The Great Gatsby

257 Pages·2007·3.231 MB·English

by  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Nowlin

b r o a d v i e w p r e s s
This electronic material is under
copyright protection and is
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provided to a single recipient
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“Canadian readers are indeed fortunate to have Michael Nowlin’s extremely d
useful edition of The Great Gatsby. Nowlin provides a wealth of ancillary materials (
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that enhance our understanding and appreciation of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece: a d
selection of Fitzgerald’s correspondence about Gatsby; eight advertisements that . N
graphically demonstrate the commodity culture underlying the novel; and, perhaps o
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most worthwhile of all, a selection of contemporary essays that supply an
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invaluable contextual framework for Gatsby. Throughout, Nowlin’s emphasis is in
on the quality, not quantity of these materials; the result is a book that will be )
indispensable to students, teachers, and the casual reader alike.”
Jackson R. Bryer, University of Maryland
“This edition of The Great Gatsbyconfirms what Fitzgerald Society members have
long believed: Michael Nowlin is a leader in the emerging generation of Fitzgerald T
scholars. His introduction here charts the intensely personal journey through love, h
loss, and ambition that Fitzgerald traveled in order to realize his masterpiece; e
Nowlin’s appendices, meanwhile, provide secondary sources for appreciating the
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chaotic energies of youth, race, and cultural change compelling the novel’s
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inexorable tragedy. Whether excerpting Fitzgerald’s mid-1920s correspondence, e
contemporary reviews, or nonfiction gems of the day—including Zelda Fitzgerald’s a
insightful ‘What Became of the Flappers?’(1925)—Nowlin dramatizes how t

