Selected cultural elements and allusions in five Polish translations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 'The Great Gatsby'

In the summer and early autumn of 2008, as the global ‘credit crunch’ intensified, resulting in the collapse, part-nationalization, or forced merger of numerous venerable financial institutions, a ...

The public domain is a swamp, or a valley of ashes.—Charles Scribner III, in conversation, 25 January 2021 Copyright protection for The Great Gatsby expired on 1 January 2021. The novel has entered the public domain. I was curious to examine the new editions that would be coming out. I anticipated low-priced paperbacks, mid-priced student editions, and high-priced gift editions. I ordered (mostly from Amazon) all print editions published in 2020 or 2021. Over a period of several weeks I received and examined a total of thirty-four new editions. Possibly there are other new editions, but I believe I have acquired them all.1In what follows, I will concentrate for the most part on the texts and physical characteristics of these editions, rather than on prefaces, introductions, and ancillary material. I will address several questions. Is a base text declared? How are the various textual cruxes handled? Are editorial emendations reported? Is there an account, even a brief one, of the composition and textual history of the novel? Are there remarks about the image by the illustrator Francis Cugat that appears on the original dust jacket? The answers are as follows: Some of the new editions do declare a base text. Two of these editions offer remarks about emendations, but no new edition includes a full composition narrative. Only one of the new editions has anything to say about the 1925 dust jacket. Most of the editions say nothing about what text is being presented.In the Cambridge variorum, I traced the textual history of The Great Gatsby from its initial clothbound publication by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1925 to the paperback published by Scribner in 2018 (GGVar xxxi–li). I was able to perform this exercise with confidence. Given the methods used by commercial printing firms for the majority of that period, I knew that for each new edition (i.e., fresh typesetting), there must have been a printer’s copy—a typescript or a published text that had been marked for the compositor. The newly typeset text would have been proofed and then printed, on paper, from standing monotype or linotype, or from an electrotype plate or a planographic plate mounted on an offset press. The result would have been a physical manifestation of the text, a bound book. Later editions of The Great Gatsby would therefore inevitably descend, in some fashion, from earlier editions of the novel. Bibliographers demonstrate these relationships by constructing a “stemma,” a tree-like figure that shows the line of transmission from one text to another.Such assumptions can no longer be made. After examining these new editions of Fitzgerald’s novel, I am convinced that the texts have been cross-pollinating in the night. Editions that had been out of print for decades, editions that I thought were dead, have risen from the grave. Variants that had not appeared in a printed text of The Great Gatsby in decades have popped up in one or more of these new editions. Sets of variants unique to one edition have become intermixed with variants characteristic of another. I therefore cannot speak with confidence about the origins of some of these new texts. They have simply materialized. A few years back, critics were apt to speak of the “instability of the text” as an abstract concept. Today, with The Great Gatsby, we have textual instability incarnate.None of these editions pretends to be a scholarly performance. For the most part these are commercial products issued by publishers who want to capture a sliver of the enormous market for The Great Gatsby. Still, one feels that care should have been taken with the text of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. I will admit to feeling protective about that text. Publishers, it seems to me, should feel the same way. A responsible publisher has a fiduciary duty to provide a reader with an accurate, reliable text of a classic work of literature.Scribner’s (since 2012 Scribner), Fitzgerald’s publisher for his entire career, did an exemplary job of making trustworthy texts of The Great Gatsby available while the novel was still in copyright. From 1925 onward, the book was never out of print. It was published in cloth and paperback, in various price ranges, in editions for teachers, students, and lay readers. Scribner’s was sensitive to the accuracy of the text, incorporating Fitzgerald’s emendations from his personal copy into the standard text and correcting errors when they came to light (such as those Edmund Wilson added to the text when he included it in his edition of the uncompleted The Last Tycoon, published in 1941, a year after Fitzgerald’s death). Scribner has now adopted the Cambridge variorum text for its editions of The Great Gatsby. The Scribner 2018 paperback, with an introduction by Jesmyn Ward and a foreword by Eleanor Lanahan, offers the variorum text. This text was reissued in 2020 in a rack-sized edition. Thus, the variorum text is available from Scribner in two soft-cover editions. The original artwork for the first-edition dust jacket is on the covers of both paperbacks.Some of these new editions appear to descend from the digital text first posted on the Project Gutenberg site in January 2002. That text was updated in October 2020, probably in anticipation of the expiration of copyright. It is impossible now to know how the Gutenberg text read before October 2020, during the period when some prospective publishers of new Gatsby editions seem to have used the cut-and-paste feature to appropriate that