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Irish Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Gatsby Gambit: Spin-off whodunit is a marketer's dream and a literary reader's nightmare
The Gatsby Gambit Author : Claire Anderson-Wheeler ISBN-13 : 9781408748510 Publisher : Renegade Books Guideline Price : £16.99 There's something off about The Gatsby Gambit's epigrams . One draws from the children's classic Harriet the Spy ('to yourself you must always tell the truth'); the other from Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, warning of glamour's capacity to conceal evil. Yet the novel responds more directly to The Great Gatsby 's weary observation that the best thing a girl can be is 'a pretty little fool'. It's this idea that Anderson-Wheeler attempts to subvert through the character of Greta Gatsby, Jay's 21-year-old sister, who serves as narrator. Newly graduated from finishing school, Greta arrives in East Egg sporting a fresh bob, harem pants and a desire to 'learn something about the world besides the art of watercolour'. While she proves as charming and persistent as her brother, she lacks Nick Carraway's poetic sensibility as a memoirist. To her, Jay is simply 'drawn to women who were either hard to please or hopelessly unavailable', while Nick is 'quieter than the others and less prone to smiling'. In this spin-off story, Nick, Jordan Baker and a cast of Buchanans have moved into the Gatsby mansion for an extended stay. When a gunshot goes off at the end of the first chapter, Greta transforms from schoolgirl to sleuth in order to discover who's responsible for the killing. As she searches for clues in gambling dens and high-society soirées, she teams up with Carraway, with whom she shares a certain spark. READ MORE I'll be clear: The Gatsby Gambit isn't a homage to The Great Gatsby; it's an imitation of Agatha Christie written at Fitzgerald's expense. The novel uses Gatsby as set dressing for an utterly straightforward whodunit. [ Dazzling tragedy of The Great Gatsby still stalks the American imagination Opens in new window ] Though Greta's feminist leanings and class consciousness hint at fresh perspectives, they never materialise; the novel substitutes Fitzgerald's enchanting exploration of desire, class and country with ethical absolutism, replacing his characters' yearning with disillusionment. Its prose is perfectly serviceable but Greta's descriptions of the Jazz Age feel more researched than realistic. The result is a marketer's dream – and a literary reader's nightmare. In a way, The Gatsby Gambit ironically creates what a downcast Nick Carraway briefly wishes for at the very beginning of the original novel, something that Fitzgerald rallied against: a tepid world 'in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever'.
CBS News
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
"The Great Gatsby" turns 100: Initially a sales flop, now regarded as the "great American novel"
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby" at the height of the roaring '20s, he couldn't possibly realize that the book would emerge as one of the very top contenders for "the great American novel." In fact, when Fitzgerald – a St. Paul, Minnesota native whose debut novel "This Side of Paradise" launched him into national prominence at the age of 24 – died in 1940 at the early age of 44, the book was already in danger of falling into obscurity. Now, 100 years after the book's first publication on April 10, 1925, it endures as one of the country's foremost tales of American hubris, modern yearning and class consciousness. And its clear-eyed assessment of the attainability of the American dream remains incisive with each passing decade. Fitzgerald's book, long a staple in high school literature classes, tells the story of Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner (and veiled Fitzgerald stand-in) who becomes enamored with the bon vivant, Jazz Age lifestyle on Long Island, specifically the effects of mutli-millioniare Jay Gatsby. Like Carraway, Gatsby is a Midwesterner who has trekked to the East Coast to make a name for himself. It's Carraway's cousin Daisy Buchanan who serves as the catalyst for Gatsby's downfall, and ultimately Carraway's own disillusionment. All the while, a symbolic green light beckons from the distance. When the book was first published, reviews were largely positive, though not unanimous. Fitzgerald, who originally wanted to title the book "Trimalchio in West Egg" before being persuaded to go with a title he thought far more generic, watched as the book languished on the vine commercially, selling fewer than 25,000 copies in the initial push. He would only complete one further novel in his lifetime: 1934's "Tender is the Night," a thinly-veiled roman à clef of Fitzgerald's own marriage to socialite Zelda Sayre, detailing their mutual descent into alcoholism and mental illness. Fitzgerald's early death from a heart attack was likely fuelled by years and years of alcohol abuse. Ironically, he'd gone sober just ahead of the cardiac event. If "The Great Gatsby" never achieved the level of esteem it now enjoys during the author's own life, it wasn't long after his death that Fitgerald's literary reputation took off. When the Modern Library asked authors, historians, critics and publishers on the eve of Y2K to rank their picks for the world's best novels of the 20th century, it was "The Great Gatsby" that stood above all other U.S. contenders near the top of the poll. (The novel landed in second place, bookended by Irish author James Joyce's "Ulysses" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in the top three.) The novel has since launched multiple film adaptations, has been transposed to the stage, and since going into the public domain in 2021, has been the subject of an endless array of reimaginings, remixes and mashups. It's even cleared space around itself as a modern-day meme, in the form of an animated .GIF depicting Leonardo Dicaprio (playing Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film adaptation) smirking as he offers a champagne toast flanked by ostentatious fireworks. A host of "Gatsby"-themed events are planned to mark the novel's centennial anniversary, including a new exhibit of Fitzgerald's life and times at the Minnesota History Center , as well as various, less-than-sober events leaning into the novel's party-friendly Prohibition-era setting. And if you managed to get through high school without having been assigned to read the book, there are a number of live readings of the book scheduled this month, including at St. Paul's Gale Family Library .
