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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – review

‘Many say this is a story about love, but I disagree, I think this is a story about the amazing friendship between Gatsby and Nick’

Glitz, glam and splendour, behold the roaring twenties! A world of success, freedom and dreams. However, this novel is about the downfall of the American Dream. Meet Jay Gatsby, an amazing man who has built his way to the very top through his work and dedication to achieve his dream. Gatsby is the main man throughout the novel (clearly) as his story is the most interesting and the reader grows to love as well as hate him. He throws massive, lavish parties every week in hopes that one day, the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan, will make an appearance.

Meet Nick, the narrator whom the reader will most definitely feel sorry for. I mean why wouldn’t you? In the beginning we learn that his wife left him and his dog has run away! But he becomes really good friends with Gatsby, his neighbour.

The main themes in this novel, in my opinion, are affairs, friendship and unachievable dreams. It really hits the reader emotionally at many aspects of it. This novel highlights how Gatsby builds himself up to achieve a dream that is unachievable even with all the money in the world, but Gatsby doesn’t realise this.

Many say this is a story about love, but I disagree, I think this is a story about the amazing friendship between Gatsby and Nick as even until the very end, Nick was the only one who stayed by Gatsby’s side.

If you haven’t read Gatsby, then I really recommend that you do as Fitzgerald is a genius writer.

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The Great Gatsby

By f. scott fitzgerald.

'The Great Gatsby' tells a very human story of wealth, dreams, and failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald takes the reader into the heart of the Jazz Age, in New York City, and into the world of Jay Gatsby.

About the Book

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The Great Gatsby tells a very human story of wealth, dreams, and failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald takes the reader into the heart of the Jazz Age , in New York City, and into the world of Jay Gatsby. Through Nick’s narration, readers are exposed to the dangers of caring too much about the wrong thing and devoting themselves to the wrong ideal.

Gatsby’s pursuit of the past central to my understanding of this novel. Fitzgerald created Gatsby as a representative of the American dream , someone who, despite all of his hard work, did not achieve the one thing he wanted most in life.

Wealth and the American Dream

Another part of this novel I found to be integral to my understanding of the time period was the way that wealth and the American dream did not exist alongside one another. The American dream suggests that through hard work and determination, anyone can achieve the dream life they’re looking for.

On the outside, Gatsby does just that. He raises himself out of poverty and makes his fortune (albeit not through entirely legal means). He worked hard and remained focused. For those attending his parties or who have seen his mansion, he is living the best possible life–an embodiment of the American dream. But, he’s missing the one thing he really wanted to achieve–Daisy’s love and commitment. His pursuit of wealth was not for wealth alone. It was for something that, he realized, money can’t buy.

It was impossible for me not to feel moved by the bind Gatsby got himself into. He put Daisy on a pedestal, one that required she fulfill her end of the bargain if he fulfilled his. He got rich and acquired the means to give her the kind of life she wanted. But, Daisy was unwilling to separate herself from her husband, Tom Buchanan, and return to Gatsby. She ended up being more interested in maintaining her social status and staying in the safety of her marriage than living what might’ve been a happy life.

Daisy Buchanan and the Treatment of Women

Her character is often deeply romanticized, with her actions painted as those of a woman torn between what she knows is right and her inability to guide her own life. However, I always return to the strange conversation she shares with Nick, revealing her concerns about raising a daughter. The quote from The Great Gatsby reads:

I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

This quote proved to me that Daisy is well aware of her position in the world, and she turns to the safety of being “a beautiful little fool” when she needs to be. It’s the only way she feels she can survive.

There’s something to be said for the depiction of Daisy as a victim. Still, her callous treatment of Gatsby at the end of the novel, seen through her refusal to attend his funeral and dismissal of the destruction she caused, is hard to empathize with. Daisy may be at Tom’s mercy for a great deal, her livelihood, and her social status, but when she walks away from the death of a man she supposedly loved, it feels as though her true nature is revealed. She’s a survivor more than anything else and didn’t deserve the pedestal that Gatsby put her on. This is part of what makes Gatsby’s story so tragic. He was pure in a way that no other character in the novel was. He had one thing he wanted, and he was determined to do anything to get it. That one thing, Daisy’s love, was what let him down.

I also found it interesting to consider the differences between Jordan’s character and Daisy’s and how they were both treated. Jordan, while certainly no saint, is regarded as a dangerous personality. She sleeps with different men, appears to hold no one’s opinion above her own, and has made an independent career for herself as a golfer (a surely male-dominated world). I continue to ask myself how much of Nick’s depiction of Jordan is based on her pushing the envelope of what a woman “should” do in the 1920s ?

The Great Gatsby and Greatness

One of the novel’s defining moments is when Nick realizes who was truly “great” and why. Gatsby wasn’t “Great” because of his wealth, home, parties, or any other physical item he owned. He was great because of the single-minded pursuit of his dream. His incredible personality and determination made him a one-of-a-kind man in Nick’s world. This realization about who Gatsby was and what he represented was driven home by his death and the lack of attendees at his funeral. No one, aside from Nick, realizes the kind of man he was. Those he might’ve called friends were using him for the money, possession, or social status they might have attained. But, Nick realizes that none of these things made the man “great.”

The Great Gatsby as a Historical Document

Finally, I find myself considering what the novel can tell us about the United States post-World War I and during the financial boom of the roaring twenties. Without didactically detailing historical information, the novel does provide readers with an interesting insight into what the world was like then.

The characters, particularly those who attend Gatsby’s parties, appear to have nothing to lose. They’ve made it through the war, are financially better off than they were before, and are more than willing to throw caution to the wind. Fitzgerald taps into a particular culture, fueled by a new love for jazz music, financial stability, prohibition and speakeasies, and new freedoms for women. The novel evokes this culture throughout each page, transporting readers into a very different time and place.

The novel conveys a feeling of change to me, a realization that the American dream may not be all it’s cut out to be and that the world was never going to be the same again after World War I. It appears that this is part of what was fueling Fitzgerald’s characters in The Great Gatsby and his plot choices.

What did early reviewers think of The Great Gatsby ?

Early reviews of The Great Gatsby were not positive. Reviewers generally dismissed the novel, suggesting that it was not as good as Fitzgerald’s prior novels. It was not until after this death that it was elevated to the status it holds today.

What is the message of The Great Gatsby ?

The message is that the American dream is not real and that wealth does not equal happiness. Plus, optimism might feel and seem noble but when it’s misplaced it can be destructive.

Is Jay Gatsby a good or bad character?

Gatsby is generally considered to be a good character. He did illegal things to gain his fortune but it was with the best intentions–regaining the love of Daisy, the woman he loved in his youth.

Did Daisy actually love Gatsy?

It’s unclear whether or not she loved Gatsby. But, considering her actions, it seems unlikely she loved him during the novel.

What does Nick learn from Gatsby?

Nick learns that the wealth of East and West Egg are a cover for emptiness and moral bankruptcy. The men and women he met are devoid of empathy or love for one another.

The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald's Enduring Classic of the Jazz Age

Writing Style
Lasting Effect on Reader

The Great Gatsby Review

The Great Gatsby is a novel of the Jazz Age. It follows Nick Carraway as he uncovers the truth behind his mysterious neighbor’s wealth and dreams. The novel explores the consequences of wealth and suggests that the American dream is an unrealistic expectation.

