didn't care for it. It was a LOT better when I looked at it again a couple of decades later.
I think it can be interesting to place Gatsby as the natural heir to the novels of Edith Wharton in terms of class, wealth and the impact of time on them
It never impressed me. But neither did many if the other books in the American cannon that are supposed to be so impressive. "Catcher In The Rye", "To Kill a Mockingbird", all that. I dunno why (I'm not saying my judgement is correct.) Too self serious or something? The Brits seemed to do late 19th - early/mid 20th century literature better, imho. Give me Wilde or Wodehouse or C.S. Lewis etc over all that. But I'm probably a philistine.
Good post. Makes me want to read it again. The kid from nowhere who makes it big, the ultimate American tale. And then nemesis taking him down, and unrequited love, and success not bringing happiness -- the human condition.
Fitzgerald's economical use of words, meaning and characters has impressed me since I read him for the first time, and he continues to influence my writing in this way.
Realize this will be an unpopular opinion, but... My own take is that what makes the book work is nothing other than Fitzgerald’s writing. He was a tremendously talented writer. But the story itself is uninteresting and apart from the mystery of how Gatsby got rich the characters are pretty uninteresting and unsympathetic at best. This is why the movie versions fail, because once you lose Fitzgerald’s writing there just isn’t much left to work with.
I loved reading this article. The Great Gatsby was the only book I read in high school that I enjoyed reading. I'm definitely due for a re read on that
I really enjoyed your essay. For years, most of my high school students loved Gatsby and didn’t see his dishonest methods of obtaining his wealth as problematic. During more recent years, they seemed more condemnatory of him and saw his obsession with Daisy as stupid. They were more interested in Nick’s sexual orientation...and what exactly happened in that elevator with Mr. McKee. One thing never changed; they were the most engaged with it of any other novel I taught. I’ll be interested to read your response to My Antonia. I used it in my master’s thesis, focusing on the food motifs.
I enjoyed reading your essay, though I must admit I do not remember this novel fondly. Having read it in high school some 30 years ago with only Baz Lurhmann's disjointed film adaptation to bring back recollections in the meantime, probably does not afford the novel a fair shake. Your review has made me reconsider giving it another read.
Great way to start the year, Joel. I didn't really read "Gatsby" until I was an adult. In high school, we could choose between it and the "Scarlet Letter," and I chose the latter, thinking Hawthorne would be an easier read than Fitzgerald. Seemed like a more interesting story. Boy, was I wrong.
It wasn't until maybe a decade or so ago, in my thirties, that I picked up "Gatsby" with an open mind, unable to remember if I had ever tried to read it. I instantly loved it. It was quick, the story fairly simple with layers of meaning, and the prose absolutely beautiful right up to the final scene. To me, it's so many things but primarily a critique on the American Dream. I love that Fitzgerald himself was an outsider, a writer earning in the top one-percent of his field but surrounded by a level of wealth he could never access. It may be this "outsiderness" made him a poignant observer of people and places.
When I was researching my own book "Real Artists Don't Starve," I wanted to include Fitzgerald as an example of a "thriving artist" whose success was short-lived, due in part to his own mindset and personal challenges. Plus, I was just fascinated with the man and era of literature. A great read on this subject is Maureen Corrigan's book "So We Read On." She writes about why "Gatsby" endured when so many works did not, crediting a number of factors to its success—not least of which was luck.
Corrigan shares, as you pointed out, how the WWII paperback edition of "Gatsby" helped the book reach many readers who likely never would have encountered it. Since a paperback could be read up to seven times before it fell apart, and soldiers were always passing around what they were reading, it's estimated that "Gatsby" reached over a million readers in its short life as a wartime read.
I read once that one of the most important factors in the longevity of a writer's work is friends who continue to write about the writer after he is gone. Fitzgerald definitely had this going for him. In fact, were it not for one of his friends being in the Council on Books in Wartime, "Gatsby" would not have ever been a part of the conversation. This, of course, continued with the admission of the book into school libraries, in spite of its mature subject matter, and subsequently being adopted into the pantheon of books most American high schoolers eventually had to read.
Why did this happen? An important, albeit somewhat arbitrary reason, was its length. For a great work of literature, it is surprisingly short. I think you could say the same for "Old Man and the Sea." These books are often read by young people, because they are not the length of a Dostoyevsky or Hugo novel. They're relatively easy to get in and out of, and time is an important factor for anyone who's choosing what, especially a teacher of hormonal teenagers.
