How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures

There was a moment in this book where I actually shouted "Yes!" out loud.

The year I turned 13, I became the owner of a scruffy paperback copy of "The Great Gatsby. "I fell in love the first time I read through it, then proceeded to read it another thirty times. Read every Fitzgerald novel I could find, every biography, every short story. I carried Gatsby around with me all that year, balanced on top of my pile of school books as I went from class to class. Though we studied it for Honors English, it was obvious that I knew more about the story and its meaning than the teacher did.

Decades went by. And then, one summer a few years ago, the "New York Times" printed the book, in its entirety, one perfect chapter at a time, over the course of a week.

And oh, my friends. It is quite a thing to read Gatsby as an adult.

Thank you, Maureen Corrigan, for writing this magnificent book. You explained to me all the reasons I loved it as a kid, and continue to love it today.

Chatty, entertaining, intelligent, and compassionate, "So We Read On" discusses the meaning of Gatsby, the writing of Gatsby, the history of Gatsby, the significance of Gatsby, and why the book still speaks to us today when many other classics have lost their shine. She also writes about F. Scott Fitzgerald as if she knew him, describing his painful childhood, his personality, his gifts, his meteoric rise, and the tragedy of his fall, with anecdotes that read as if she was present for all of it.

Her first, all-important point is this; that high-school students may be too young to appreciate the book. With its themes of aspiration, class differences, disappointment, loss and regret, it may not be the best fit for kids. But in your forties, you know what it feels like to have your dreams dashed. You know what it feels like to be an outsider, striving desperately to fit in. You've learned all about the differences between people who have lots of money and people who don't. You know what it's like to be scoured out by loss. If you have lived through these experiences, Gatsby breaks your heart.

Like a detective, Corrigan investigates the way a failed, out-of-print novel became a classroom staple; she collects F. Scott Fitzgerald family stories; she takes Gatsby-themed trips to New York; she does Gatsby-themed research in the National Archives; she tours through F. Scott Fitzgerald memorabilia collections like a fangirl.

Go ahead. Reread "The Great Gatsby." Then read this book.

This is a lively, informative, inspirational book. It now ties with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way as my favorite book on writing.

I’ve read Gatsby five times but I’ve never particularly liked it. My reaction, according to Corrigan, is not rare, in fact, she has a whole chapter entitled “I Didn’t Get It the First Time.” So We Read On is an exciting combination of biography, history, literary criticism, even autobiography—Corrigan has read Gatsby 50 times, so it’s a love story, too. And despite my original dislike (several, times, remember) Corrigan’s book—her passion, her research, her originality, and her darn good writing—has convinced me to read the novel yet again. This time I’m looking forward it.

Corrigan claims The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is the best American novel written in the 20th century. It was a hard-won struggle to attain that accolade—the book fizzled upon publication, and poor F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) died penniless, convinced he was a failure.

As a writer myself, I sympathize with other writers and Fitzgerald’s sad life has always made me it hard for me to separate his work from his biography. Not to mention the fate of his wife Zelda (1900- 1948), who died in a fire in Highland Hospital in Asheville.

During WWII Gatsby was chosen to be published in inexpensive paperback editions for American GIs and a great wave of appreciation began which the decades have not quelled. Movie versions of the book, including the latest (2013) starring Leonardo DeCaprio (directed by flashy Aussie director Baz Luhrmann), increased the number of fans of the book. [Corrigan considers the hard-to find 1949 version with Alan Ladd to be the best cinematic telling of the novel.]

The Great Gatsby (a title Fitzgerald didn’t want) is the tragic story of a self-made millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who lives alone in a mansion on one side of a bay off Long Island. He’s obsessed with dreams of his former lover a high society southern belle who is now married and living on the other side of the bay where he can see the flashing green light on her dock every night. A quick reading of Gatsby tells us that it’s about the materialism of America, the excessive hedonism of the 1920s. Well, yes, that it is. But upon closer examination, as Corrigan points out, Gatsby is a merciless depiction of something Americans don’t like to admit—that the country was, and is, a class-stratified society. Believing the American dream, we are addicted to illusion, longing for love, for riches, for acceptance, for reinventing ourselves.

