This book is almost exhausting. How much more can be said about The Great Gatsby? Read on and find out. It does not end for over 300 pages.
Maureen Corrigan is the book reviewer for NPR. She is a lifelong admirer of The Great Gatsby. The book details her admiration and adventures with the book.
She it's the most popularly read literary novel in the country. Most people read it in HS of college. She claims that at least one additional reading is necessary as an adult.
The novel can hit us the second time around after being boring at first at a younger age.
Gatsby is the one novel that most educated Americans have read. P. 5
The eyes of Dr. Eckleburg. . . . the color of Gatsby’s car. . . . and above all, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. . . . yet these symbols are not what the novel points to. P. 5
It’s not the green light, stupid, it’s Gatsby’s reaching for it that’s the American symbol. P.5
How about Gatsby as a child’s name?
Grandmother paid for Princeton. P. 55
Fitzgerald was boomerang kid after return from New York to Minnesota. P. 82
The gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy—-E.B. White P. 89
The Commodore Hotel. P. 104
So Big won the Pulitzer in 1925. P. 131
We’re never completely clear on how Gatsby made his money. P. 130
The theological gloom that pervades Gatsby. P. 145
It is mind-boggling to me that a wordsmith like F. Scott Fitzgerald could be a poor speller. P. 151
The classic hardboiled novels of the 20’s and 30’s were written by man who served in the war called each “soldier.” They venerated older “manly men.” Good men showed loyalty to each other—-a central motif in Gatsby. Nick has overwhelming loyalty to his fallen friend Gatsby.
The author is wedded to the notion of a hard-boiled novel.
Nick tells a story that has already happened. He is “born back ceaselessly into the past.” P. 153
The novel can be read like an inquest. P. 154
Coincidences lead to fate which leads to dead ends. P. 156
The author makes a big deal of the hard-boiled genre that begin in the US in the 1920’s. P. 156
After what Corrigan calls the climax of the novel with the reunion of Gatsby and Daisy in Chapter 5, Nick does not reunite the couple again until the end of the story. Fitzgerald called this the biggest mistake of the novel. Rightfully so. P. 167
The author milks everything she can from the novel. How much is there to milk from the Fitzgeralds?
He worried about the sluggish sales of Gatsby. The book was too masculine? Too short? The silence between Gatsby and Daisy after their initial meeting? Poor title. P. 168
The author is cool about Tender is the Night. She is pro-Gatsby more than pro-Fitzgerald. P. 186
Edmund Wilson was the editor of the unfinished Last Tycoon. P. 188
The muses are notoriously fickle. P. 188
Corrigan seems to like his letters. P. 189
She insists that Gatsby is his ONE great novel.
Fitzgerald was a never-ending reviser. The detailed editing process of Gatsby is an industry unto itself. I could never myself do this kind intensive scholarly research. P. 192
Perhaps the brevity of the novel is partly due to Fitzgerald’s constant eliminating of unnecessary words. P. 200
All the sound young men of the postwar generation. P. 217
What accounts for the Fitzgerald revival after his death in 1940? One explanation is that many fellow writers that knew him kept writing about him. The Kazin essay collection appeared in 1951. The first biography by Arthur Mizener also appeared in 1951. Malcolm Cowley published a collection of his short stories. P. 220
Also: Sheilah Graham’s Beloved Infidel appeared in 1958 and Heminway’s mocking of Fitzgerald appeared in 1964. P. 221
As Fitzgerald moved up the literary pecking order in the 50’s with his short stories. The author is an authority of Fitzgerald’s rise to literary prominence. P. 225
Zelda was living with her mother in Montgomery when Scott died. P. 238
The emergence of paperback popularity in the 50’s contributed to rise of Gatsby popularity as did the ASEs. P. 241
Scottie was positive about her famous parents. P. 246
Bruccolli’s obsession with Fitzgerald. P. 247
Forthcoming graphic Gatsby. What is a graphic novel? A Gatsby graphic novel is supposed to be coming this summer.
At the end she says she will inevitably read the book again. P.304
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