Realistic setting.
Interesting and provoking dialogue.
Memorable characters.
Limited action and emotions.
Several unlikeable characters.
Leaves readers with questions.

About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

Cite This Page

Baldwin, Emma " The Great Gatsby Review ⭐ " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/f-scott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby/review/ . Accessed 16 April 2024.

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This week’s issue features an essay adapted from Jesmyn Ward’s introduction to a new edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “ The Great Gatsby .” In 1925, Edwin Clark reviewed the novel for the Book Review. Below is an excerpt.

Of the many new writers that sprang into notice with the advent of the post-war period, Scott Fitzgerald has remained the steadiest performer and the most entertaining. Now he has said farewell to his flappers and is writing of the older sisters that have married. To use a phrase of Burton Rascoe’s — his hurt romantics are still seeking that other side of paradise. And it might almost be said that “The Great Gatsby” is the last stage of illusion in this absurd chase.

The story of Jay Gatsby of West Egg is told by Nick Carraway, who is one of the legion from the Middle West who have moved on to New York and finds in Long Island a fascinating but dangerous playground. Gatsby’s fortune, business, even his connection with underworld figures, remain vague generalizations. Of his uncompromising love — his love for Daisy Buchanan — his effort to recapture the past romance — we are explicitly informed. This patient romantic hopefulness against existing conditions symbolizes Gatsby.

Nick Carraway had known Tom Buchanan at New Haven. Daisy, his wife, was a distant cousin. The post-war reactions were at their height — everyone was restless. Buchanan had acquired another woman. Daisy was bored, broken in spirit and neglected. Gatsby, his parties and his mysterious wealth were the gossip of the hour. At the Buchanans Nick met Jordan Baker; through them both Daisy again meets Gatsby, to whom she had been engaged before she married Buchanan. The inevitable consequence that follows is almost incidental, for in the overtones the decay of souls is more tragic. With keen psychological observation, Fitzgerald discloses in these people a meanness of spirit and absence of loyalties. He cannot hate them, for they are dumb in their selfishness, and only to be pitied. A curious book, a mystical, glamourous story of today.

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The book I am currently reading I am working steadily through the Chips Channon diaries , edited by Simon Heffer. Channon was a superb social and political diarist: bitchy, observant, self-aware, charming and frequently repellent.

The book that changed my life Friedrich Nietzsche’s Will to Power . A terrible book, cobbled together from the contents of the great philosopher’s rubbish bin by his ghastly sister after he had gone mad, to justify her Nazi views. But it set me off in search of the antisemitic, vegetarian, German colony Elisabeth Nietzsche had founded in Paraguay, and resulted in my first book.

The book I wish I’d written I wish I had written F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . Doesn’t everyone? I would love to be able to write with the fluid, urgent anger of John le Carré in his early works.

The book that had the greatest influence on my writing Undoubtedly In Cold Blood . His honesty is still debated, but Truman Capote showed that a “nonfiction novel”, when it works, can be even more engaging than either “pure” form. I have been trying to write that way ever since I read it in my teens. The book I think is most overrated I can’t manage the later Hilary Mantels, a failure on my part that is made more acute by my admiration for her earlier books. I just don’t seem to be able to stomach 16th-century characters having 21st-century thoughts.

The book that changed my mind Wilding by Isabella Tree . The story of an over-cultivated, uneconomic farm rendered wild again, and an ecological vision mercifully free of hand-wringing and finger-wagging. It persuaded me that here really is a way to enable nature to recolonise this increasingly barren land. The last book that made me cry To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read it to my children on holiday, but found I kept weeping copiously and having to stop, not at what I was reading, but at what I knew was coming. They found it quite baffling.

The last book that made me laugh Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son . Roger Mortimer’s epistles to his infuriating, delightful, feckless son Charlie are filled with gentle frustration, self-mockery and boundless love. Like all great comic writing, he makes it seem effortless. The book I couldn’t finish The authorised history of MI6 by Keith Jeffery. Given that I write about espionage, this ought to be my daily reading, yet it manages to make spying seem genuinely dull. It was authorised by MI6, but not, it seems, to reveal anything interesting. The book I’m ashamed not to have read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time . I have two copies. One lived on the coffee table for years. But I have never opened it. There is, I believe, a mathematical equation for this: weight + time x celebrity = unpickupable. The book I give as a gift I am currently distributing, as widely as I can, The Gospel of the Eels by Patrik Svensson, a moving evocation of one of the last great natural mysteries, a beast that leaves Europe a steely snake-fish to make a single transatlantic migration during which it magically assumes a gender, digests its own innards, and grows large blue eyes, before finally reaching the waters of the Sargasso Sea northeast of Cuba, reproducing, and then dying.

My earliest reading memory Of adult literature: Jane Austen, all of her. I was partly brought up in a remote Scottish property without television, electricity or heating, but stuffed with books, which I flatly refused to read until, driven by a combination of weather and boredom, I started on the author I thought most calculated to reflect superiority over my sister. Of children’s literature: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Still a wild rumpus after all these years.

My comfort read Scoop by Evelyn Waugh . I know, I know: racially insensitive, viciously snobbish, but still the best satire of journalism ever written.

• Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre is published by Penguin (£8.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply .

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Fitzgerald’s ‘Radiant World’

December 21, 2000 issue

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Novels and Stories, 1920-1922

Trimalchio: An Early Versionof The Great Gatsby

Trimalchio by F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Facsimile Edition of the Original Galley Proofs

Scott Fitzgerald conceived of the story which would become The Great Gatsby on Long Island, where man, in the person of a crew of Dutch sailors, was placed “face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” That was in the spring of 1924. He wrote most of it, though, in a villa above St. Raphaël on the Riviera, with Roman and Romanesque aqueducts within sight, and beneath a skyline that reminded him of Shelley’s Eugenean Hills. There was a beach where he and Zelda swam daily, and came to know a group of young French naval aviators. Otherwise, he worked steadily at what he jokingly spoke of to friends as “a novel better than any novel written in America.” By late October the manuscript was ready to be mailed to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s.

He knew very well that the book in hand was far finer than anything he had attempted before. In April, on the eve of his departure for Europe, he told Perkins that “I cannot let it go out unless it has the very best I am capable of in it or even as I feel sometimes, something better than I am capable of.” He would not be alone in that feeling; Perkins himself would say that the novel possessed the Fitzgerald glamour, but also “a kind of mystic atmosphere at times.” He may have been remembering Fitzgerald’s words in that April letter: “So in my new novel I’m thrown directly on purely creative work—not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere yet radiant world.”

He had first, however—and this would become a recurring problem—to clear himself of debt. He was at the beginning of a decade in which he would be one of America’s best-paid writers of fiction, but money kept vanishing as though at the command of an evil sorcerer. Renting a mansion on Long Island Sound could not have helped, of course, nor could driving into Manhattan for parties and hotels, or living next door to his friend Ring Lardner, a notorious alcoholic. Or a staff that included a live-in couple, a nurse for the baby, and a laundress. When he had dug himself out of the hole, he wrote an insouciant account of the matter for The Saturday Evening Post , which he had come to think of as his guardian spirit. “Over our garage is a large bare room whither I now retired with pencil, paper and the oil stove, emerging the next afternoon at five o’clock with a 7,000 word story.”

