"The Great Gatsby" is a novel by the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald; the most famous literary work of the "jazz age". The novel was started by Fitzgerald in New York and finished in Paris, where he then lived during his travels in Europe. Published by Scribner's on April 10, 1925
"I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
In the center of the plot is a love story with a detective and tragic ending. The action takes place near New York, on the "gold coast" of Long Island, among the villas of the rich. In the 1920s, following the chaos of the First World War, an economic boom began and American society entered an unprecedented period of prosperity. At the same time, Prohibition made many bootleggers millionaires and gave a significant boost to the development of organized crime.
Fitzgerald, although he was not indifferent to the brilliance of "new money", in his book critically examined the concept of the "American Dream", highlighted the cult of material prosperity and the emerging consumer society.
Fitzgerald deliberately moved away from his previous work in creating The Great Gatsby. In January 1922, after completing the play The Vegetable, or From President to Postman, Smear, he began planning this novel, and in 1923 work began on it. Back in July 1922, he said that he would like to “create something new, unusual, beautiful, simple and at the same time compositionally delicate.
Unlike his earlier works, Gatsby was carefully edited and honed as the writer believed the novel could bring him recognition. Later he wrote: "I felt a tremendous strength in myself, such as I never had." E. Hemingway, who during this period of time maintained friendly relations with Fitzgerald in Paris, where the novel "The Feast That Is Always With You" was completed, later wrote: "He spoke with some disdain, but without bitterness, about everything that he wrote, and I realized that his new book must be very good, since he speaks without bitterness about the shortcomings of the previous books. "
In 1925, in a letter to the well-known journalist and critic H.L. Mencken, the writer noted that he wrote "Gatsby" in a strict manner, as he was "not satisfied with the chaotic form of my first two novels" and indicates that it was "influenced by a manly manner "Brothers Karamazov", creations of unsurpassed form. "
The manuscript of the novel was sent to Scribners in late October 1923. His friend and publisher Maxwell Perkins responded with an immediate telegraph: THINK THIS NOVEL IS BEAUTIFUL. Later, a letter came from him with a detailed analysis of the shortcomings and comments that Fitzgerald worked on further, rewriting the novel.
Fitzgerald had a lot of doubts not only about the images he created, but also about the title of the work. Previously rejected options were: Around Trash and Millionaires, Gatsby's Golden Hat, Furious Lover, and On the Road to West Egg. A week before publication, Fitzgerald had chosen the title "The Feast of Trimalchio." Then he decided to call it "The Great Gatsby", and at the very last moment, deciding to associate the title with the symbols of the American Dream, the writer came up with the name "Under Red, Blue and White" (the colors of the American flag).
There is an opinion that Fitzgerald called his hero great because in this way the author wanted to show his ironic attitude towards the hero: on the one hand, Gatsby is a clearly extraordinary person, with great abilities and indomitable vitality, but on the other hand, he wasted himself in pursuit of false goals - wealth and an insignificant, spoiled woman.
Although The Great Gatsby was staged on Broadway and filmed by Hollywood shortly after publication, the book did not become a bestseller (first edition - about 24,000 copies). During Fitzgerald's lifetime, the novel was not well known. During World War II, it was reprinted and 150,000 copies of the book were sent to American soldiers at the front. This sparked a surge of interest in the novel. Since then, it has sold over 25 million copies worldwide.
In the decades that followed, the novel became mandatory reading in secondary schools and university literature courses in many English-speaking countries of the world. In 1998, the novel was ranked No. 2 on the list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by Modern Library, second only to Joyce's Ulysses. In the list of "100 books of the century according to Le Monde" the novel took 46th place.
This articlke was sponsored by Kristine Ammerlaan.
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