CBS News
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
"The Great Gatsby" turns 100: Like Daisy to its titular character, its spell lingers through the years
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby" at the height of the roaring '20s, he couldn't possibly realize that the book would emerge as one of the very top contenders for "the great American novel." In fact, when Fitzgerald – a St. Paul, Minnesota native whose debut novel "This Side of Paradise" launched him into national prominence at the age of 24 – died in 1940 at the early age of 44, the book was already in danger of falling into obscurity. Now, 100 years after the book's first publication on April 10, 1925, it endures as one of the country's foremost tales of American hubris, modern yearning and class consciousness. And its clear-eyed assessment of the attainability of the American dream remains incisive with each passing decade. Fitzgerald's book, long a staple in high school literature classes, tells the story of Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner (and veiled Fitzgerald stand-in) who becomes enamored with the bon vivant, Jazz Age lifestyle on Long Island, specifically the effects of mutli-millioniare Jay Gatsby. Like Carraway, Gatsby is a Midwesterner who has trekked to the East Coast to make a name for himself. It's Carraway's cousin Daisy Buchanan who serves as the catalyst for Gatsby's downfall, and ultimately Carraway's own disillusionment. All the while, a symbolic green light beckons from the distance. When the book was first published, reviews were largely positive, though not unanimous. Fitzgerald, who originally wanted to title the book "Trimalchio in West Egg" before being persuaded to go with a title he thought far more generic, watched as the book languished on the vine commercially, selling fewer than 25,000 copies in the initial push. He would only complete one further novel in his lifetime: 1934's "Tender is the Night," a thinly-veiled roman à clef of Fitzgerald's own marriage to socialite Zelda Sayre, detailing their mutual descent into alcoholism and mental illness. Fitzgerald's early death from a heart attack was likely fuelled by years and years of alcohol abuse. Ironically, he'd gone sober just ahead of the cardiac event. If "The Great Gatsby" never achieved the level of esteem it now enjoys during the author's own life, it wasn't long after his death that Fitgerald's literary reputation took off. When the Modern Library asked authors, historians, critics and publishers on the eve of Y2K to rank their picks for the world's best novels of the 20th century, it was "The Great Gatsby" that stood above all other U.S. contenders near the top of the poll. (The novel landed in second place, bookended by Irish author James Joyce's "Ulysses" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in the top three.) The novel has since launched multiple film adaptations, has been transposed to the stage, and since going into the public domain in 2021, has been the subject of an endless array of reimaginings, remixes and mashups. It's even cleared space around itself as a modern-day meme, in the form of an animated .GIF depicting Leonardo Dicaprio (playing Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film adaptation) smirking as he offers a champagne toast flanked by ostentatious fireworks. A host of "Gatsby"-themed events are planned to mark the novel's centennial anniversary, including a new exhibit of Fitzgerald's life and times at the Minnesota History Center , as well as various, less-than-sober events leaning into the novel's party-friendly Prohibition-era setting. And if you managed to get through high school without having been assigned to read the book, there are a number of live readings of the book scheduled this month, including at St. Paul's Gale Family Library .