By April, he had sold enough commercial fiction to clear himself of debt, and to take himself and Zelda to France, where he would be free to write the novel. “I really worked hard as hell last winter—but it was all trash and it nearly broke my heart and my iron constitution.” But they were going to the “Old World to find a new rhythm for our lives, with a true conviction that we had left our old selves behind forever—and with a capital of just over seven thousand dollars.” Arthur Mizener, his second and perhaps most subtle biographer, after quoting this passage, suggests that, like Gatsby, he “wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving [Zelda]. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.” 1 Mizener deliberately borrows Nick Carraway’s language to suggest similarities of circumstance between Gatsby and his creator.

The comparison was irresistible, if only because we keep looking for themes that connect Fitzgerald with his greatest work of fiction. Certainly Fitzgerald had reached a crossroads of sorts, but not one that had anything to do with Zelda. That, ironically, would be reached later that summer, when he was writing productively in France. It had much to do, however, with money and with “some idea of himself.”

The sensational public success of This Side of Paradise in 1920, when he was twenty-three, had established him as a figure on the literary scene, and he had gone on to secure that reputation with enough commercial short fiction to fill two volumes— Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age . Those stories, even the slenderest of them, display with careless grace his uncanny ability to evoke atmospheres, moods, energies, through his deployment of sounds, colors, lights, shadows. But a few stories written later, and he knew which ones—“Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” “The Sensible Thing,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”—had more than inborn grace and developing skill. Later, these would be the stories singled out by critics as signaling the tentative stirring of The Great Gatsby within his imagination. This may or may not be the case, but they may have reminded him that it had been his plan to become something more than the chronicler of flappers and playboys.

Fitzgerald himself had given currency to neither of those words; very few of his short-story women are flappers in the John Held sense of the word, and certainly not the young ladies, however liberated, in his novels. He did later admit ruefully to some responsibility for that phrase “the Jazz Age,” and at one of Gatsby’s parties a “Jazz History of the World” would be performed. He had shaped the literary image of that world, and it had been decided, in those quarters where such things are decided, that he was not merely the prophet of a new, reckless generation, with new songs to sing, but its living embodiment, with the looks of a movie star and a gift for outrageous public behavior. “The other evening at a dancing club,” one of numberless journalists reported, “a young man in a gray suit, soft shirt, loosely tied scarf, shook his tousled yellow hair engagingly, introduced me to the beautiful lady with whom he was dancing and sat down.” Mizener offers the familiar verbal snapshots: “They rode down Fifth Avenue on the tops of taxis because it was hot or dove into the fountain at Union Square or tried to undress at the Scandals , or, in sheer delight at the splendor of New York, jumped, dead sober, into the Pulitzer fountain in front of the Plaza. Fitzgerald got in fights with waiters and Zelda danced on people’s dinner tables.” They were already drinking far too much, especially Fitzgerald.

They were a well-known couple, Fitzgerald and his “barbarian princess from the South,” creating a rotogravure legend which still exists, wavering, in our cultural memory, decorated with anachronistic stills of Astaire and Rogers dancing against a montage of top hats and champagne bottles. If they went broke every couple of years, there were always those fountains of eternal replenishment, The Saturday Evening Post and Red Book , and Liberty and Woman’s Home Companion . But that isn’t how he had planned it. He had planned to become the best novelist of his generation, somehow or other.

This Side of Paradise had had a success which was almost freakish, capturing the aspirations of a generation and especially of those within that generation who, like its author, aspired to be great writers. Reading it today, one blanches at its emotional and rhetorical excesses, and yet, as Matthew Bruccoli says, it was received as “an iconoclastic social document—even as a testament of revolt. Surprisingly, it was regarded as an experimental or innovative narrative because of the mixture of styles and the inclusion of plays and verse.” It was the autobiographical first novel of a very young writer who took himself very seriously, and who had not provided for his hero those escape hatches of irony which Joyce had built into A Portrait of the Artist . But it was not, by any stretch, the work of a man who planned a career as a writer of commercial fiction.

H.L. Mencken, who turns out, rather surprisingly, to have been the most perceptive of Fitzgerald’s early critics, was the gentlest of them when writing of Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned , when it appeared in 1922. For Edmund Wilson, the Princeton friend whom he would one day call his “literary conscience,” Fitzgerald “has been given imagination without intellectual control of it; he has been given the desire for beauty without an aesthetic ideal; and he has been given a gift for expression without very many ideas to express.” Wilson unkindly quoted Edna Millay as saying that he resembled “a stupid old woman with whom someone has left a diamond.” But Mencken, who could wield a heavy saber when he wished, wrote differently. After the first novel, he wrote, Fitzgerald’s future seemed uncertain and the “shabby stuff” collected in Flappers and Philosophers changed uncertainty into something worse, but the new novel has “a hundred signs in it of serious purpose and unquestionable skill. Even in its defects there is proof of hard striving.”

Perhaps Mencken had been too easily impressed by the novel’s pretentious chat about Spengler (who had not yet been translated), and perhaps Wilson had not placed proper value upon his friend’s uncanny ability to evoke atmospheres, moods, emotional energies. Fitzgerald would never be an intellectual in the sense that Wilson already was, but he was beginning to learn that one uniquely novelistic gift which Wilson never quite mastered, the ability to translate ideas into art. It is at work, if falteringly and at times embarrassingly, in The Beautiful and Damned .

The sudden leap forward into the exquisite mastery of The Great Gatsby is likely to remain one of art’s abiding mysteries, but readers of Fitzgerald may be forgiven their speculations. The story called “Absolution,” which Mencken published in the American Mercury in June of 1924, just as Gatsby was being finished, is a case in point. In a letter to a fan, he tells us that the character of Gatsby

was perhaps created on the image of some forgotten farm type of Minnesota that I have known and forgotten, and associated at the same moment with some sense of romance. It might interest you to know that a story of mine, called “Absolution,” in my book All the Sad Young Men was intended to be a picture of his early life, but that I cut it because I preferred to preserve the sense of mystery.

This surely cannot have been literally the case—there seems little connection between Jimmy Gatz, who, as we learn in the novel’s final pages, had grown up a Lutheran, and Rudolph Miller, a Catholic boy who makes a boastful confession to a half-mad priest. There is, to be sure, a thematic connection: both boys live, dangerously, within the imagination, with the priest providing a creepy warning. As Fitzgerald explained to another reader, “The priest gives the boy a form of Absolution (not of course sacramental) by showing him that he (the priest) is in an even worse state of horror and despair.”

The case with the story called “Winter Dreams” is stronger. Stylistically, it is fully on a level with Gatsby—well, almost—and it displays the same control of material. Young Dexter Green is a middle-class boy who works for pocket money each summer as a caddy on the local golf course, and each winter, in the fierce Minnesota cold, roams the frozen fields, imagining himself in scenes of local and imperial glory, swinging his arms to bring armies onto the field. He, or perhaps the authorial voice, has an ability to quicken both kinds of landscape into quiet, lyrical life. One day, this glory is entered by a girl, Judy Jones, a rich man’s daughter, flirtatious, perhaps wanton, desirable, fickle, self-obsessed. And by a subtle alchemy, she comes at first to dwell with the glory of wealth, then to embody, at last to replace it in Dexter’s increasingly eroticized imagination. He imagines the splendors of her mansion’s floor of bedrooms, in words which Fitzgerald (ever a thrifty husbandman of his own prose) moved bodily into an equivalent scene in Gatsby .