text. The Gutenberg text available now appears to descend from a paperback edition published by Scribner’s in the late 1990s. The epigraph is present, but the dedication is missing. Plate changes from the second impression of Scribner’s 1925 have been incorporated, as have emendations from Fitzgerald’s personal copy.Many of the new editions have special designations. We have a Student Edition, a Large Print Edition, a Dover Thrift Edition, an American History Edition, a Collector’s Edition, and a Deluxe Illustrated Edition. Others are “Classics” editions: Vintage Classics, Reader’s Library Classics, Fingerprint Classics, SeaWolf Press Classics, Squid Ink Classics, Word Cloud Classics, Canterbury Classics, Alma Classics, and Mr. Mintz Classics. Some of the imprints are familiar: Penguin, Modern Library, Norton, Harper, Vintage, Everyman, and Dover. Other imprints are less frequently encountered: Black Dog, SeaWolf, Wordsworth, Sirius, Chiltern, Auroch, and Pure Snow. Many of the editions are one-offs that appear to belong to no series. These give no place of publication or publisher; several of them have blank copyright pages.When I prepared The Gatsby variorum for the Cambridge series, I discovered that seven editions between 1941 and 1970 had dropped the epigraph and that nine had omitted the dedication to Zelda (GGVar xxxvii n30). I had hoped that the epigraph and the dedication would reappear in the 2021 editions. Alas, this was not to be. Five of the editions under examination here are missing the epigraph, and an astonishing seventeen have dropped the dedication to Zelda. At one point, I believed this was a nefarious plot to erase Zelda’s name from the novel. I am now inclined to think that the problem is ineptitude. When the epigraph and dedication are present in some of the new editions, they are wedged into odd places—on the half-title, on the copyright page, or at the beginning of the first chapter. The epigraph should appear on the title page; the dedication, if possible, should be printed on an otherwise blank recto following the copyright page.Two of the editions that omit the dedication to Zelda have given us substitute dedications. The Decameron Books edition has the following on its copyright page: “This edition is dedicated to Alison Fields, whose love of this novel | brought others to read it, which is how literature becomes a shared | means of communication and a language unto itself” (iv). And the text published by Wordsworth Editions has this on its copyright page: “Dedicated to | LOGAN and OLIVIA BARBROOK | May your lives be filled with wonderful stories, | great adventures and happily-ever-afters, | Love Mummy” (4).The problem with “orgastic” and “orgiastic” seems almost to have disappeared. Only two of the new editions have “orgiastic” on the final page, but these two, surprisingly, are published by established houses—Modern Library (158) and Everyman (148). I had thought that several others might resurrect “orgiastic” from the Scribner’s edition of 1941, but I was incorrect. As for contested readings, five of the new editions have “irises” rather than “retinas” in the description of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes, but most of these editions do not follow through by emending “Astoria” to “Long Island City” and “eastward toward the park” to “southward toward the park.”2The slur-word “kyke” (Fitzgerald’s spelling on page 41 of the first edition) appears in many of the new editions. The more commonly found “kike” is in other new editions. A bowdlerization, “tyke,” first appeared in a Penguin text in 1974 (36). The “tyke” reading is still afloat and reappears in the new Penguin English Library text (28). Along these same lines, I had thought that some of the new editions might do away with Nick’s mention of “three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl,” and with the “yolks of their eyeballs”—this from chapter 3 of the 1925 edition, as Gatsby and Nick pass over the Queensboro Bridge on the way into Manhattan (83). But these words, which some readers will find offensive, are present in all of the new editions. About half of the editions capitalize “Negroes,” which is normal practice today but was not in 1925.Space breaks have always been a problem in The Great Gatsby. Some of the new editions include the space breaks, or most of them, from the first edition; other new editions omit them altogether; still others mark the space breaks with asterisks or bullets or type ornaments. Several of the new editions have extra space between each paragraph, which swells the page count and makes it difficult to tell where the legitimate space breaks occur. Many of the editions employ sans-serif typefaces; these make the text look like an auto-repair manual. Some of the editions have ersatz tables of contents; others have “THE END” on the final page. Neither of these features appears in the first edition. The Auroch Press edition concludes on page 144, a verso, with this familiar sentence: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” But as one is contemplating this sentence one is confronted, on page 145, the facing recto, with these five lines: OLD SPORT, IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK, AND LEARNT FROM IT TOO, WHY NOT WRITE A REVIEW FOR THE PARTIES I THREW!Only the Norton Critical Edition has something to say about the Francis Cugat painting on the dust jacket of the original Scribner’s edition. (In the Norton edition the painting, a gouache on paper, is referred to as “washed with watercolor and gauche” [xxiii].) This dust jacket image, like the text of The Great Gatsby, is now in the public domain. Any publisher can use it. Seven of the post-copyright editions have the image on the front cover, but the reproductions are often blurry and the colors not quite right. Also popular are representations of Gatsby’s yellow