So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures

Mixing criticism with memoir, NPR book critic Corrigan (Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading) contends that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel is greater than we think. According to Corrigan, we were too young to appreciate The Great Gatsby when we read it in high school; we were dead to its themes of nostalgia and regret, overlooked its trenchant social critique, and mistook it for a love story. (Corrigan is adamant that we miss the point if we ask whether Daisy ever loved Gatsby.) To reintroduce and reassess a masterpiece, Corrigan visits the book’s Long Island setting, Fitzgerald’s grave, and a high school English class. Most illuminating, though, is her research into Gatsby’s reception: in the Library of Congress, she investigates how the novel, unheralded on its publication in 1925, became part of the canon by the 1960s. (Fitzgerald’s ghost can thank a few friendly critics and the paperbacks issued to GIs during WWII.) Today, Corrigan asserts, Gatsby still doesn’t get its due. When she laments that Fitzgerald is the subject of fewer college seminars than are his modernist cohorts, such as James Joyce, her partisanship may seem blinkered. She makes a good case, however, that our very familiarity with Gatsby’s Great American qualities has caused us to underrate it—and she does much to restore its stature. 13 b&w photos. (Sept.)