As Dexter enters manhood, the complex dream in which Judy and her world of social grandeur and illimitability remains with him, while he takes steps to transcend his own limited life, persuading his father to send him east to the Ivy League, where, with a subtle blend of dream and hard-headedness, he acquires the clothes and the mannerisms of Judy’s class, while realizing that he can never himself fully enter it. “His mother’s name had been Krimslich. She was a Bohemian of the peasant class and she had spoken broken English to the end of her days.” As Fitzgerald tells us, Dexter was at bottom a practical man, and he becomes rich by a touchingly imaginative blend of dream and reality, building up a chain of dry-cleaning and laundry shops, specializing in the proper treatment of the imported tweeds of upper-class men and the delicate French lingerie of the wives. At last, years later and by chance, after he is established in a New York skyscraper, he learns that Judy is married now, with a thick and unfeeling husband, tied down with the children. And she has lost her looks.

“Winter Dreams” is a kind of rough sketch for the novel which Fitzgerald did not yet know he wanted to write. It is more rooted in social reality than Gatsby would be, and for that reason it has problems that Gatsby does not have, but also, as we shall see, it avoids problems that would in Gatsby loom formidably. We don’t know what Dexter did in the war, beyond learning that, like Gatsby, he “went into the first officers’ training camp.” It is most doubtful though, if, like Major Jay Gatsby, he had held off the enemy for two nights with a hundred and thirty men and sixteen Lewis guns, winning a decoration from every government, even little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea. That sounds more like his adolescent imaginings on the frozen fairways. But then it is even harder to imagine Jay Gatsby as the proprietor of a dry-cleaning shop in Black Bear.

“Long ago,” Dexter says at the story’s close, “long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.” Like Gatsby, he has lived too long with a single dream, and when it shattered, he entered, as Gatsby would, a community of loss, “material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.”

Fitzgerald completed The Great Gatsby in the villa at St. Raphaël, had the typing completed, and sent it off to Perkins at the end of October. Soon after, Scott and Zelda drove to Rome, apparently because Zelda had been reading Roderick Hudson but perhaps also because the Riviera held complex and troubling memories for her. They settled into a hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, perhaps because it held associations with the dying Keats, whom Scott worshiped this side idolatry, but came swiftly to loathe the city and its inhabitants. “Pope Siphilis the Sixth and his Morons,” muttered the ex-Catholic, whom scholars tell us retained to the end something called “a Catholic sensibility.” He got drunk and was beaten up by the police.

On December 6 and 30, the galley proofs arrived from New York, and he set to work on his revisions. This may seem an odd way of proceeding, but in those primitive days of publishing, Scribners was in the fortunate position of owning its own printing plant, on West 43rd Street, close to its Fifth Avenue editorial offices. Perkins’s decision to have Fitzgerald’s novel set immediately into type presumes that he did not expect extensive revisions, and he was in any case following his customary practice: Fitzgerald’s earlier books were treated similarly, as Hemingway’s would be. More astonishingly, he “had the novels of Thomas Wolfe typeset before he and Wolfe got down to serious work on them.” Letterpress composition, back then, we are told, would not have cost much more than having a stenographer make a typescript.

We are now in the fortunate position of having available to us, and in two forms, the text as Perkins had it set into type, both of them bearing the word Trimalchio as title. 2 This is the title which Fitzgerald was insisting on at the time, and it is the running head on the galleys. The first is a facsimile publication of the proofs themselves, limited to five hundred numbered copies on laid paper, resting handsomely and snugly in a box of royal blue, with more or less the proportions, although of course not the size, of a coffin. There is an afterword by Professor Matthew Bruccoli, the dean of Fitzgerald scholars, to whose work on Fitzgerald and other writers of the period we are all of us in debt. His is the one biography which can be said to supercede Mizener’s, although its title, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur , may suggest that his admiration sometimes surges over the top. 3 We also have Professor James West’s Trimalchio , described by Cambridge University Press as “An Early Version of The Great Gatsby .” It is a bound volume, one in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it is therefore easier to use than the reproduced galleys, although much less fun.

Unless you are a scholar of bibliography, which is not a fun profession, there are two reasons which make instructive a comparison of Trimalchio and The Great Gatsby . Cambridge tells us that reading the “early and complete version” is like listening to a familiar musical composition—but played in a different key and with an alternate bridge passage. It is the same work and yet a different work.” I myself am tone-deaf, unfortunately, but this seems fair enough: maybe a bridge passage is like a transition, at which Fitzgerald, as we shall see, was a master.

In the years that had followed his first publications, Fitzgerald had become a thoroughgoing professional, and the way in which he managed a major revision simply (!) by moving materials from various chapters to other chapters, on the galleys, is breathtaking, and he did it without diminishing, but rather intensifying the required moods and tonalities. He did it in two months, while turning out potboilers to cover expenses—they were broke again—and getting into more mischief with the Romans. Most of the revisions were addressed to a specific problem, which Perkins had raised with him, but there was another, more fundamental problem, which he could not quite define, not even in a well-known letter to Wilson, who had written to congratulate him:

The worst fault in it I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe. However, the lack is so astutely concealed by the retrospect of Gatsby’s past and by blankets of excellent prose that no one has noticed it—though everyone has felt the lack and called it by another name.

And that is what everyone did. Mencken “said that the only fault was that the central story was trivial and a kind of anecdote (that is because he has admiration for Conrad and adjusted himself to the sprawling novel) and I felt that what he really missed was the lack of any emotional backbone at the height of it.” As for the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about.

When Perkins read the typescript of—let us call it Trimalchio —he was shaken. “I think the novel is a wonder,” he wrote back. “I’m taking it home to read again, and shall then write my impressions in full—but it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality.”

The novel has rarely had a better reader, so generous yet judicious as to restore what may be a waning awe for Perkins as a great editor. His remarks focus precisely upon the book’s method and the scenes which are the most memorable and signifying. They deserve quotation at length:

You adopted exactly the right method of telling it, that of employing a narrator who is more of a spectator than an actor: this puts the reader upon a point of observation on a higher level than that on which the characters stand and at a distance that gives perspective. In no other way could your irony have been so immensely effective, nor the reader have been enabled so strongly to feel at times the strangeness of human circumstances in a vast heedless universe. In the eyes of Dr. Eckleberg various readers will see different significances; but their presence gives a superb touch to the whole thing: great unblinking eyes, expressionless, looking down on the human scene. It’s magnificent! …I have only two actual criticisms:— One is that among a set of characters marvelously palpable and vital—I would know Tom Buchanan if I met him on the street and would avoid him—Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim. Now everything about Gatsby is more or less a mystery i.e. more or less vague, and this may be somewhat of an artistic intention, but I think it is mistaken. Couldn’t he be physically described as distinctly as the others, and couldn’t you add one or two characteristics like the use of that phrase “old sport,” not verbal, but physical ones perhaps…. The other point is also about Gatsby: his career must remain mysterious, of course. But at the end you make it clear that his wealth comes through his connection with Wolfsheim…. The total lack of an explanation through so large a part of the story does seem to me a defect;—or not of an explanation, but of the suggestion of an explanation…. There is one other point: in giving deliberately Gatsby’s biography when he gives it to the narrator you do depart from the method of the narrative to some degree, for otherwise almost everything is told, and beautifully told, in the regular flow of it—in the succession of events or in accompaniment with them…. The presentation of Tom, his place, Daisy and Jordan, and the unfolding of their characters is unequalled so far as I know. The description of the valley of ashes adjacent to the lovely country, the conversation and the action in Myrtle’s apartment, the marvellous catalogue of those who came to Gatsby’s house,—these are such things as make a man famous. And all these things, the whole pathetic episode, you have given a place in time and space, for with the help of T.J. Eckleberg and by an occasional glance at the sky, or the sea, or the city, you have imparted a sort of sense of eternity. You once told me that you were not a natural writer—my God! You have plainly mastered the craft, of course; but you needed far more than craftsmanship for this.