Corrigan, a professor, also examines the book as a literary accomplishment. She details the things you think about but don’t pause long enough to let sink in -- the way the beginning is mirrored in the end, its metaphors, such as the eyeglasses on the roadway billboard, its recurring images of water (rain, drowning, the bay) and how Gatsby pays homage to the pulp fiction crime novels that preceded it. Anyone planning to write a novel would do well to first read So We Read On and then re-read The Great Gatsby a half dozen times.

I’m just about to read Gatsby again, but this time, prodded by Corrigan’s love for it, I’ll read it out loud, a few pages at a time, in order to luxuriate in its exquisite poetry. The famous ending: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. “ I recommend the authorized text, with notes and preface by Fitzgerald scholar, Matthew J. Bruccoli and a reproduction of the iconic original book art by Cuban-born Francis Cugat (1896-1981)

Excerpt from review in in Rapid River Arts & Culture Magazine, Nov. 2014

Reading this book brought me back to September, 1996 when Saint Paul had a parade honoring F. Scott Fitzgerald, unveiled a public statue of the man, renamed the World Theater the Fitzgerald Theater and had a special show at the Saint Paul Civic Center hosted by Garrison Keillor and featuring Fitzgerald's granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan and his secretary Frances Kroll Ring, plus many writers including Joseph Heller and Michael Dorris. What a day!

Maureen Corrigan in her book, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be, reminds us why F. Scott Fitzgerald is worthy of such honors. I loved reading this book with its insights into Fitzgerald's life and the creation of this singular book. Corrigan takes many detours and sidetracks as she examines this book, its influences, and how it influenced others, without becoming pedantic or didactic.

Last year, I read The Most Dangerous Book, which was all about James Joyce's Ulysses, a book few people get around to reading. Maureen Corrigan's book is about The Great Gatsby, a book most high school students have read (or skimmed), but fail to understand, or are indifferent to. Maureen Corrigan is an enthusiastic cheerleader for returning to the book in adulthood and exploring its riches. I recommend So We Read On to teachers, Fitzgerald enthusiasts, or even skeptical readers.

Have read quite a few books about F. Scott and his wife and muse Zelda, long considering them THE couple of the Roaring Twenties. Even though the material has been worked over by many, this extremely well written book is a welcome and timely addition to the canon. Was familiar with author Maureen Corrigan through her book reviews for public radio. However, it is here that she really SHINES by putting a neglected and dusty book into new and proper focus. Corrigan's reappraisal rightfully situates F. Scott Fitzgerald and his landmark novel on the literary map in a way they never have been before.

"The Great Gatsby," actually a flop in its time, has reentered the public consciousness through the big budgeted film. Anyone whose appetite has been whetted through this resurgence would do themselves a huge service by reading this because it fills in the entire back story in colorful style and detail.

Thoroughly researched with many primary sources . Balances various interpretations of those sources to provide the reader with an insightful appreciation of the how, why, when and controversies of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby evolution from idea to book to critics appraisals and our educational systems adoption of this as one of the best books every written.
I thank my Daughter in Law and her spouse for their outstanding recommendation. Their son , now 15 months old , will likely read it out loud to his Poppy someday in the not too distant future. I look forward to the shared experience !

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan is an insightful look at both F. Scott Fitzgerald and his classic novel The Great Gatsby. Ms. Corrigan's book is a crisp and concise look at why The Great Gatsby is an enduring American classic. Her book is part biography of the author and part literary analysis of his most famous book. I knew little of the author prior to reading So We Read On, and I was fascinated at the correlations between Fitzgerald's life and that of his characters in Gatsby.

So We Read On is clearly written by an avid fan of The Great Gatsby, and her continued studying of that novel has paid off for the public. This short but rich book is filled with the sort of information that Fitzgerald, Gatsby and literature lovers will devour.

For anyone who's a fan of The Great Gatsby, or Fitzgerald, or twentieth-century American literature, this book is a must-read. Corrigan's prose style is delightful, and the tale she weaves about her love affair with the novel is mesmerizing.