Anyway, all of the above does not necessarily account for people reading the book, liking it, and discussing it over and over again for decades. Corrigan notes that part of the magic of "Gatsby" is the subject matter and genre itself. It is both timely and timeless. The book did, in fact, sell over 20K copies in its lifetime, which is a modest but not terrible number, as you know. People were reading and discussing the work. It had made an impact both in its own time as well as in future generations of readers. In the 1920s, when it was released, the book seemed to speak to an increasing sense of disillusionment people were feeling with the idea of America, particularly when it came to wealth and climbing the social ladder. In many ways, the work, I think, is predicting a coming Depression.
Beyond that, the book somehow is "genred" and genre-less at the same time. Corrigan makes the case that it is a lot of different books, all wrapped into one: a romance novel, a noir story, a social critique, and more. This is why you can see, over the years and decades, that its adaptation to film, stage, and more all take on a different characteristic. I think this is what it takes to create a truly great story: it has to be something that can be accessed immediately on the surface but also invites the reader deeper into layers of meaning. This is not easy to do, which is why most stories get relegated to a single genre or fall into obscurity as something too obtuse and avant-garde for the average reader.
It takes a truly great writer to weave together themes we can immediately relate to and lace them with deeper meditations on what it means to be human, and I think Fitzgerald wisely did both.
Anyway, I like this subject and appreciate your willingness to let me rant a little about it here. Hope we can go for a walk soon and talk through it some more. Pardon the soliloquy. ;)
Great essay - I always learn something new from you, even if you're writing about a familiar book. I think the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version of Gatsby is one of the best movie adaptations of a novel ever made. The Leo DiCaprio one is awful, but my high school students love it.
Here is a book that I *almost* left a comment about on your 'childhood memory' post...
I had always wanted to be an archeologist (Egyptologist, likely a saturated market even then!), but when I got to high school chemistry I was abysmal. I didn't think I could hack the science portion - always my worst subject - but what is absolutely necessary for dating artifacts.
The next year I took a required English class with a teacher I ended up loving and taking multiple courses from - Mrs. Burt. She had shock-white hair, piercing blue eyes and bright crimson lipstick!
We read The Great Gatsby and it was one of her favorite books. Just going through it and learning about 'symbolism' and metaphor - I was hooked. I knew then and there if I could understand books like this, my internal self would always get to process ideas, worldviews, etc - something I already did without really knowing I was doing it.
A few years later I graduated university with a degree in English literature. Thanks, Mrs. Burt, and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for the inspiration!
I don''t know if I'd love the book as much as I did then, if I reread it now, but it almost doesn't matter. It'll always have a spot in my heart as one of the books that I'd call a 'seed' of who I am today.
While Gatsy isn't my favourite Fitzgerald work (Tender is the Night and The Beautiful and The Damned rank higher for me), I can appreciate its impact on society. Great review, as usual. It made me want to re-read it.
Been a while since I read Gatsby and it's past time for a revisit. But I first read it in, um, high school? early college?, and didn't care for it. It was a LOT better when I looked at it again a couple of decades later.
I think it can be interesting to place Gatsby as the natural heir to the novels of Edith Wharton in terms of class, wealth and the impact of time on them
It never impressed me. But neither did many if the other books in the American cannon that are supposed to be so impressive. "Catcher In The Rye", "To Kill a Mockingbird", all that. I dunno why (I'm not saying my judgement is correct.) Too self serious or something? The Brits seemed to do late 19th - early/mid 20th century literature better, imho. Give me Wilde or Wodehouse or C.S. Lewis etc over all that. But I'm probably a philistine.
Thanks for including the history of the book, how WWII popularized Gatsby.
It's my favorite novel. I'm so happy it spoke to you.
Good post. Makes me want to read it again. The kid from nowhere who makes it big, the ultimate American tale. And then nemesis taking him down, and unrequited love, and success not bringing happiness -- the human condition.
Fitzgerald's economical use of words, meaning and characters has impressed me since I read him for the first time, and he continues to influence my writing in this way.
Realize this will be an unpopular opinion, but... My own take is that what makes the book work is nothing other than Fitzgerald’s writing. He was a tremendously talented writer. But the story itself is uninteresting and apart from the mystery of how Gatsby got rich the characters are pretty uninteresting and unsympathetic at best. This is why the movie versions fail, because once you lose Fitzgerald’s writing there just isn’t much left to work with.
Very nice Joel. Really enjoyed it !
I loved reading this article. The Great Gatsby was the only book I read in high school that I enjoyed reading. I'm definitely due for a re read on that