All that Perkins singled out for praise—the narrative method, the individual scenes, are of course carried forward intact from Trimalchio to Gatsby and so too is that light dusting upon existence for which Perkins could find no better word than “glamour” and neither can anyone else.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. There was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

There is no need, surely, to rehearse the plot of “probably the most widely read novel written by an American in the twentieth century.” The opening chapters of Trimalchio and The Great Gatsby are pretty much the same, barring the kind of fussing every writer does with galleys. The chief changes come in Chapters Six and Seven of Trimalchio , and the long, late chapter, as Gatsby and Nick sit by the open French windows in Gatsby’s house, the dawn after Myrtle’s killing, when Gatsby breaks out “exuberantly”: “I’ll tell you everything. The whole story. I’ve never told it to anyone before—not even Daisy. But I haven’t told many lies about it, either, only I’ve shifted things around a good deal to make people wonder.” And shifting things about is what Fitzgerald, his creator—one of his surrogate fathers, like Cody and Wolfsheim—now proceeds to do. Perkins had surely been right: Gatsby’s story comes to us much more persuasively measured out among chapters. And it has effects that could not have been anticipated. It is right, for example, that we should learn, much earlier, that “Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that.”

In a jubilant, indeed cocksure letter to Perkins, Fitzgerald reported that he had brought Gatsby to life, accounted for his money, fixed up the second party scene and the climactic scene at the Plaza, and successfully broken up the long, autobiographical scene at Gatsby’s French windows. In brief, by an act of stylistic legerdemain, he had addressed all of Perkins’s concerns. What he had not addressed were his own misgivings about the novel’s emotional center, or rather, its lack of one.

There is a moment in Trimalchio at one of the parties, when Daisy and Nick are dancing and Daisy, leaning backward to look into his face, tells him that she just wants to go, and not tell Tom anything. She is afraid of the riskiness of Gatsby’s world, afraid of “some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion.” A few weeks later, the lights failed to go on one Saturday night, and “as obscurely as it had begun his career as Trimalchio suddenly ended.” “I’m very sad old sport,” he tells Nick a few days later. “Daisy wants us to run off together. She came over this afternoon with a suitcase all packed and ready in the car.” In other words, Nick tells him, understandably if a bit brutally, you’ve got her—and now you don’t want her. What Gatsby wants, as far as he had figured things out, is that he and Daisy should go back to Louisville and be married in her house and start life over. The bewilderment which this bizarre enterprise might cause in that conventional household seemed to him of no concern. As he walks frantically up and down, he seems to be in some fantastic communication with time and space. With a bit more experience, Nick could have pointed out to him that when you mess around with an excitable young married woman, you are buying yourself a peck of trouble.

It is at this point that there occurs the passage that, when carried over from Trimalchio into Gatsby , has caused much spilled ink. Gatsby remembers the time, five years before at the change of the year, when he kissed Daisy, and knew that now his mind would never romp again like the mind of God: “So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

The extremity of the language is necessary, though, if the relationship of these star-crossed lovers is to be grasped, and it is at least possible that Fitzgerald has conjured into being sets of feelings that run on different tracks. Daisy lives in the world we like to call real, in which women, real women, stuff their suitcases with real silks and drive real cars over to a lover. A bit headstrong, perhaps, but none the less real for that. But Gatsby lives in the world of romantic energies and colors, a world shaped as a conspiracy between himself and the writer who has been creating him. It is the world of Emma Bovary and Julien Sorel and Balzac’s heroes. How it was wandered into by a cornball from the shores of Lake Superior must remain, no doubt, a mystery. But there you are.

As Fitzgerald wrote to his other literary friend from Princeton, John Peale Bishop, “You are right about Gatsby being blurred and patchy. I never at any one time saw him clear myself—for he started out as one man I knew and then changed into myself—the amalgam was never complete in my mind.” But that would happen always with his central figures—Amory Blaine and Anthony Patch, Dexter Green, Dick Diver, Monroe Stahr. It is a common affliction of the romantic sensibility and still more of romantic aspiration. Small wonder that Keats was his favorite poet—perhaps his favorite writer—or that he wrote to his daughter that The Eve of Saint Agnes “has the richest, most sensuous imagery in English, not excepting Shakespeare.” It would be somewhere within his mind when Gatsby begins throwing his London-made shirts before Daisy in multicolored disarray, “shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue.” Small wonder that when the single romantic dream shatters, the world disassembles itself, uncreates itself, drains off its colors and names for things. “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found out what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.”

Fitzgerald—and Zelda too, in her different way—had received a raven’s wing of that terror of the suddenly unreal in that summer when he was writing Gatsby , and Zelda either became infatuated with or fell desperately in love with a young French naval aviator named Édouard Jozan. He would appear, variously renamed, in Tender Is the Night and in Zelda’s Save Me the Waltz . “Everybody knew it but Scott,” Sara Murphy said. But he found out. They always do. Even Tom Buchanan did when he heard Daisy say to Gatsby: “You always look so cool.” Apparently the jury is still out on whether Zelda went to bed with Jozan, but it might not have much mattered in view of the enormous, the almost Gatsby-like investment which Fitz-gerald and Zelda had made in each other.

Back in 1920, a young woman friend of Fitzgerald’s, bearing the somewhat improbable name of Isabelle Amorous, heard that the engagement had been broken off, and wrote to tell him that from all she had heard he was well out of it. She got an earshot in reply, which is what such people deserve:

No personality as strong as Zelda’s could go without getting criticisms and as you say she is not above reproach. I’ve always known that. Any girl who gets stewed in public, who frankly enjoys and tells shocking stories, who smokes constantly and makes the remark that she has “kissed thousands of men and intends to kiss thousands more,” cannot be considered beyond reproach even if above it. But Isabelle I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self respect and it’s these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all that she should be. But of course the real reason, Isabelle, is that I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything. You’re still a Catholic but Zelda’s the only God I have left now.

So much for this “lapsed Catholic sensibility” nonsense. He ends the letter with admirable restraint, perhaps because he is writing from Princeton’s Cottage Club: “And don’t reproach yourself for your letter. My friends are unanimous in frankly advising me not to marry a wild, pleasure-loving girl like Zelda so I’m quite used to it.” To speak of Zelda, then at least, as what he has instead of God (which is eerily prophetic of something Brett says to Jake in The Sun Also Rises ) is more than a lover’s rhetoric; it is something closer to the fact.

Now, from the Riviera in August, a month after he has confronted Zelda, and as he is finishing the novel, he writes to another old friend, Ludlow Fowler, the model for Anson Hunter in “The Rich Boy”: “That’s the whole burden of this novel—the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world that you don’t care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.”

