The Great Gatsby
27 March 1925
The Great Gatsby
F Scott Fitzgerald Chatto & Windus, 7s
Mr Fitzgerald’s story of New York’s Bohemian and Smart Sets has qualities that remove it from the ruck of such novels. The Great Gatsby himself is drawn with spirit and insight and humour, a man who, though many kinds of rogue, is yet an idealist and dreamer of dreams. When we first meet him, Gatsby is the centre of a flamboyant society that sponges upon, despises and slanders him. He is living in an enormous and pretentious mansion on Long Island, where he keeps open house. We soon learn that this ostentation of wealth is but a means to an end. During the war Gatsby, a young officer with nothing but his pay, had met and loved a young woman of the established rich and his love had been returned. This girl is now married to a wealthy man of her own class who is notoriously unfaithful to her. They are living on Long Island and Gatsby is there to meet her. He does, and for a time it seems that he will succeed in winning her from her husband, but in the end she cheats him, and he is killed in error by a man whom the husband has wronged. Mr Fitzgerald is a satirist with a pretty thick velvet glove. When the narrator of the story tells the unhappy Gatsby that he is the best of the bunch, we agree.
