The Great Gatsby: is this THE great American novel?

Few novels capture a moment and place in time as The Great Gatsby. F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterpiece captures a generation determined to live and party hard in the aftermath of the First World War. There are love affairs, exotic cocktails (a ‘gin rickey’ anyone?), no less than three car crashes and, of course, the famous party scenes. It has been adapted at least eight times for film and television, yet the road from publication to becoming considered one of Great American Novels was a slow burn. Fitzgerald died believing his life a failure.

The Great Gatsby has some of the most famous final lines in literary history. But what exactly is the ‘green light’ and can the future really be ‘orgastic’ or did Fitzgerald make a typo? Sophie and Jonty wrestle with these questions while asking how a book so specifically rooted in the 1920s has proven so timeless. In the process, Sophie shows off her detailed knowledge of the landscape between Manhattan and Long Island, and Jonty confirms Tom Buchanan’s claim that Jay Gatsby can’t be an Oxford man because ‘he wears a pink suit’.

We also look at Fitzgerald’s life. His determination not to end up a failure like his father (a former salesman at Proctor & Gamble), his turbulent relationship with Zelda Sayre and the long road to Gatsby via a disastrous play called The Vegetable.

Content warning: discusses alcoholism, racism, scenes of violence. And Sophie uses a swear word.

Visit the Secret Life of Books and join a conversation about the episode and the show: https://www.secretlifeofbooks.org/forum

Further reading:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Norton Critical Edition, ed. David Alworth (2022)

Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F Scott Fitzgerald by Matthew J Bruccoli (Open Road Media, 2022)

Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, (Cambridge UP, 2023).

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