“[Fitzgerald] saw our American world...with clearer eyes than any of his contemporaries.” —Tobias Wolff
“[Fitzgerald] had one of the rarest qualities in all literature…It’s a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartettes.” —Raymond Chandler
“Fitzgerald was a better just plain writer than all of us put together. Just words writing.” —John O’Hara, to John Steinbeck
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.” —Ernest Hemingway
Biography
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and educated at Princeton, where he was a leader in theatrical and literary activities. He began writing his first novel, This Side of Paradise, while serving in the army. Its publication in 1920 established him as the spokesman for the Jazz Age. His major novels include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.
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Praise for Books
“It is humor, irony, ribaldry, pathos, and loveliness…A curious book, a mystical, glamorous story of today.” —New York Times, April 1925
“Leaves the reader in a mood of chastened wonder, in which fact after fact, implication after implication is pondered over, weighed, and measured. And when all are linked together, the weight of the story as a revelation of life and as a work of art becomes apparent.” —Los Angeles Times, May 1925
“The finest work of fiction by any of this country’s writers.” —Washington Post
“In astonishingly beautiful, layered prose, what Scott Fitzgerald manages to do is to replicate some of the mystery of what it is to be human…One of those rare books that you can read at different times in your life, and each time it’ll do something different to you.” —The Independent (London)
“Now we have an American masterpiece in its final form: the original crystal has shaped itself into the true diamond. This is the novel as Fitzgerald wished it to be, and so it is what we have dreamed of, sleeping and waking.” —James Dickey, National Book Award–winning poet
“A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology.” —Amazon.com
Hailed as one of the Great American Novels, The Great Gatsby delves into the dark corners of the Jazz Age to tell a tragic tale of obsession, love, and the gritty underbelly of the American Dream. Through the eyes of unassuming narrator Nick Carraway, the story follows the enigmatic Jay Gatsby as he chases the object of his hopeless desire, the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.
Years after first meeting Daisy, when he was merely a penniless soldier, Gatsby has remade himself into an eccentric millionaire, throwing lavish parties at his New York mansion every weekend with the hope of enticing the woman of his dreams into his reach. It is through these parties that Nick, Daisy’s cousin, first meets Gatsby and learns of his deep, unrelenting love. When at last Gatsby and the now-married Daisy reunite, the consequences of their illicit affair will reverberate through the lives of everyone around them.
An illuminating exploration of the deleterious effects of unrequited love, social stigmas, and unchecked capitalism, The Great Gatsby is an elegant yet unforgiving novel that will keep you hooked until the very last page.