There remains now only the hygienic task of clearing up a misconception about this novel which has grown mushroomlike beside it, and threat-ens at times almost to replace it. This is the belief that The Great Gatsby is about something called “the Ameri-can Dream.” Scholars exchange their learned articles on the subject, and generations of college freshmen are told about it. If you whispered into a reader’s sleeping ear the words “Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby ,” she would murmur drowsily “and the corruption of the American dream.” By the time Mizener was at work on his biography, he was writing with confidence of “Gatsby’s embodiment of the American dream.” Subsequent libraries of Gatsby criticism are elaborations of the theme. There probably is an American dream, and it probably deserves some of the things that are said about it. (How else could we have wound up with Gore and Bush—such things are not accidents.) But this is not the subject of Fitzgerald’s wonderful novel, which is “about” our entrance into the world “trailing clouds of glory” until

At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Wordsworth was not in a particularly American mood when he wrote the Immortality Ode. And he even went out of his way to tell us in a long note what he took his own poem to be about. Many times when going to school, he tells us, “have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality.” In his poem, he chooses to regard this “as resumptive evidence of a prior state of existence,” an idea “not advanced in revelation” but with “nothing there to contradict it.” And, if one would want some more recent speculations upon the subject, one might study what Nick feels after Gatsby’s fear that his mind will not romp again like the mind of God:

Through all that he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there were more struggling on them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

That memory came to a first European life in a Platonic dialogue, and since then we have been listening to fragmentary echoes from the Cave. Of course , Fitzgerald has much to tell us about the life and the history of American culture, about the textures, the richnesses and thinnesses of our national life—because after all, as we’ve been told, poetry must have a local habitation and a name. And maybe we have persuaded ourselves that all American novels are really about America, and not about love and eros and death.

December 21, 2000

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Thomas Flanagan (1923–2002), the grandson of Irish immigrants, grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he ran the school newspaper with his friend Truman Capote. Flanagan attended Amherst College (with a two-year hiatus to serve in the Pacific Fleet) and earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he studied under Lionel Trilling while also writing stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. In 1959, he published an important scholarly work, The Irish Novelists, 1800 to 1850 , and the next year he moved to Berkeley, where he was to teach English and Irish literature at the University of California for many years. In 1978 he took up a post at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, from which he retired in 1996. Flanagan and his wife Jean made annual trips to Ireland, where he struck up friendships with many writers, including Benedict Kiely and Seamus Heaney, whom he in turn helped bring to the United States. His intimate knowledge of Ireland’s history and literature also helped to inspire his trilogy of historical novels, starting with The Year of the French (1979, winner of the National Critics’ Circle award for fiction, reissued by NYRB Classics in 2004) and continuing with The Tenants of Time (1988) and The End of the Hunt (1994). He is also the author of There You Are: Writings on Irish and American Literature and History (2004). Flanagan was a frequent contributor to many publications, including The New York Review of Books , The New York Times , and The Kenyon Review .

Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Houghton Mifflin, 1951). ↩

In the Satyricon by Petronius, Trimalchio is a vulgar and rich ex-slave who gives gaudy banquets to derisive guests. Gatsby scholars who specialize in clocks (and there are some: Time and all that) should note Trimalchio’s water-clock. ↩

Harcourt Brace, 1981. ↩

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Read TIME’s Original Review of <i>The Great Gatsby</i>

Read TIME’s Original Review of The Great Gatsby

T he main book review in the May 11, 1925, issue of TIME earned several columns of text, with an in-depth analysis of the book’s significance and the author’s background.

But, nearly a century later, you’ve probably never heard of Mr. Tasker’s Gods , by T.F. Powys, much less read it.

Meanwhile, another book reviewed in the issue, earning a single paragraph relegated to the second page of the section, has gone down in history as one of the most important works in American literature — and, to many, the great American novel. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , published exactly 90 years ago, on April 10, 1925.

TIME’s original review, though noting Fitzgerald’s talent, gave little hint of the fame waiting for the book:

THE GREAT GATSBY—F. Scott Fitzgerald—Scribner—($2.00). Still the brightest boy in the class, Scott Fitzgerald holds up his hand. It is noticed that his literary trousers are longer, less bell-bottomed, but still precious. His recitation concerns Daisy Fay who, drunk as a monkey the night before she married Tom Buchanan, muttered: “Tell ’em all Daisy’s chang’ her mind.” A certain penniless Navy lieutenant was believed to be swimming out of her emotional past. They gave her a cold bath, she married Buchanan, settled expensively at West Egg, L. I., where soon appeared one lonely, sinister Gatsby, with mounds of mysterious gold, ginny habits and a marked influence on Daisy. He was the lieutenant, of course, still swimming. That he never landed was due to Daisy’s baffled withdrawal to the fleshly, marital mainland. Due also to Buchanan’s disclosure that the mounds of gold were ill-got. Nonetheless, Yegg Gatsby remained Daisy’s incorruptible dream, unpleasantly removed in person toward the close of the book by an accessory in oil-smeared dungarees.

But not everyone had trouble seeing the future: in a 1933 cover story about Gertrude Stein, the intellectual icon offered her prognostications on the literature of her time. F. Scott Fitzgerald, she told TIME, “will be read when many of his well known contemporaries are forgotten.”

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THE GREAT GATSBY

A graphic novel adaptation.

by F. Scott Fitzgerald & K. Woodman-Maynard ; illustrated by K. Woodman-Maynard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 5, 2021

A disappointing stand-in for the original.

Nearly a century after its first publication, the English class mainstay is presented in graphic form, presenting the story of Nick, a young man who rents a mansion in Long Island for the summer, and an enigmatic party host named Gatsby.

Fitzgerald’s dialogue appears in speech bubbles while Nick’s signature nonjudgmental judgments are woven into the art itself, appearing in the beam of a lightbulb, the shadow of the self-important Tom Buchanan’s imposing frame, or the chaise that Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker seemingly ceaselessly lounge on. Woodman-Maynard’s adaptation of the text is understandably quite abridged, but it does the book no favors. The great revelation that Gatsby is (spoiler alert) not a trust fund kid but an imposter is afforded a single page, and the fact of his past affair with Daisy is so murkily depicted that it feels less tragic romance and more moony boy and Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The class issues that make the original novel so compelling are thus less than adequately examined. Where the book truly shines is in a few striking images, some metaphorical and some text based, rendered in cool, languid watercolor and digital art. As Woodman-Maynard indicates in the author’s note, those who are not familiar with the novel should begin there; those more familiar with the story will be able to fill in the gaps as they read this condensed version.

Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5362-1301-0

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

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BOOK REVIEW

by F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Dave Page

by F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by James L.W. West III

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

SUPERMAN SMASHES THE KLAN

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by Gurihiru ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2020

A clever and timely conversation on reclaiming identity and acknowledging one’s full worth.

Superman confronts racism and learns to accept himself with the help of new friends.