car. Five editions feature the automobile on the cover; three have champagne glasses and bubbles; four have the motif of a feather fan.Several of the hardback editions have decorative stamped bindings, silk ribbon bookmarks, and gilt edges. These editions, one assumes, are for the giftbook trade. The Canterbury Classics edition has a gold-stamped image of a languid-looking woman on the front cover. The rendering of her dress is probably meant to suggest the style of the American 1920s but to my eye looks like something from the Mauve Decade, done in the manner of Aubrey Beardsley. The most elegant of the decorated editions was published in New Delhi by Fingerprint Classics. Representations of a man and a woman in evening clothes are stamped, in shiny gold and glossy red, on the front cover. This is appropriate, but the automobile parked behind these two people is a Dodge Charger (the muscle car popular during the 1980s), and the house behind the car is a McMansion. My favorite cover is on a paperback published in Boston by Squid Ink Classics. The image is of majestic pine trees over which hover the Northern Lights—in luminous green, of course.The prize for the most peculiar edition goes to a paperback that has no title page, no copyright page, no half-title, no epigraph, no dedication, and no page numbers. (It is the last of the thirty-four editions listed at the head of this review.) Fitzgerald’s name appears only on the cover. The text of the novel begins on the very first page of the book. Some of the dialogue is set off with double quotation marks, as in the first edition, but most of it is prefaced only by a hyphen before the first word. The text is bizarre. Fitzgerald’s words appear to have been translated into another language and then rendered back into English by an antic computer. Consider this passage, typical of many in the edition: Anyway, Miss Baker’s lips frizzed; she nodded almost imperceptibly in my direction, then very quickly threw it back—no doubt the object she was balancing had almost fallen to her terror. Again, a sort of justification rose to my lips. Any display of self-assurance extorts me an astonished tribute. (5)Or this passage: I glanced around. Most of the ladies still present were arguing with gentlemen who were said to be their husbands. Jordan’s first companions, the two East Eggs, were themselves cruelly torn by an argument. One of the men was talking to a young actress with serious intensity and his wife, after trying to laugh at it indifferently and dignifiedly, finally lost all restraint and engaged in flank attacks—at intervals, she suddenly appeared at his side, sparkling with anger like a diamond, and whistled in his ear: “Yet you had promised!” ” (31)I merely transcribe. The two double quotation marks at the end of the passage above appear just as they do in this strange edition. Finally, we have this familiar exchange between Nick and Gatsby:Gatsby turned to me all in one piece: I have nothing to say in this house, old brother.She has an indiscreet voice, a voice full of . . .I hesitated.Her voice is full of change, he said suddenly. (73)There is a surprise at the end of this edition. The final three pages of the original novel have been omitted. The text stops in the middle of the confrontation between Nick and Tom on Fifth Avenue (109). At least one does not have to worry about “orgastic” versus “orgiastic” in this edition.I am curious to know how this misbegotten text came into being. The publisher is not identified. The cover is black; it bears the title of the book and Fitzgerald’s name. Between the title and the author’s name appear three rectangles in a sandy brown color. Collectors of textual curiosa will want to acquire a copy (ISBN 9798708844682). In September 2021, the edition was still available from Amazon, but it was necessary to scroll quite far down through the listings to find it.Some of these editions are responsibly done. One of the best is the Penguin Books paperback, with a text prepared by Philip McGowan. Both McGowan and Min Jin Lee, who supplies the introduction (ix–xxviii), have done their homework. The documentation (xxix–xxxii) and the “Suggestions for Further Reading” (xxxiii–xxxv) show an admirable effort to put into play the available scholarship on the novel. McGowan has consulted both the Cambridge edition of 1991 and the Cambridge variorum of 2019. McGowan tells us that his text is based on the first appearance of The Great Gatsby on the British book market, the 1926 Chatto & Windus subedition (xxxvii). As McGowan must have learned from the Cambridge variorum, this Chatto & Windus edition was in fact printed from a set of duplicate electrotype plates cast from the Scribner’s plates, or possibly cast from the standing type, at the Scribner’s printing plant. These plates were used for the second American printing of 1925.This new Penguin text therefore actually derives from the second printing of Scribner’s 1925, incorporating the six changes made for that printing (e.g., “echolalia” and “sickantired”) plus one other, the correction of “absorbtion” to “absorption” at 119.5–6, which appears first in the Chatto & Windus text. McGowan lists new emendations in his textual note (xxxvii–xxxix). The revisions from Fitzgerald’s personal copy have not been included. This edition emends to “irises” in the description of the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (27) but leaves “eastward” (40) and “Astoria” (72, 132) as they appeared in the first edition (respectively 27, 43, 82, 150).3 Much of the quasi-British orthography from the first Scribner’s edition has been The epigraph and dedication are present in their and “orgastic” appears on the final page. The space breaks from the first edition are present, with a new one that appeared for the first in the 1991 the 1926 subedition has been used as the base text, the