This book was wonderful at putting Gatsby into context in terms of explaining many of the mores and practices of the mid-1920s, as well as the influences of Fitzgerald's own life. The literary analysis of the novel and the writing were also equally wonderful at helping me appreciate the book, and then the post-Gatsby history of Fitzgerald and Gatsby were enjoyable to read. This was a great book to take to the beach this summer.

If you're interested in the Gatsby and the context in which it was written I would recommend this. Not academic and written in an accessible personal style by a writer who does a lot of NPR. Has bibliography. Directed me to some earlier movie iterations (1949) possibly available on Netflix One of the more current books on this Great American novel. Written by an enthusiast for a general audience.

I recently re-read Gatsby, a favorite novel, after reading Churchwell's Careless People. As much as I enjoyed Churchwell and intriguing as Corrigan's excellent bibliographical note is, Corrigan's is the one book on Gatsby and Fitzgerald to read. It is a book as accessible to teens as to scholars, and the vividness of her love for Gatsby is contagious. Time to find my copy again and....

The great virtue of this "book about a book" is that it brings together personal experience, well documented research, and intellectual theorizing into a concise treatment of one of the most-read of American novels. Unlike the "theory first" approach to literature in contemporary academic considerations of great works of art, Corrigan's book is entirely existential in the best sense of the word. Her conclusions about recurring images and structural components of The Great Gatsby are tentative, descriptive, undogmatic. She is as willing to learn from a comment from a first-time high school reader as she is from the great critics. More books like hers are needed. I once took a film theory course at NYU by a professor named Noel Carroll, who warned us graduate students not to entirely trust any theory of film (and of the other arts, I conclude), because the academic theory factory often "moves the target so that the arrow will land in the bull's eye." That is, the art work will be made to fit the theory. I think the antidote to all the "isms" of literary theory are analytical books which know how to stay in the text being examined and not in the mental abstract which is being brought to the task. By providing all the publishing history of this book, along with her own observations from years of teaching it, and reading it, Corrigan is part of that antidote.

And yes, I wanted to reread the original Great Gatsby after finishing "So On We Read"....and just finished it for the "twentieth"? time.

A little professorial (see end notes for class discussion) but sure to enthrall Gatsby devotees. Really though, someone should tell the author that the expression she frequently misquotes is "to the manor born" (as in an English manor with an aristocratic family, tenant farmers, servants etc.) and not "to the manner born." One can acquire the mannerisms of the inherently wealthy, as Jay Gatsby did, but Fitzgerald's point is that one is either to the "manor" born or not.

Interesting read. Corrigan has a strong theory and she really sticks to it. I think the phrase "hard-boiled" was used at least a couple of hundred times, and sometimes several times in one paragraph. The English Major in me really appreciates the ferocity with which she approaches her theory of Gatsby, as well as all of the tiny historical morsels she has found and seamlessly woven into her analysis.

It's akin to having a conversation with a good and intelligent friend who shares your love of The Great Gatsby.
If you love and appreciate this gem of a novel, you will love and appreciate And We Read On.
If you don't understand the continued adulation of this novel, which reads like a prose poem, you will still love And We Read On. More importantly, you will learn to understand why The Great Gatsby is so great, why it endures, and how several readings always yields forth a fresh perspective or the discovery of a detail which was missed upon the last reading of it.

Shallow, simplistic, reductive, and trivial. This is the opposite of good critical thinking; completely lacking in real scholarly chops, Corrigan substitutes pithy anecdotes for analysis and original thinking.

Ms. Corrigan gave me some very illuminating insights into the process of the creation of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and the themes that run throughout the novel. Fitzgerald probably only wrote one great novel, but what a novel. I've read The Great Gatsby 6 or 7 times during the last 50 years and I learned things about Gatsby from reading Ms. Corrigan's book that never had occurred to me.

This book reads like a not very good high school essay on The Great Gatsby. The author goes off on tangents about her family trips--same route as Fitzgerald. Gee, neither ground breaking nor insightful. Don't waste your time on this.

I have been waiting for this book to come out since I first heard about it and was not disappointed. What a wonderful insight into the heights and despairs of being a writer. I now know more about how The Great Gatsby came to be and why it endures.