Information about Jay Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

The cover of the first edition, 1925.
Author	F. Scott Fitzgerald
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Charles Scribner's Sons
Publication date	April 10, 1925
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	180 (2004 paperback edition)
ISBN	NA & reissue ISBN 0-7432-7356-7 (2004 paperback edition)

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in Long Island and New York City during the summer of 1922. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to increases in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it.

The Great Gatsby was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership, and is now often regarded as the Great American Novel. It is now a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world.

Plot summary

The first-person narrator, Nick Carraway, begins the novel with a short introduction in which he insists that he strenuously avoids judging people, based on advice his wealthy father once gave him. However, he admits that this habit often causes him problems, with particular reference to events concerning a man named Gatsby. Nick indicates that he has left New York, where these events took place, to return to the Midwest. Toward the end of the novel, Nick says that a year or two has passed since the story took place.

Nick opens his story of Gatsby by recounting that Nick, a young Minnesotan, has moved to New York and is renting a low-cost cottage located in West Egg, the less fashionable of two fictional seaside communities alongside one other (the other one being East Egg). Nick visits his second cousin (once removed), Daisy Buchanan, whose husband, Tom, is a phenomenally wealthy former college athlete. The Buchanans have an opulent mansion in East Egg. Here, Nick meets Jordan Baker, a lady friend of Daisy's and a well-known golfer.

Nick is the next-door neighbor of Jay Gatsby, an extremely wealthy man known for hosting lavish soirées in his own enormous mansion, where every Saturday, hundreds of people come. Although many of the guests are uninvited, Nick is soon personally invited (via a hand-written note delivered by butler) to one of Gatsby's parties and finds himself becoming involved in this party scene, although he states that he despises the entire concept of mindless entertainment.

Gatsby seems to be a mysterious character whose great wealth is a subject of much rumor; none of the guests Nick meets at Gatsby's parties know much about his past. A man begins a conversation with Nick by asking him if they had been together in the Third Division during the war. Nick affirms that he was in the Division, and remarks on the strange absence of their host. The man reveals himself to be Gatsby, surprising Nick who had expected Gatsby to be much older and not as personable. In fact, Nick and Gatsby begin a close friendship.

Although Nick is initially confused as to why Gatsby throws parties without introducing himself to his guests, Gatsby eventually reveals to Nick that he was holding these parties in hopes that Daisy, his former lover who is now married to Tom, would stumble into one of them by chance. Daisy and Gatsby soon begin an affair after a meeting arranged by Nick, at Gatsby's request, which is at first strained (unnerving Nick), but turns more communicative when Gatsby begins to relax. In the meantime, Nick and Jordan Baker, who Nick re-encounters at one of Gatsby's parties, start a relationship, which Nick already predicts will be superficial.

Eventually, in an explosive scene at a hotel in Manhattan, Tom notices Gatsby's love for Daisy and alleges that Gatsby is a bootlegger. Tom claims that he's been "researching" about Gatsby and expresses his hatred towards Gatsby by tactlessly accusing Gatsby of illegal activities. During this scene, Gatsby attempts to force Daisy to claim that she has never loved Tom in hope of erasing the last five years of her past so that she may simply come back to him. Daisy says what Gatsby tells her to say, but hesitantly. Tom, noticing this uncomfortable bond between Daisy and Gatsby, orders them to drive back home from the hotel back to Tom's house on Long Island together, mocking Gatsby by saying that he knows nothing can happen between Daisy and Gatsby. Tom takes his time getting home with Nick and Jordan.

