A century on, this Great American Novel still captivates readers

Sydney Morning Herald

29-04-2025

In 1923, when Scott Fitzgerald was 27, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, about his ambitions for his third novel. 'I want to write something new – something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned,' he wrote.
Two years later, that third novel was published, to mostly positive reviews. One-hundred years later, The Great Gatsby is still inspiring, delighting, obsessing and occasionally infuriating its readers. It's a small book, but nonetheless a leading contender for the role of Great American Novel.
It's said to contain some of the most perfect sentences ever written about America. And perhaps the most astonishing thing is that it's still extraordinary, beautiful, simple, intricately patterned – and feels new.
We nearly missed it. After those initial reviews, the novel failed to sell and drifted into obscurity, dismissed as a minor nostalgic tale about rich people living it up in the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald died in poverty in 1940, convinced his work was forgotten.
Two things saved Gatsby after the author's death. The novel was championed by two influential critics, Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Cowley. And during World War II, 155,000 paperback copies of The Great Gatsby were distributed to combat troops, who liked what they read. Tragic as the story is, it must still have been a grand antidote to the grim reality of war.
Today, it's difficult to think of any other novel with the same impact on both literature and the popular imagination. At the last count, it had sold about 30 million copies worldwide, has been translated into 42 languages, and continues to sell about half-a-million copies a year. It's been adapted into at least four films (notably Baz Luhrmann's 2013 version with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby), as well as plays, television shows, musicals and video games, and it's a perennial on high-school book lists.
Since the book came out of copyright, it has inspired a bevy of novels extending the story into the past and the future, focusing on various characters. Camille Aubrey, author of The Grand Hotel (which features Fitzgerald as a character), lists 10 of them, including a spy novel and a tale of vampires.