The Great Gatsby (Scribner Classics)
by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli
A Distinctive Gem
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write something
new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately
patterned. That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above
all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgeralds finest
work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the
Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of
the authors generation and earned itself a permanent place in American
mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies
some of Fitzgeralds--and his countrys--most abiding obsessions: money,
ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. Gatsby believed in
the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It
eluded us then, but thats no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch
out our arms farther.... And one fine morning-- Gatsbys rise to glory and
eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the
American Dream. Its also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsbys
quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the

novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and
Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves
overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom
Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of
wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to
the same thing. Her voice is full of money, Gatsby says admiringly, in one
of the novels more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a
mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisys patrician East Egg
address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she
does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with
detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout.
Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great
Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.
Personal Review: The Great Gatsby (Scribner Classics) by
Matthew Joseph Bruccoli
"More critical writing exists on The Great Gatsby than on any other work of
American fiction" - according to the back matter of F. Scott Fitzgerald: The
Great Gatsby, a critical guide from Columbia University Press. Though it's
unsourced, it sounds legitimate - which is why I doubt I can say much
about Fitzgerald's work that hasn't already been said. However, except for
briefly commenting on the novel's classic status, the reason I've written this
review is to assist those who, like me, may have avoided 'Gatsby' for
years, and to help them decide whether to keep on doing so.
I sidestepped 'The Great Gatsby' because I believed that this book,
universally acknowledged as a classic, had to make its appeal for that
standing to the broadest possible base of readers - an American Literature
primer, so to speak - and I felt that I was past that stage. High-handed,
maybe, but I've basically the same opinion since finishing the book as
before. That doesn't mean 'Gatsby' isn't an excellent construction, full of
interesting themes and motifs, and above all an insightful opinion on the
American Dream - which I expected - but as an introduction to literature, I
wonder what resonance 'Gatsby' carries for young readers confronted with
the book today.
Jay Gatsby, the self-made man, built out of nothing but now able to buy
anything except the one thing he wants - Daisy Buchanan. Nick Carraway,
the voice of reason, narrates the events - how Gatsby and Daisy, lovers
before the war, are reunited; but despite all of Gatsby's attempts, he fails to
lure her away from her philandering husband. Nick, disgusted with the
excesses and unseemliness of both Gatsby's party crowd and Daisy's old
money blue bloods, eventually decamps westward, returning symbolically
to the common sense of America's heartland.
It's not surprising that 'The Great Gatsby' wasn't successful in Fitzgerald's
lifetime. After all, he chastised the people most likely to read his book for
being part of the anything goes culture. Nor is it remarkable that there was
a rediscovery of 'Gatsby' after World War II. In the Twenties, Nick

Carraway was a perceptive man, and Gatsby a naïve and complicit victim
of the American Dream. In the years since, Nick looks like an altruistic
fool, and, in the ultimate irony, Gatsby, who was facetiously called 'Great'
by Fitzgerald, has grown into his title. Viewing his life now, it's difficult not
to say that he conquered the Dream as he acquired a vast wealth, and his
willingness to sacrifice everything for Daisy becomes a tragic flaw - instead
of one last symbol in a poorly directed life.
Fitzgerald warned that the pursuit of wealth wasn't enough, that it couldn't
buy dreams - now the dream *is* the pursuit of wealth. Those tasked with
presenting 'Gatsby' to succeeding generations must face a wall of
misunderstanding - how to convince people that the wealthy Gatsby's
inability to buy back his past amounts to failure? Or more importantly, why
he even wanted to with all he already had. I'm glad that's not my job.
Anyone who skipped 'Gatsby' in high school or college could do worse
than picking up Fitzgerald's book. Primer or not, I find its themes,
understandable to a perceptive teenager, have gelled into subtle truths
now that my experiences have caught up to it. That, to me, is as good a
definition of classic as any other. A distinctive gem.
This edition, with a preface and endnotes by Fitzgerald biographer
Matthew Bruccoli, promises to be the "Authorized Text", a reprint of the
Cambridge University Press 1991 edition. In a brief note, Mr. Bruccoli
gives a few examples of some of the corrected textual errors, but I couldn't
see much difference. Bruccoli's preface and the publisher's afterward
were both interesting without becoming tiresome, though the endnotes
seemed geared toward an inexperienced and ill-read student. Thankfully,
the text wasn't dotted with superscript notation indicating entries in the
endnotes, which I find very distracting. Overall, I doubt there's enough to
distinguish this edition from a mass-market publication, except that it's in
the trade paperback format, which I prefer if I plan to keep a book, and
which is easier on the eyes the older I get.
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