“The Great Gatsby”, the radical via the American Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), celebrated its hundredth anniversary on April 10, 2025. Despite the fact that it has already been the topic of over 100 papers or important articles, this brief tale continues to encourage researchers.
In america, we all know Gatsby as a result of younger American citizens be informed the e book in highschool. It has the good thing about just one hundred and seventy pages and, in the beginning look, reasonably easy.
It additionally ended in quite a lot of diversifications that contributed to his reputation: ballet, opera, radio and theater performances and above all 5 movies. Amongst them, two completed world good fortune: the movie directed via Jack Clayton in 1974, with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, and Baz Luhrmann in 2013, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan.
A monument to American letters
The Nice Gatsby is the tale of an unsatisfied love between a flapper with a voice “full of money”, because the hero says, and an excessively wealthy gangster (the well-known bootlegger of Prohibition). It’s each the American dream and its limits, the tragedy of the passage of time, the debauchery of the twenties (“the Jazz Age”, as Fitzgerald known as it)), with its extravagant evenings, its excesses of song, dance and particularly alcohol. We by no means drank up to we did all through Prohibition, Fitzgerald reportedly stated. And he knew what he was once speaking about!
Gatsby could also be a sophisticated tale, with out announcing an excessive amount of, the place the destiny of the hero sooner or later merges with the destiny of The usa. The unconventional has develop into one of those monument to American letters, “the Sistine Chapel of American literature”, writes the writer, instructional and literary critic Maureen Corrigan in a work from 2014. So we learn on: How The Nice Gatsby Used to be Created and Why It Lasts (Little Brown and Corporate) (now not translated into French), the place the editor analyzes, and does now not analyze for lengthy. Consistent with her, each time we learn Gatsby, we discover ourselves even higher. Finally, we find new main points, clues, as in a detective novel (as a result of it’s one, with 3 violent deaths), which we didn’t realize prior to.
All through a convention on the Library of Congress in Washington at the instance of the newsletter of his e book, Corrigan insisted that Fitzgerald was once influenced, each in French and in English, via hardboiled fiction, a subgenre of American detective fiction characterised via “hardboiled”. She additionally asks “What is left to say?” » about Gatsby nowadays.
At the instance of the centenary of the radical, some of the masterpieces of American literature, it gave the impression suitable to post a choice of instructional articles in English to survey Fitzgerald’s grievance from each side of the Atlantic. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald. 100 years after Gatsby (the paintings has now not been translated into French, editor’s word) was once printed in September 2025 via Presses universitaire de Bordeaux. After I began this mission, I didn’t check out to reply to Corrigan’s query in any respect as a result of I used to be so satisfied that I might now not be presented an editorial about Gatsby, that such a lot has already been written about this brief novel that the subject was once virtually exhausted. I imagined that the American, British, French, and Swedish researchers I contacted would as an alternative ship me articles about little-known brief tales or texts.
I used to be totally improper.
The Enduring Gatsby
Of the 9 articles, 5 are dedicated to The Nice Gatsby, two to A Delicate Night time (printed in 1934), and two to autobiographical tales. 4 of the 5 have been written via American citizens, the closing via a Brit. If maximum Europeans now appear reluctant to go back to Gatsby, American citizens would not have the similar reservations. And the worst factor is they nonetheless arrange to make the textual content discuss.
This sort of 5 articles, via James L. V. Vesta, is a “genetic criticism” and compares the sooner variations of the radical with the only printed in 1925. It focuses, specifically, at the masquerade which Fitzgerald deleted. The passage confirmed a profound distinction, a distinction at school and tradition, between Daisy and Gatsby. The nouveau riche invited film stars and fashionistas, hoping to delight the younger lady. In her global, alternatively, the sector of previous cash, folks aren’t keen on celebrities. By means of deleting this episode, Fitzgerald subsequently preferred the implicit, the allusive. All through the tale, if truth be told, it’s as much as the reader to decipher or decipher the sparse clues given to them.
The second one article (written via Dominic Robin) analyzes the paintings in the course of the prism of magical realism, fearing neither the audacity nor the anachronism of one of these studying, even supposing the writer readily acknowledges that his method isn’t flawless. Coined via a German artwork critic in 1925, the formulation “magical realism” first implemented to portray prior to being implemented to South American literature within the Sixties. Gatsby is subsequently neither in reality magical nor real looking, say someplace in between.
The 3rd article (signed via Tom Phillips) reads the radical in mild, particularly within the rhythm of jazz, and argues that Fitzgerald made syncopation, the root of jazz, his manner of writing. So he says issues with out seeming to mention them. It’s as much as the reader, for instance, to find the combined racial identification of Jordan Baker’s persona (Daisy’s buddy, editor’s word).
A fourth article (via Alan Bilton) compares Fitzgerald’s artwork within the novel to that of an embalmer. Underneath the skin veneer, between makeup and camouflage, the novelist would concurrently hide and disclose social variations, corruption and materialism.
Gatsby and American Presidents
As for the 5th article (Kirk Kernut), without a doubt probably the most cutting edge, he analyzes the presence of Gatsby, this is, his identify within the American political discourse, particularly that in regards to the President of america.
Despite the fact that Gatsby isn’t a political textual content (except Tom Buchanan’s textual content, Daisy’s husband, allusions to problems with race and immigration), it’s been used, again and again used, to signify presidents, Republican or Democrat, starting with Richard Nixon on the time of the Watergate scandal within the early Seventies.
It should be stated that Nixon’s resignation in 1974 coincided with the discharge of Clayton’s movie adaptation of the radical, which sparked a fierce exposure marketing campaign. The 2 names, Nixon’s and Gatsby’s, have been subsequently concurrently within the media. After that, maximum American presidents are known as Gatsby, together with Barack Obama and Donald Trump. If we will be able to suitable his identify on this manner, the item additionally claims, it’s without a doubt as a result of the nature’s unsure, even ambivalent identification, each idealistic and gangster, naive and pragmatic.
Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in Jack Clayton’s Gatsby (1974). Allotted
In mild of those other and no much less interesting approaches to the radical, it sort of feels that conventional literary grievance, focused at the textual content, is now condemned to silence or, worse, to repetition. The Nice Gatsby turns out to have develop into extra of a “cultural object”, generating increasingly more discourse outdoor the world of literature, politics, song… or funeral cosmetics, for instance. Because of this, American critics, without a doubt much less sure to their self-discipline, nonetheless arrange to supply new and cutting edge analyzes of this brief tale.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. One Hundred Years After Gatsby, edited via Pascale Antolin, was once printed in September 2025 via Presses universitaire de Bordeaux (e book in English).