George Wilson, owner of a garage on a desolate road between Manhattan and northern Long Island, and his wife, Myrtle (with whom Tom is having an affair), are also having an argument. She runs out of the house, only to be hit by Gatsby's car, driven by Daisy; and she is killed instantly. On the way back home, Tom, Jordan, and Nick notice the car accident. Tom remarks that Wilson, who is an auto repairman, will finally have some business, but stops shortly after noticing something wrong. Tom soon realizes that his lover is dead. During this grotesque scene, Wilson comes out of his shop, half-insane and half in shock, and talks about a yellow car. Tom leads Wilson into a private place and tells him that the yellow car was not his; that Tom was driving Gatsby's yellow car earlier when they were driving to the hotel and stopped by at Wilson's for gasoline. Wilson does not seem to listen and from that point and after that confrontation, Wilson is portrayed as an insane character. He stays up all night rocking back and forth, muttering nonsense, while his neighbor patiently watches over him. He finally makes the connection that whoever was driving that yellow car must have been the man Myrtle was having an affair with and makes up his mind to find that yellow car.

Wilson finds himself in Tom's house with a gun and Tom, while packing for an escape trip with Daisy, gives Gatsby's name to Wilson. In the meantime, Gatsby is floating in his pool, overwhelmed with depression, thinking that Daisy no longer loves him. While he is still hoping for a call from Daisy, Wilson comes and shoots Gatsby. He then commits suicide on the lawn not far away.

With Gatsby dead, Nick tries to find people who will attend his funeral, only to find that not even his crooked business partners will be there to mourn for him. Finally, Mr. Gatz, Gatsby's father (Gatsby apparently gave himself a new name after leaving home) comes to the funeral, apparently still trapped in the past. He shows Nick a well-worn photograph of Gatsby's house and a notebook that Gatsby wrote in as a child.

Only three people attend Gatsby's actual funeral: Nick, Mr. Gatz, and "Owl Eyes," a random man who had enjoyed one of Gatsby's parties earlier that summer, but whom Nick hadn't seen since. After permanently severing connections between himself and Jordan, Tom, and Daisy, Nick leaves New York and goes back to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby's desire to recapture the past.

Composition

With Gatsby, Fitzgerald made a conscious departure from the composition process of his previous novels. He began composing the novel in 1923, but ended up discarding most of the false start, though some of it would resurface in the story "Absolution." Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to heavily edit and reshape Gatsby, believing that it held the potential to launch him toward literary acclaim. He told his editor Max Perkins that the novel was a “consciously artistic achievement," and a "purely creative work—not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world." He added later during the editing process that he felt “an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had.”^[1]

Along with the editing, which reframed both Daisy and Gatsby’s characters, Fitzgerald also wavered on the title of the novel. Among various titles considered were Among Ashheaps and Millionaires, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, The High-Bouncing Lover, and On the Road to West Egg. Fitzgerald also considered several variations on titles alluding to the Roman character Trimalchio from the Satyricon. Weeks before Gatsby was to be published, he wrote Perkins saying that he preferred Trimalchio's Banquet. At the last moment, Fitzgerald also considered the title Under the Red, White and Blue, referring to the book's ties with the American dream and other symbols of America. He then came up with the title The Great Gatsby which he submitted to his publisher. However, he once again changed his mind and wanted to change the title back to Under the Red, White and Blue, but by then it was too late to change. Hence the title remained The Great Gatsby.^[2]

Cover art

The cover art for The Great Gatsby has seen a distribution on par with its related novel; it is one of the most widely disseminated dust-jacket composite-spine covers of the 20th century. Commissioned by Charles Scribner of Francis Cugat (brother to Xavier), it was completed before the novel, and Fitzgerald once claimed that the cover was "written into" the novel.