thoroughly Jay Gatsby’s creator intuited the sadness and uncertainty beneath G
the glitz and gild of modernity’s most golden of decades.” a
Kirk Curnutt, Troy University, Vice-President of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society t
s
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The Great Gatsbyis widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of American fiction. It y
tells of the mysterious Jay Gatsby’s grand effort to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, the
rich girl who embodies for him the promise of the American dream. Deeply romantic in
its concern with self-making, ideal love, and the power of illusion, it draws on modernist
techniques to capture the spirit of the materialistic, morally adrift, post-war era
The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald dubbed “the jazz age.” Gatsby’s aspirations remain inseparable from the
rhythms and possibilities suggested by modern consumer culture, popular song, the
F. Scott Fitzgerald
movies; his obstacles inseparable from contemporary American anxieties about social
mobility, racial mongrelization, and the fate of Western civilization.
edited by
This Broadview edition sets the novel in context by providing readers with a critical
Michael Nowlin introduction and crucial background material about the consumer culture in which The Great Gatsby
Fitzgerald was immersed; about the spirit of the jazz age; and about racial discourse
in the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Michael Nowlin is Associate Professor of
English at the University of Victoria. He is the
author of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Racial Angles edited by
and the Business of Literary Greatness(2007) Michael Nowlin
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and editor of the Broadview edition of Edith r
Wharton’s The Age of Innocence(2002). o
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cover: i
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THE GREAT GATSBY
A First Modern English Edition of
Les Évangiles des Quenouilles
broadview editions
series editor: L.W. Conolly
THEDISTAFFGOSPELS 1
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2 THEDISTAFFGOSPELS
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THE GREAT GATSBY
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Les Évangiles des Quenouilles
translated by Thomas K.Abbott
with revisions by Lara Denis
edited by Michael Nowlin
broadview editions
THEDISTAFFGOSPELS 3
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© 2007 Michael Nowlin
All rights reserved.The use of any part of this publication reproduced,transmitted in any form or
by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,or stored in a
retrieval system,without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying,a
licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency),One Yonge Street,Suite
1900,Toronto,Ontario M5E 1E5—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Fitzgerald,F.Scott (Francis Scott),1896-1940.
The great Gatsby / F.Scott Fitzgerald ;edited by Michael Nowlin.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13:978-1-55111-787-4
ISBN-10:1-55111-787-8
I. Nowlin,Michael Everett,1962- II. Title.
PS3511.I9G7 2007 813′.52 C2006-907022-9
Broadview Editions
The Broadview Editions series represents the ever-changing canon of literature in English by
bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable lesser-known works.
Advisory editor for this volume:Jennie Rubio
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Broadview believes in shared ownership,both with its employees and with the general public;
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Contents
Acknowledgements (cid:127) 7
Introduction (cid:127) 9
F.Scott Fitzgerald:ABrief Chronology (cid:127) 35
A Note on the Text (cid:127) 41
The Great Gatsby (cid:127) 45
Appendix A:Fitzgerald’s Correspondence about The Great Gatsby
(1922-25) (cid:127) 177
Appendix B:Contemporary Reviews
1. H.L.Mencken,Baltimore Evening Sun (2 May 1925) (cid:127) 195
2. William Rose Benét,Saturday Review of Literature (9 May
1925) (cid:127) 198
3. William Curtis,Town & Country (15 May 1925) (cid:127) 201
4. Carl Van Vechten,The Nation (20 May 1925) (cid:127) 203
5. Gilbert Seldes,The Dial(August 1925) (cid:127) 204
Appendix C:Consumption,Class,and Selfhood:Eight Contem-
porary Advertisements (cid:127) 209
Appendix D:The Irreverent Spirit of the Jazz Age
1. From F.Scott Fitzgerald,“Echoes of the Jazz Age”
(1931) (cid:127) 219
2. Duncan M.Poole,“The Great Jazz Trial”(1922) (cid:127) 224
3. From H.L.Mencken,[“Five Years of Prohibition”]
(1924) (cid:127) 229
4. Zelda Fitzgerald,“What Became of the Flappers?”
(1925) (cid:127) 230
5. From Walter Lippmann,A Preface to Morals(1929) (cid:127) 233
Appendix E:Race and the National Culture,1920-25
1. From Lothrop Stoddard,The Rising Tide of Color Against White
World-Supremacy(1920) (cid:127) 238
2. From Henry Ford,Jewish Influences in American Life
(1921) (cid:127) 240
3. From Frederick C.Howe,“The Alien”(1922) (cid:127) 247
4. Miguel Covurrubias,“The Sheik of Dahomey”(illustration,
1924) (cid:127) 252
Select Bibliography (cid:127) 253
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6 CONTENTS
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-
search Council of Canada and the University of Victoria for
helping fund research expenses connected to this project.
Several people have helped me see this project through. I
would like first of all to thank Jennifer Douglas, who gathered
and photographed most of the advertisements in Appendix C as
well as doing some preliminary work on the notes.My thanks are
due as well to Madeline Walker,who also did some research for
the notes;and to Kerry Mogg,who scanned the first edition for
me and prepared it for my word-processing program.The staff at
Zap Copy Services helped format the illustrations.The anony-
mous readers who commented on my initial proposal for this
volume gave me useful advice that guided me throughout the
project.And Professor Leonard Conolly of Trent University has
been a valuable advisor on behalf of Broadview Press,and Jennie
Rubio an excellent copy-editor.
The staffs at Princeton University’s Firestone Library, the
New York Public Library, and, most importantly, the University
ofVictoria’s McPherson Library have been invariably helpful and
friendly.The Interlibrary Loans office has proven indispensable,
and I am grateful in particular for the interest taken in the project
by Chris Petter,coordinator of Special Collections.I have relied
on the first-rate secretarial staff of the English department for
various jobs connected to the project:my thanks go to Puri Pazo-
Torres, Diana Rutherford, Darlene Hollingsworth, and Jenny
Jessa.And colleagues, friends, family, and students have helped
me either by reading and commenting on material,or supplying
me with useful information:I am thinking in particular of Caro-
line Baldwin, Luke Carson, Anthony Edwards, Christopher
Nowlin,Kathleen Baldwin,John Tucker,and Gordon Alexander.
Finally,I would like to thank the following individuals and organ-
izations for permission to reprint the material described below.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s revisions to his personal copy of the 1925
first edition of The Great Gatsbyare published with permission of
the Princeton University Library.
The excerpt from Carl Van Vechten’s review,“Fitzgerald on the
March” (Appendix B4), is reprinted by permission of the Carl
Van Vechten Trust.My thanks go in particular to Bruce Kellner.
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Gilbert Seldes’ review “Spring Flight” (Appendix B5) is
reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening as agents for
the author. Copyright © 1925 by Gilbert Seldes, copyright
renewed 1953 by Gilbert Seldes.
The selection from Walter Lippmann’s A Preface to Morals
(Appendix D5) is reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an
imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.Copyright
© 1929 by the Macmillan Company;copyright renewed 1957 by
Walter Lippmann.
Advertisements from Town & Country magazine (Appendix C)
are reprinted by permission of The New York Public Library,
Astor,Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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Introduction
While planning and writing the novel he finally called The Great
Gatsby,F.Scott Fitzgerald revealed enough about the scope of his
ambition to make a fool of himself if the novel proved,like its title
character, an ultimate failure. He had recently suffered the
embarrassment of seeing his 1923 play The Vegetable, which he
trusted to make him a fortune on Broadway,flop during try-outs
in Atlantic City.But by the late summer of 1924,he was feeling
supremely confident again,or so his boast to his editor Maxwell
Perkins suggests: “I think my novel is about the best American
novel ever written.”1The draft he was working on at that point
would only get better:first as a result of his usual intensive work
revising and finishing up a book before submitting it for publica-
tion, and secondly, as a result of extensive revisions he made to
the galleys,largely in response to Perkins’gentle but pointed crit-
icism of the submitted typescript.By the time the finished novel
appeared in the spring of 1925,Fitzgerald’s boast seemed all the
more warranted, his faith in the work steeling him against the
vulgar criticism of contemporary reviewers:“Some day they’ll eat
grass, by God! This thing, both the effort and the result have
hardened me and I think now that I’m much better than any of
the young Americans without exception.”2
Literary history has obviously borne Fitzgerald out. The
reviewers who thought The Great Gatsby inconsequential or
downright bad (actually a minority) now suffer the punishment
of all reviewers who misjudge a future classic,which is to exem-
plify critical obtuseness to a more knowing posterity. The Great
Gatsby is now widely considered one of the greatest American
novels, if not the greatest, and a recent survey of the board
members of Random House’s Modern Library ranks The Great
Gatsbysecond only to James Joyce’s Ulysses(1922) on a list of the
one hundred greatest twentieth-century novels.But there are two
aspects to this fortunate issue more interesting than Fitzgerald’s
bold prescience, and more pertinent to our appreciation of his
novel.The first is the barely sublimated competitive spirit ani-
mating his project,his desire to beat his peers at the writing game
1 John Kuehl and Jackson R.Bryer,eds.,Dear Scott/Dear Max:The
Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence(New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1971),76.
2 Ibid.,106.
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