appears in this Penguin text of the surprisingly, appears of Both of these errors were by in his personal Norton Critical edition the dedication to Zelda. This is not a The J. includes a textual note which a of This Norton edition is based on the second printing of Scribner’s The emendations that made in his personal copy of The Great Gatsby are not included. A few in the second printing are over in the Norton rather than has been to textual note in the I have English but some British variants (e.g., have been The Norton text has most of the quasi-British from the first edition, as and has been to other name is with the the final page, one as is not “orgiastic” The of the pages in is of great The edition includes that read and was by during with by that have on the novel, the and are and and all of the in the Norton Critical series, this one will be of in and for and for the of is have been able to the or base text for some of the other editions, even if that text is not in the texts can be by unique to these I like to think of them as and that in look for when new Modern Library paperback does not its text or give a of emendations, but it from 1941 Scribner’s edition. The epigraph and dedication are present were from the Wilson The here is “orgiastic” on the final page with and for both Other of the Wilson text are the words missing from page of this edition, and a sentence just shows from page space breaks are omitted in chapter as they are in text. Most of the emendations from Fitzgerald’s personal copy of The Great Gatsby are present, that the Modern Library text was typeset from one of the of Scribner’s 1941 into which had those changes (GGVar Everyman edition from Scribner’s The is “orgiastic” on the final page the epigraph and dedication are both present are in the 1941 The Everyman us a text with Much of the quasi-British has been (e.g., and in of both The peculiar is omitted as in the 1941 text, but just shows missing from the 1941 edition, has been The plate changes for the second printing of Scribner’s 1925 are but the emendations from Fitzgerald’s personal copy are we have of and rather than edition has a of Gatsby’s toward the end of the novel more or other have been in as on a The dedication is present, but the epigraph is missing. Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes have “retinas” We have one and one is with the The changes from the second printing have been incorporated, as have Fitzgerald’s emendations from his personal the final page, we find as we should Decameron edition offers an introduction that had its in the this has been added and by This edition has the following to say in the back text from this edition most of the made to the novel in only a few earlier and of what this means is The fact is that the edition was typeset from the paperback edition that I for Scribner in The is this said This line appears only in the 2018 Scribner paperback, on page was an by me to the about who is Gatsby or is nothing about the 2018 Scribner paperback as but it would have been to have an The Dover Thrift Edition is a of the same Scribner paperback with no new edition, from Black & Publishers, features and other by the The note tells us that the base text for this new is the first printing of the Scribner’s 1925 first edition The note goes on to say that this new edition to that edition, in and other characteristics of the For the most part this is Neither the for the second Scribner’s printing the changes marked by in his copy are included. One The marks in Gatsby’s are typeset as I found the and other to be a on pages that has through the text. This is a gift edition and is not meant to be is in the epigraph and the Black edition is the best of the texts. The Mr. Mintz Classics edition on its cover to be a Edition with The out to be and include an image of a and a in chapter the chapter in which Tom his and at Gatsby’s that is the Great Gatsby and Other from Canterbury Classics, includes This of and The and both of which have been out of copyright for some in the same with The Great Gatsby. This Canterbury edition came out in 2020, which would put it in of copyright for The Great Gatsby, but the book was printed in this made it for the publisher to the by a This edition has a decorated and gilt all around. The text appears to descend from the 1941 Edmund Wilson edition. The epigraph is as is the dedication to of Wilson Fitzgerald’s appears of and at the end of the book we find “orgastic” of “orgiastic” This or two same is on the way for other classic American texts. The Also copyright protection in for the and in and The and the in The of and Black will pass into the public domain in the years after a in copyright These do not have the of The Great Gatsby, but all of them are Any publisher will be to a new edition of one of readers are probably themselves of this Are we Other than the dedication, of these variants The reader who one of these editions will still most of what has to voice will be full of Gatsby will have his same Nick will be Tom and he or will made from will be and full of will be the only to to the The language will be the and the a is not I believe we it to and to this novel, to to the text right. A great more care might have been taken with most of these new texts. In the Cambridge variorum, I came to the that many of the and publishers other than Scribner’s who issued editions of The Great Gatsby between 1925 and believed that old text would do for a and that it was all to Fitzgerald’s novel with a I had hoped that would not be the this but with the majority of these editions not seems to have new editions of The Great Gatsby are in the It would be if the and publishers of those editions would the the two Cambridge editions. an effort will them a base text and make about textual It would be if publishers would out the dedication to Zelda.