In this graphic-novel adaptation of the 1940s storyline entitled “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” from The Adventures of Superman radio show, readers are reintroduced to the hero who regularly saves the day but is unsure of himself and his origins. The story also focuses on Roberta Lee, a young Chinese girl. She and her family have just moved from Chinatown to Metropolis proper, and mixed feelings abound. Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane’s colleague from the Daily Planet , takes a larger role here, befriending his new neighbors, the Lees. An altercation following racial slurs directed at Roberta’s brother after he joins the local baseball team escalates into an act of terrorism by the Klan of the Fiery Kross. What starts off as a run-of-the-mill superhero story then becomes a nuanced and personal exploration of the immigrant experience and blatant and internalized racism. Other main characters are White, but Black police inspector William Henderson fights his own battles against prejudice. Clean lines, less-saturated coloring, and character designs reminiscent of vintage comics help set the tone of this period piece while the varied panel cuts and action scenes give it a more modern sensibility. Cantonese dialogue is indicated through red speech bubbles; alien speech is in green.

Pub Date: May 12, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-77950-421-0

Publisher: DC

Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

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by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by LeUyen Pham

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by Les McClaine & Alison Acton

by Gene Luen Yang ; illustrated by Les McClaine & Alison Acton ; color by Karina Edwards & Alex Campbell

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2017

New York Times Bestseller

by Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2017

A contemporary hero’s journey, brilliantly told.

The 17-year-old son of a troubled rock star is determined to find his own way in life and love.

On the verge of adulthood, Blade Morrison wants to leave his father’s bad-boy reputation for drug-and-alcohol–induced antics and his sister’s edgy lifestyle behind. The death of his mother 10 years ago left them all without an anchor. Named for the black superhero, Blade shares his family’s connection to music but resents the paparazzi that prevent him from having an open relationship with the girl that he loves. However, there is one secret even Blade is unaware of, and when his sister reveals the truth of his heritage during a bitter fight, Blade is stunned. When he finally gains some measure of equilibrium, he decides to investigate, embarking on a search that will lead him to a small, remote village in Ghana. Along the way, he meets people with a sense of purpose, especially Joy, a young Ghanaian who helps him despite her suspicions of Americans. This rich novel in verse is full of the music that forms its core. In addition to Alexander and co-author Hess’ skilled use of language, references to classic rock songs abound. Secondary characters add texture to the story: does his girlfriend have real feelings for Blade? Is there more to his father than his inability to stay clean and sober? At the center is Blade, fully realized and achingly real in his pain and confusion.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-310-76183-9

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Blink

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT LITERARY FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

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Scott Berkun

The great gatsby: book review.

As a story outline, The Great Gatsby is simple. There’s nothing that fancy or elaborate going on. It’s a writer’s book in a way, since it’s so simple and in many way obvious, yet works so wonderfully well. It’s constructed as a series of slow burning time bombs that make you simultaneously want them to both go off to relieve the pressure, but not go off, so you can enjoy the way things are slowly unraveling for as long as possible. It’s irresistible as a writer to want to take it apart and see how it works.

What makes the book sing is the first person narration, and how easy Fitzgerald makes it seem to blend internal thoughts with plotting, dialog and observation. He jumps though time and perspective but always makes you, as the reader, feel well cared for by the soft cushion of his narrative powers.

But there are moments that don’t age well: scenes of racism, which, on afterthought, were probably appropriate for 1920s America (and perhaps part of the commentary he was making about society. It’s hard to tell at times what he is criticizing and what he’s simply observing). Some manners of speech feel staged, but not having been born until 50 years after it was written it’s hard to argue whether he got it right or wrong. But none of those complaints stand in the way of what has always been a deeply worthwhile, and easy read.

Some choice non-spoiler quotes from the book:

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth. No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and shortwinded elations of men. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens. The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face, discussing in impassioned voices…

When I saw the latest film version of The Great Gatsby (directed by Baz Luhrmann, of Moulin Rouge fame), I was disappointed and delighted. Baz’s style fits his name, and the movie is grand, dramatic, over the top and nearly absurd, but also beautiful, shocking and intense. It seemed Baz didn’t see the film as a tragic commentary on the misguided capitalistic dream, or at least not enough to prevent the dance numbers and special effects to often take center stage. The revival of Gatsby parties seemed to have missed the point of who Gatsby was.

I’d always thought of the story as more smoldering than explosive, and more lyrical than confrontational. I still prefer the 1974 Redford version of the film , which was more stayed and placed a bigger bet on the strength of the story than on visual storytelling itself. Gatsby is meant to be a sad enigma, and it’s Carraway (played best by Sam Waterston) who has the burden of framing him for us. In the end, the most successful, best looking person in the story is the opposite of what he seems, yet it’s so easy to get lost along the way that this is what the story is truly about. Perhaps Fitzgerald was too soft in his telling of the story, as far too many people take other things away from it.

[updated 4-10-2016]

7 Responses to “The Great Gatsby: Book Review”

One of my favorite books of all-time. Funny enough, through each read over the years, my visual mind has always had DiCaprio playing the role.

I’d never imagined a specific actor for it, but when I saw the preview he instantly seemed like a great choice.

Thanks for the book review, Scott! I’m embarrassed to admit that I have yet to read THE GREAT GATSBY. However, my husband’s enthusiasm for it as one of the best books he’s ever read coupled with the fact that Baz Luhrmann made a movie (ROMEO + JULIET is a longtime favorite of mine) is enough to get me to read it.

Time to squeeze it into the book pile!

Hey, speaking of books for writers – have you read Stephen King’s ON WRITING? What do you think? I’m borrowing it from Jon Colman soon and will give it a read. Hope it will hone my approach to writing.

Thanks for the reminder of this book, Scott. I’ll have to read it again. Your description of “slow burning time bombs” is so great. I enjoyed the 1974 version of the film ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071577/ ), but cannot stomach the thought of watching DiCaprio play Jay Gatsby in the new one.

” What makes the book sing is first person narration” One of the reasons media fiction (hollywood/comics/radio) will never fully replace prose is that media can’t do first person narration very well. Moving pictures can’t do justice to Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield or where readers learn about the world as the hero does, such as the detective in The Puppetmasters or the teens in Harry Turtledove’s Cross-time Traders series. As most computer nerds know, the gap in quality is especially wide between sci-fi (media) and sf. Strange how the public doesn’t get it.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you write about this being a fairly simple story which is nevertheless fun to pick apart. The beauty for me has always been in Fitzgerald’s ability to spin a sentence. Gorgeous.

My review: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Great Gatsby Review

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4.5 out of 5

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David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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The great gatsby, common sense media reviewers.

American classic captures romance, debauchery of Jazz Age.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

The Great Gatsby is a book very much of its time.

Many of the characters behave irresponsibly at bes

There are a lot more negative role models in The G

In one scene, a man punches his lover in the face

Adults in the book flirt and kiss. Reference is al

Curse words are not used, but other offensive lang

There are many examples of excessive material weal

The adults consume a great deal of alcohol, which

Educational Value

The Great Gatsby is a book very much of its time. Readers will learn about life in New York during the Jazz Age (1920s), and about drinking behavior during Prohibition. Also, the character Tom Buchanan converses about books he likes that represent bigoted views held by many whites at that time. These beliefs are often offensive, but they do inform the reader about the time Fitzgerald portrays.

Positive Messages

Many of the characters behave irresponsibly at best, and the most romantic character in the novel, Gatsby himself, is probably involved in criminal business dealings. The most positive message in the book is probably that readers should learn from the characters' mistakes. However, there's something beautiful in Gatsby's undying devotion to Daisy. Though Fitzgerald deeply questions the wisdom of trying to recapture the past, Gatsby believes in his dream of restoring lost love in a way that's childlike and touching.