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gatsby by Jane Crowther; The Gatsby Gambit by Claire Anderson-Wheeler – Jay's eternal hold
It might seem unfathomable to us now, but F Scott Fitzgerald's third novel was something of a let-down when it was published 100 years ago; his previous books, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned – there had also been a novella, The Diamond As Big As the Ritz, and short stories including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – had been more commercially successful and found greater favour with critics. Fitzgerald's tale of obscure origins, extreme wealth and obsessional romantic desire appeared too unlikely, too contrived and, perhaps, too uncomfortable a reminder of class and financial inequality and its consequent social schisms to be recognised for what it was: a masterly exploration of delusion, self-delusion, myth-making and complicity. Fitzgerald himself died 15 years after its publication believing it to have been a worldly failure and unconsoled by any hint of its future cultural ubiquity. But literature, as we know, is studded with these anomalies, burials and rebirths and now, in an age of recycling and rebooting, it seems perfectly natural, if ironic, for The Great Gatsby to spawn a number of tribute acts. Nonetheless, it's striking that Jane Crowther's Gatsby and Claire Anderson-Wheeler's The Gatsby Gambit are debut novels, suggesting that the original is an artefact that feels fundamentally available, not forbiddingly off-limits; that both writer and reader might feel they have absorbed enough of Gatsby's internal workings as well as its superficial detail to find variation productive and interesting. (This is, of course, a generous interpretation; familiarity is also commercially attractive.) Crowther's approach is both straightforward and, in execution, intricate. She brings Gatsby to the very recent past, just pre-pandemic, and messes with gender; Gatsby becomes a female influencer, her apparently limitless funds provided not by bootlegging but invisible arrangements with beauty brands and real estate companies. Her love object is not Daisy but Danny Buchanan, the decent enough but none-too-deep husband of T, a far more savvy and implacable operator. Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald's implicated insider-outsider, is Nic, a young woman seeking to make her name not on the money markets but in the more cut-throat world of lifestyle journalism. These narrative switches take up a fair amount of energy to manifest, as Jay herself might describe it in one of her Instagram posts, and keeping track of how Crowther maps old on to new can eclipse some of her more interesting choices: that Tom's lover Myrtle, for example, becomes Miguel, an undocumented worker from the Dominican Republic with an interest in baseball and Warcraft, and a passing acquaintance with 'some guys out in Queens' who sell drugs at Gatsby's parties. For Nic, who has swallowed whole her new friend's bone-broth-and-vitamins persona, this is information to be brushed under the carpet, as is the suspicion that camera surveillance is a key part of those gatherings, and of Gatsby's modus operandi. But despite the novel sometimes over-signalling its ingenuity in reimagining the cultural landscape, Crowther still does well to portray its central figure as a tragic over-reacher, impelled by what she imagines to be love to enter into a social stratum in which preservation of the status quo is prized above all else. The Gatsby Gambit is a different affair altogether; a thoroughly enjoyable mystery story with all the tropes and pleasures of a golden age detective story. Our sleuth is Jay Gatsby's invented little sister Greta, who arrives for a summer at his West Egg home poised on the brink of adulthood and chafing at her much-loved brother's overprotectiveness. When Tom Buchanan is found dead – apparently by his own hand, in the face of spiralling debts – on Gatsby's boat, Greta's quiet persistence and powers of observation mean that she must exonerate Gatsby himself, who rapidly becomes the chief suspect. Well-written and pacy, inflected by the original characters and setting but otherwise unconstrained by them, The Gatsby Gambit romps along in rather happier vein than Fitzgerald might have recognised. As for the novel celebrating its centenary, the literary wheel keeps turning: Sarah Wynn-Williams's exposé of the Zuckerberg empire takes its title, Careless People, directly from Fitzgerald; switching on Radio 4 this week, I heard Alexei Sayle deliver the novel's final line – 'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past' – to bathetic comic effect. That past does indeed remain another country, but one we love to visit. Gatsby by Jane Crowther is published by the Borough Press (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply The Gatsby Gambit by Claire Anderson-Wheeler is published by Renegade (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
CBS News
11-02-2025
- CBS News
Statue of young F. Scott Fitzgerald stolen from St. Paul, police say
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A statue of one of St. Paul's most famous sons was stolen from the capital city earlier this month, police say. The statue of a young F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of high school English class staple "The Great Gatsby" among other works, sat outside 25 Dale Street North, the former site of a school that he attended. A St. Paul Police Department spokesperson said the statue was reported missing Friday but may have been stolen as early as Feb. 3. Police believe someone cut the statue free. Anyone with information about the theft is asked to call 651-291-1111. Fitzgerald was born on Laurel Avenue in St. Paul on Sept. 24, 1896, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. He attended St. Paul Academy, which once sat where the stolen statue resided. Though he spent much of his life in New York, Paris and Hollywood, Fitzgerald did return to St. Paul with his wife Zelda and finished his first novel, "This Side of Paradise," in his home city. The historical society said Fitzgerald's upbringing in the wealthy Summit Avenue area of St. Paul greatly impacted his later life. "Fitzgerald's experiences with St. Paul's elite profoundly influenced his life," the historical society said. "He loved, and loathed, the life of wealth. He desperately sought acceptance from elites, but also recognized the emptiness of their lives." According to CCI Properties, which manages 25 Dale Street North, the statue was created by artist Arron Dysart and put up in 2006. The plaque that accompanies the statue reads: "F. Scott Fitzgerald attended school here at the St. Paul Academy from 1908 to 1911 where he published some his first short stories in the school magazine Now and Then and penned his first plays."
