The Great Gatsby

Was the hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic African-American?

A couple of academics have advanced that theory. I’m not sure I buy it. The notion (and supporting “evidence”) seems little more than a literary parlor game, not to mention the fact that nothing in Fitzgerald’s work or his letters shows a particular engagement with, or sympathy for, black Americans.

Still, it’s an interesting metaphor and the reason this seminal American novel appears in a list of what’s otherwise non-fiction. Gatsby’s yearning for his lost love could be an African-American yearning for a beloved country that does not always love… show more.

The centenary of what has been called James Joyce's "Great Irish Novel," Ulysess, was in 2022.

I realized then that the centenary of the “Great American Novel,” The Great Gatsby, was looming and further realized that F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is arguably the “Great Diasporic Irish Novel” too. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was a Catholic from Maryland. F. Scott tended to stress family connections to the Maryland elite through his paternal grandfather’s marriage into the Anglo-American establishment Scott family.

Although Fitzgerald discussed the Irish ancestry that embarrassed him as being on his “potato famine Irish” mother’s side alone,… show more.

I couldn't leave this important book off this list, especially since my own novel is a refashioning of that story from the woman's point of view!

Fitzgerald's most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, is seen by many as an avatar for the American Dream of the quest for riches and status. But Jay Gatsby is also Scott himself—the man striving to be part of the in-crowd, who conflates wealth with class, and who never, ever gave up on his ultimate goal of reclaiming the great love of his life, Daisy Buchanan.

Short—it clocks it at barely 50,000 words, The Great… show more.

People usually recall The Great Gatsby being about yearning (the green light across the water) and the inaccessibility of the American dream. I recommend it for the yearning, but not Gatsby’s longing for Daisy—instead, read it with an eye to narrator Nick’s pining for Gatsby.

Nick’s awe of Gatsby’s stainless optimism is coupled with a dreadful disgust that Gatsby aspires to the vacuous, selfish, destructive lifestyle of Daisy and Tom Buchanan. In the end, the impression from Nick is that Gatsby is too good for this world and the ash heaps in it.

There’s a shocking chasm between the admiration… show more.

You can make a pretty convincing argument that one of the most celebrated books in American history is actually a mystery novel. 

You have all the requisite components: the femme fatale (Daisy), a murder victim (Myrtle), a shady rich man (Gatsby), and the narrator/amateur detective in Nick Carraway. The writing is gorgeous, but it’s the thick and juicy plot that drives these pages. This is the first novel I read in school that I actually liked!

I love this book for its multiple themes of unrequited love, racism, gender, class, even environment.

Fitzgerald's description of the view from a train moving through the ash fields of today's Flushing Meadows is, in my humble opinion, one of the most haunting in literature. I also love this book because it was a commercial failure. (Fitzgerald died never believing he was a success.)

Yet The Great Gatsby became one of those books we can't stop talking about. It's so rich and complex filmmakers have tried four times (and failed) to bring it to the screen. As if to underscore… show more.

This is peak F. Scott Fitzgerald, a story of love and longing written in a style that relies as much on nuance as flat statement, where not a word is wasted, and the reader joins the narrator as witness of the unfolding drama, with Fitzgerald’s keen observation of place a time sharpening every scene.

The Great Gatsby, the ultimate jazz-age novel, explores the hedonism of the Roaring Twenties, when flappers ruled the dance floor and illegal booze flowed freely if you knew where to look.

The characters offer a glimpse into the glitz and glamour of the era’s high society, but beneath the trappings of wealth, they face relatable conflicts. While the novel may depress you with its conclusions about a false American dream, its beautiful prose offers a temporary lift, and leaves one longing, like Daisy Buchanan, for the perfect mint julep on a hot summer day. 

Is this the perfect novel? I suspect it is one of them. How can I feel so uplifted, so enraptured, by a tragic story of deluded liars? The language: Fitzgerald’s writing is transcendent. So richly lyrical that it always threatens to tip over into melodrama, but somehow never does, this brief but vibrant story always grounds itself in the fundamental need to be loved.

It's set in 1922, on an island off New York City, narrated by the passive Nick Carraway. Nick watches his friend, Daisy, endure a loveless marriage to a bully and briefly revive an affair with the… show more.

Fitzgerald himself saw the book as a struggle between rich and poor. Bootlegging functions as a backdrop to the corruption of America and its aspiring classes. The narrator, Nick Carraway, escapes the attention of most readers who think the book is about Gatsby, when in fact it is about Nick, who at the outset disapproves of Gatsby and concludes by praising him. I particularly like the irony that Nick and readers of the novel think Gatsby foolish for thinking that you can repeat the past; but in fact, the book proves that you can repeat it. Nick relates his story… show more.