Positive Role Models

There are a lot more negative role models in The Great Gatsby than positive ones. The narrator, Nick, is largely a foil for the lovers' bad behavior, but his intention of being a real friend to Gatsby, especially in the end, is admirable.

Violence & Scariness

In one scene, a man punches his lover in the face during an argument. At another point, a woman is fatally hit by a car, and the condition of her body is described briefly but graphically.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Adults in the book flirt and kiss. Reference is also made to extramarital affairs, and Fitzgerald describes the past relationship of two characters, saying that the man "took her," though sex is never actually described.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Curse words are not used, but other offensive language is. The book includes the word "kike," and characters are prejudiced toward Jewish and African-American people.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

There are many examples of excessive material wealth in The Great Gatsby . In fact, the majority of the culture during this time was defined by consumerism and flashy lifestyles. Gatsby's way of life in particular is very much dictated by his devotion to Daisy, which explains the lavish mansion and extravagant parties to impress the object of his affection.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The adults consume a great deal of alcohol, which fuels some bad behavior. As the novel was written and takes place in the United States before the Surgeon General's warning, cigarette smoking is also ubiquitous.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that THE GREAT GATSBY is at once a romantic and cynical novel about the wealth and habits of a group of New Yorkers during the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's writing is unassailably magnificent, as he paints a grim portrait of shallow characters who maneuver themselves into complex situations. This classic American novel is required reading for a lot of high school students, and it can definitely be appreciated and understood on some levels by teenagers. However, Fitzgerald's use of language and symbolism is best appreciated by mature readers able to analyze literature and think critically. Parents also need to know that some characters express racial and religious prejudice.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (12)
Kids say (72)

Based on 12 parent reviews

Little people living lives too larger for them

Themes of female sexuality,, what's the story.

Nick Carraway spends a summer living in a cheap rental house surrounded by lavish mansions on Long Island in the 1920s. Among his neighbors are his beautiful cousin Daisy, her loutish husband Tom, and her former lover, Jay Gatsby, whose history and epic parties are fodder for gossip. Nick becomes caught up in the machinery of more than one romantic triangle as the summer begins to fade and Gatsby's orchestra stops playing.

Is It Any Good?

THE GREAT GATSBY is a magnificent novel on every level. Fitzgerald writes about the Jazz Age in language that beautifully evokes music. He writes about a hot day in a way that almost makes you sweat. His characters are well-drawn, and the plot is engaging and fast-paced. Though this novel is possibly best appreciated by college-level readers, advanced high school students will find a lot to enjoy and discuss.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Gatsby's five-year quest to regain Daisy's heart. Is his dream realistic? What is Fitzgerald saying about trying to recapture the past?

What kind of person is Nick? Do you feel he is a well-formed character? Why was he so devoted to Gatsby at the end of the book?

What is Gatsby really like? How is he different from the widely held ideas about him in the book?

Why do you think this book is considered a classic?

Book Details

Author : F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre : Literary Fiction
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Scribner
Publication date : April 10, 1925
Number of pages : 192
Last updated : September 30, 2015

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COMMENTS

What makes The Great Gatsby great?
Fri 3 May 2013 14.00 EDT. They called him an "ultra-modernist" and dismissed his books as overrated and forgettable, just "so much unnecessary evanescence travelling first class". When his third ...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Overall, I felt disappointed by this overhyped book but I accept it and understand. In terms of the writing I would rate a five star but in terms of the actual story and characters then it would ...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In a whirlwind, Nick starts to unravel the secrets behind Gatsby and his reasons for living alone. Truly brilliant, this book shows aspects of class, love and sorrow. At the time this book was set ...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gatsby is the main man throughout the novel (clearly) as his story is the most interesting and the reader grows to love as well as hate him. He throws massive, lavish parties every week in hopes ...
Nearly a Century Later, We're Still Reading
Gatsby has inspired immersive theater, young adult novels, a Taylor Swift song — "Happiness," on her latest record, weaves together lines and images from the novel.
The Great Gatsby Review
The Great Gatsby tells a very human story of wealth, dreams, and failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald takes the reader into the heart of the Jazz Age, in New York City, and into the world of Jay Gatsby. Through Nick's narration, readers are exposed to the dangers of caring too much about the wrong thing and devoting themselves to the wrong ideal.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald book reviews
(Book 699 From 1001 Books) - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922.
Notes From the Book Review Archives
April 20, 2018. This week's issue features an essay adapted from Jesmyn Ward's introduction to a new edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby.". In 1925, Edwin Clark reviewed ...
"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest novel—a book that offers damning and insightful views of the American nouveau riche in the 1920s. The Great Gatsby is an American classic and a wonderfully evocative work. Like much of Fitzgerald's prose, it is neat and well-crafted. Fitzgerald has a brilliant understanding of lives that are ...
Ben Macintyre: 'I wish I'd written The Great Gatsby ...
The last book that made me laugh Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son. Roger Mortimer's epistles to his infuriating, delightful, feckless son Charlie are filled with gentle frustration, self-mockery and boundless love. Like all great comic writing, he makes it seem effortless. The book I couldn't finish The authorised history of MI6 by ...
Fitzgerald's 'Radiant World'
1. Scott Fitzgerald conceived of the story which would become The Great Gatsby on Long Island, where man, in the person of a crew of Dutch sailors, was placed "face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." That was in the spring of 1924. He wrote most of it, though, in a villa above St. Raphaël on the Riviera, with Roman and Romanesque ...
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's third novel. It was published in 1925. Set in Jazz Age New York, it tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. Commercially unsuccessful upon publication, the book is now considered a classic of American fiction.
Read TIME's Original Review of The Great Gatsby
THE GREAT GATSBY—F. Scott Fitzgerald—Scribner— ($2.00). Still the brightest boy in the class, Scott Fitzgerald holds up his hand. It is noticed that his literary trousers are longer, less ...
THE GREAT GATSBY
As Woodman-Maynard indicates in the author's note, those who are not familiar with the novel should begin there; those more familiar with the story will be able to fill in the gaps as they read this condensed version. A disappointing stand-in for the original. (author's note) (Graphic fiction. 14-adult) 7. Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021.
The Great Gatsby: Book Review
As a story outline, The Great Gatsby is simple. There's nothing that fancy or elaborate going on. It's a writer's book in a way, since it's so simple and in many way obvious, yet works so wonderfully well. It's constructed as a series of slow burning time bombs that make you simultaneously want them to both go off to relieve the ...
Book Review: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby is a man like everyone, he's flawed, he's chasing a woman and he's deeply lonely despite having a large house, lots of money, and large parties. The plot itself is slow. This novel was written in 1925, a time before authors cared more plot and cared more about how their book was written. However, Fitzgerald tells a sad ...
The Great Gatsby Review
With a score and soundtrack supervised by Jay-Z, the film bumps 'n grinds to the sounds of Young Hov himself, as well as Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, Florence + the Machine, and more. There is just ...
The Great Gatsby Book Review
Our review: Parents say ( 12 ): Kids say ( 72 ): THE GREAT GATSBY is a magnificent novel on every level. Fitzgerald writes about the Jazz Age in language that beautifully evokes music. He writes about a hot day in a way that almost makes you sweat. His characters are well-drawn, and the plot is engaging and fast-paced.

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