After several initial sketches of various completeness, Cugat decided upon a gouache depicting two reclining nudes forming the irises of a pair of disembodied female eyes hovering above the bright lights of an amusement park. There is no nose but full, voluptuous lips, and descending from the right eye is a green tear. The eyes are reminiscent of those of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, while the hue of the tear is similar to the light at the end of Daisy's dock. Extending the theme of lights, the amusement park echoes a common theme of the novel.^[3]

Film, TV, theatrical and literary adaptations

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

1. The Great Gatsby (1926 film), in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. According to the IMDb, no known copies have survived (only a trailer with a few minutes of footage is known to exist);
2. The Great Gatsby (1949 film), in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; far more faithful to the plot of the novel than the 1974 version; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;
3. The Great Gatsby (1974 film), in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan & Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;
4. The Great Gatsby (2000 TV), in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

Famous American author Truman Capote was originally hired as the screenwriter for the 1974 film adaptation. In his screenplay, Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker were both written to be homosexual. After Capote was removed from the project, Coppola rewrote the screenplay.

The 2002 film G (released in 2005) by Christopher Scott Cherot claims inspiration from The Great Gatsby.

Opera

An operatic treatment of the novel was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the debut of James Levine. The opera premiered on December 20, 1999. The music and libretto are by John Harbison with popular song lyrics by Murray Horwitz.

Also, it had been adopted by Takarazuka Revue in 1991, performed by Snow Troupe.

Plays

The Great Gatsby, a stage adaptation by Owen Davis, was first performed at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on Feb 2, 1926 in a production directed by George Cukor with James Rennie and Florence Eldridge.

The Great Gatsby, in a new adaptation by Simon Levy, was performed for the opening of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 2006. This was billed as "the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926."

However, two months earlier, in Brussels, Belgium, The Kunsten Festival des Arts debuted Gatz, a six-hour production by the New York theater company Elevator Repair Service. Set in a ramshackle contemporary office building, Gatz utilized the entire text of Gatsby, at first read by employees at the office building, and eventually acted out by them. "Gatz" premiered in the U.S. on September 21, 2006, at the Walker Art Center (also in Minneapolis) just eleven days after the closing of The Great Gatsby at The Guthrie.

Books

Ernesto Quiinonez' Bodega Dreams adapted The Great Gatsby to Spanish Harlem.
The Great Gatsby, a graphic novel adaptation by Australian cartoonist Nicki Greenberg.

In popular culture

• The Great Gatsby was sometimes read out loud by Andy Kaufman in a faux British accent as a type of anti-humor.
• The previously mentioned event was paid homage in South Park episode 403, Timmy 2000, in which a Psychiatrist reads the novel in its entirety, to determine whether the boys have Attention Deficit Disorder.
• Seattle-based rock band Gatsbys American Dream derived their name from an obvious theme in the book.
• Businessman Bill Gates has inscribed in his library a sentence from the last page of the novel: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/june2000/nf00613b.htm
• The King of Queens episode "American Idle" uses The Great Gatsby as a running joke as Carrie states in the beginning that she intends to read the book, but by the end of the episode she has clearly not read it. Doug eventually comes to the conclusion that Gatsby must be a magician due to his title.
• German pop-music band Wolfsheim derived their name from one of the novel's characters.
• The episode in the Ken Burns' documenary Baseball, The Faith of Fifty Million People (Inning 3), has the title and a line taken from the novel, referring to its fictional character "Meyer Wolfsheim" (but based on Arnold Rothstein).
• A Peanuts comic featured Sally teaching Bible school, but one of her students answers every question (including "Who hit Goliath in the head with a stone?" and "Who parted the Red Sea?") with the Great Gatsby. Snoopy quotes Nick watching Gatsby and Daisy dance during his nighttime dance with the little red-haired girl.

References

External links

Sources

• The Great Gatsby, from Project Gutenberg Australia, plain text.
• Cowley, Malcolm (1950). The Stories Of F.Scott Fitzgerald. Scanned book from Internet Archive, includes The Great Gatsby.
• Index to The Great Gatsby

Movies Miscellaneous

• AP: Page Ivey: "Professor, private investigator team up in search of the real 'Great Gatsby'"
• Washington Post - 'Gatsby': The Greatest Of Them All
• Ray C. Fair - "Where did Fitzgerald get the idea of having Clay's Economics reside in Nick Carraway's library?"