F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context

Gatsby:<i>The Cultural History of the Great American Novel</i><i>Beyond</i>Gatsby:<i>How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture</i><i>So We Read On: How</i>The Great Gatsby<i>Came to Be and Why It Endures</i>

Last Kiss The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby: An Edition of the Manuscript

Fitzgerald and France, Or “The Course Of True Love Never Did Run Smooth” <i>A Review Essay</i>

The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel AdaptationNick: A NovelEl gran GatsbyStepping Out with Scott and Zelda: Touring the Fitzgeralds’ Montgomery

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights various cultural characteristics of the Jazz Age. This paper will explore the cultural elements of the original novel and the 2013 film adaptation and its impact on its audience. Specifically, this paper focuses on the themes of a materialistic culture, hegemonic culture, the American Dream, the portrayal of women in the 1920s, and the racist ideology. During the Jazz Age, a period of economic prosperity and social change, materialism shaped people's values and pursuits. Through an in-depth analysis of the novel and the film, this paper will explore the characters' endless pursuit of material wealth and social status to show that there was also impatience, emptiness, and ruthlessness behind this era's wealth. Moreover, this paper will explore the concept of hegemonic culture and the dominance of upper class characters over the lower class people. By examining the class conflicts between old and new money, the nature of the upper-class social circle, and the set of society that the aristocracy benefited from, this paper aims to show how The Great Gatsby highlights the power dynamics between different socio-economic classes and the injustices caused by this hegemonic culture. Despite Jay Gatsby's pursuit of wealth, status, and desire for personal fulfillment, the pursuit of this ideal often comes at a price, and this paper will explore the downfalls and disillusionment of the American Dream, as well as the complexity and ambivalence of the American Dream in the Jazz Age. In addition, the paper explores the portrayal of women in The Great Gatsby and the limitations of these female characters as well as the broader context of gender dynamics during the Jazz Age, where despite the progress made by women in terms of their social status at the time, some limitations and negativity still existed for women. Finally, the paper will look at racist ideology through the character Tom Buchanan as an aristocratic white man. Although this is not the main theme of the story, the fact that racism still exists is reflected in this character. The Great Gatsby portrays many elements of American society during the Jazz Age in both the novel and film highlighting the social dynamics and values of its time.

Gatsby: <i>The Cultural History of the Great American Novel</i> <i>Beyond</i> Gatsby: <i>How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture</i> <i>So We Read On: How</i> The Great Gatsby <i>Came to Be and Why It Endures</i>

The article analyses the novels "The Master and Margarita" by M. A. Bulgakov, "The Great Gatsby" by F. S. Fitzgerald and "The Song of Endless Longing" by Wang Anyi from the point of view of the presence of musical images associated with specific musical works, performers, genres, instruments, etc. in them. Music influences the themes and issues, images of the protagonists, character system, plot, composition, motive structure, and stylistic features of these books. In all three novels the presence of two spheres – earthly space and other-worldly reality – is revealed. These spheres, having opposite axiological connotations, manifest themselves also through music. New York, Moscow and Shanghai are portrayed by the writers as cities existing within the real or conventional "jazz age" – in a broad sense within the era of "nervous excitement" against the background of past and approaching turbulent changes. Jazz in "The Master and Margarita", "The Great Gatsby" and "Song of Endless Longing" symbolises the illusory romanticisation of earthly life, which in fact is full of ugly, suffering and transitory things. The heroes of Bulgakov, Fitzgerald, Van Anyi in the final stories, being killed, pass into otherness, leaving behind a coarse and vulgar world filled with earthly noise, characterised by falsity or cacophony, and hearing harmonious music associated with natural sounds or coming from metaphysical soundlessness. The relevance of the article is determined by the high interest of modern literary studies to the comparison of works created in different national cultures, in particular – in Russian, Western and Chinese, as well as to intermedial phenomena, in this case – to the interaction between literature and music. The novelty of the article is due to the comparison of the novels of Bulgakov, Fitzgerald and Wang Anyi, which has never been made before.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as the spokesman of the American "Jazz Age." "Jazz Age" denotes the temporal span, including 1919 to 1929. The economy flourished during this particular period in American history, leading to a significant shift in societal ideals. Consequently, a discernible decline emerged in individuals' cognitive and ethical faculties. The Great Gatsby, a literary work that portrays the terrible existence of Gatsby and carries notable scholarly and pragmatic ramifications, symbolizes the disintegration of the "American Dream." The cohort of individuals in the United States, commonly called the "lost generation" during the 1920s, saw a notable discrepancy between their aspirational objectives and the prevailing realities of their day. This study examines the fundamental significance of Gatsby's interpretation of the "American Dream" and uncovers the inescapable inevitability of Gatsby's sad demise and the disillusionment associated with the "American Dream" through a thorough analysis of the primary textual elements inside the novel. The primary aim of this essay is to enhance readers' understanding of the widespread appeal of riches and worldly possessions while encouraging them to reflect on the development of moral, healthful, and dynamic principles.

Reviewed by: So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and How It Endures by Maureen Corrigan Guy Szuberla Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and How It Endures. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2014. 343pp. $26.00. Maureen Corrigan’s So We Read On moves forward with the spirit and energy of a triumphal march. Corrigan is, after all, telling the story of how Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby rose from a near death to become “our Great American Novel,” and how, in her view, it endures as one of the “modernist masterworks,” a work to be set alongside Ulysses and The Wasteland (23, 176). Along the way, Corrigan reconstructs in detail the moments when The Great Gatsby almost ceased to be. Gatsby was published to critical applause in 1925, but sales were disappointing and Scribners wound up warehousing the second printing. When Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, the novel was out of print and sales and royalties had dwindled to nothing. Writers of Fitzgerald’s obituaries who bothered to mention Gatsby generally dismissed it as a frivolous relic of the Jazz Age. In May 1940, six months before his death, Fitzgerald had pleaded with his editor Max Perkins to consider bringing back Gatsby as a “25 cent” pocketbook. He worried that when his daughter “Scottie assures her friends I was an author” she’ll learn “no book is procurable” (214). If only to set the stage for the story of Gatsby’s dramatic return as The Great American Novel, Corrigan reconstructs Fitzgerald’s personal failures—his years of alcoholism and writer’s blocks—and keys them to the crucial dates and dead ends in the book’s publication history. She draws upon the usual and expected resources of Fitzgerald scholarship, but she also explores some untraveled routes in reading and re-reading the novel. She has, it’s evident, steeped herself in Fitzgerald biographies and autobiographical material (Scott’s, Zelda’s, and their daughter Scottie’s), attended to minute details of the novel’s composition history, reception, and sales figures, and, when it suits her, has drawn lessons from the cheesiest pieces of popular culture and the most sacred academic rituals of canon formation. [End Page 84] She takes “the Great Gatsby Boat Tour” through Long Island Sound, which, even with its costumed passengers and ersatz feel, fills out a map of Gatsby’s New York. The chapter titled “Rhapsody in Noir” reveals, in surprising and persuasive illustrations, the connections between Gatsby and the hardboiled school of fiction headed by Dashiell Hammett and the 1920s “gals-guts-and-guns” pulpsters. Her commentary on Alan Ladd’s forgotten1949 Gatsby—afilm noir with a tough machine gun toting Gatsby—throws an interesting light on Jay Gatz’s midwestern origins and his relation to his dissolute mentor, Dan Cody. Looking for the early signs of the book’s revival in the 1940s and 1950s, Corrigan notes, as other scholars have, that the critic Edmund Wilson, the writer Dorothy Parker, and other friends edited and collected Fitzgerald’s work in the years just after his death. Their concerted and individual efforts set in motion a Fitzgerald revival. And, mirabile dictu, she finds the beginnings of a new life in the Armed Services Edition of The Great Gatsby—one of many books printed in paperback and distributed free to American troops toward the end of World War II. She discovers still other indications of the novel’s rebirth deep in the stacks of the Library of Congress. Poring over discontinued American Literature anthologies, handbooks, and literary histories, she concludes that in these textbook worlds of the 1940s neither the novel nor Fitzgerald had an existence. Not until 1955 does she find the first excerpt from Gatsby making an appearance in a college anthology. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece was then on its way to becoming “required reading” in high schools and college literature courses (227). In her introduction, Corrigan declares that she wrote So We Read On “above all, [as] a personal excursion into the novel I love more than any other” (15). In her final chapter, “I Didn’t...

Exile and the City F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Lost Decade”

Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is one of the most outstanding novelists in America of the 1920s and the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”, as well as the creator of “the Jazz Age”. As a typical writer of “Lost Generation” in the United States during the post-war period of the economic prosperity, he not only experienced false prosperity of “the 1920s-full of clamor” – “the Jazz Age”, but also predicted that it would not last long. His representative works The Great Gatsby, is a novel about a typical American young man -- Gatsby’s pursuit of the American dream, which vividly portraits the trend of money worship and epicureanism in America of the so-called “Jazz Age” and reveals people’s selfishness and indifference in the United States during the economic prosperity period after the World War I. Georg Lukács, a Western Marxist theorist, points out in Historical Novel, critical works that “A historical fiction is a story in which history is set among historical events ”. Fitzgerald’s purpose is to show the postwar social life and mental outlook of the Americans in the 1920s and try to arouse people’s introspection and exploration for the value of survival. Since the advent of the novel, it has been the focus of most critics. Among a large number of comments, most focus on the analysis of the text and the subject matter of the novel, as well as the author’s writing techniques. While few have tried to employ Western Marxist criticism to analyze the themes and techniques of the literature perspectives of Georg Lukács. The paper attempts to conduct an analysis of realistic themes, such as impressionism and symbolism in The Great Gatsby from the theory of Western Marxist criticism to reflecting the corruption of people’s value.

The Chosen and the Beautiful