Thank you. I had an older copy of the book along with a film item. Miss them, but so glad to have the memories. This is the book which taught me so much, including my enjoyment of reading and a good part of believing in myself. Must go and get a copy again.

Thanks for this, Roger. These are the greatest lines in 20th century English literature.

You might be interested in learning more about Carl Van Vechten, to whom Fitzgerald dedicates this inscription. He was a gay white man who was rather prominent during the Harlem Renaissance. Nella Larsen's underrated novel "Passing" was dedicated to him and featured a character based on him, and he wrote a novel called "Nigger Heaven" which (perhaps for obvious reasons) is no longer read but made quite a stir in Harlem when it was published in 1926. Langston Hughes famously defended it, while W.E.B. DuBois thought it was a pernicious sort of cultural tourism (my phrase, not his).

How would you rate the final monologue of "He's Alive" in the Twilight Zone? It is certainly more blunt then Fitzgerald's prose, but is equally as poignant.

What can you say about Fitzgerald’s prose? It is poetic and lilting as one line merges into the other. The closing lines of the 'The Great Gatsby' are one of the most famous lines in all of literature. To me, the novel is a reflection of the materialism, the decadence, the hypocrisy of the American society during the 1930s. Fitzgerald makes very strong comments on the American Dream – can it really be fulfilled? And at what cost? Shmoop had some interesting views and comments on this book which helped me to see the novel in its entirety. If you want to get to know more about this book that has crossed many generations, then Shmoop would be a good place to go to.

Thanks, Roger. As a film critic, you may recall how Hollywood butchered the ending of "The Great Gatsby" in 1974 (the year I read the book for the first time). If you don't, here it is courtesy of YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwObr8IRc8o&feature=related

Even the end of your original review of the movie version commented about the ending;

That, and one other small item: How could a screenplay that plundered Fitzgerald's novel so literally, that quoted so much of the narration and dialogue, have ended with a rinky-dink version of "Ain't We Got Fun" instead of the most famous last sentence of any novel of the century? Maybe because the movie doesn't ever come close to understanding it: "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19740101/REVIEWS/401010315/1023

i think about this book every time i pass or drive over the queensboro bridge here in NYC. I purposely undertake the extra pain whenever possible to find the entrance to the upper level just to experience the sun flickering through the metal lattice just as fitzgerald describes. Too bad the bridge is so rusty and ugly now.

Have you ever thought of a connection between Gatsby and Spiderman swinging on the queensboro bridge from the battle with the green goblin first movie? probably tenuous at best, but you do have him swinging into that majestic city in pursuit of a green object.

Yo who dis man - I can has his verbosal skills in my slang?

Only better books is my rhymes son.

To commentator James: If I ever did hear of Nigger Heaven my short term memory has long since buried it, but thank you for mentioning it. I am not sure I'll live long enough to read my entire wish list, but it's on there.

As to The Great Gatsby-- first read it in high school, recently reread it and entered the hugely tiresome debate about whether Nick is bisexual. I write tiresome because sticking labels on literary classics is limiting, after a fashion.

I may shock some by expressing a slight preference for Tender Is The Night over Gatsby, but will also admit that the latter leaves me more unsettled, even though I know something of the standard literary interpretations surrounding the novel. I have not sorted out in my own mind what I feel about Nick, or where he is being unreliable, or Jay, or Tom, and his comic fear of miscegenation.

You should be awed at Roger's abllity to make me drive to my kindle to upload the file up out of archive in a frenzy. Even though EVERYONE has done it, I am thinking of writing a short essay on Fitzgerald's use of improvisation in the book. I hear certain keys fall into place in my head when I treat Gatsby like a jazz concert.

Just down the road from the Helen Keller Institute, is the Sands Point Nature Preserve and mansion complex: After purchasing "Castle Gould" "Falaise was built on a bluff above the Long Island Sound in 1923 for Harry F. Guggenheim and his wife, Caroline, on what is now the Sands Point Preserve" run by Nassau County on Long Island, on the Long Island Sound, that shore Fitzgerald refers to. Castle Gould has a pipe organ built into the foyer as one enters. Once there to look at a benefit auction and one Halloween, to see if the nearby North Shore Animal League would take the kittens I had, (no, they had FeL V) I recall there was a tour in small buses one could take of the "Gold Coast" that once was less populated. A number of years ago, further east, they tore down Emperor Zog's place, who fled Albania, with reportedly just a bucket of jewels. Since however, I think that inspired more preservation efforts on Long Island, New York.

I may be the only person who discovered Gatsby through Sheilah Graham's autobiography, Beloved Infidel. My early childhood reading consisted of undirected rooting through my father's books, a pile of Detroit Library discards. I was thus quite fresh to the identity of Fitzgerald, and indeed to the definition of 'mistress'.

I cry through that last page of Gatsby, every damn time.

Thanks for this section of your outstanding coverage of Fitzgerald.
Living in Minnesota,I see so many older preserved & renovated homes straight off his astounding pages;along with several yaught clubs off Lake Minnetonka. A great classic of Anmerican literature to read & remember.

The Great Gatsby is one of America's best books, one that I've loved since I was a teen. I think it was probably the modern 'machine age' coming of age book that first laid out America's relationship between love and money for the future. I always keep a copy in my glove compartment, and read it over when I have the chance or am waiting around in my car.

I used to live in Washington DC, and would go to Rockville Maryland on the anniversary of his 'death day' to look at his grave an pay homage, before the church fenced in the area and locked it up because people were destroying the area with champagne bottles and such. He was buried there with Zelda, and the absolute final line of the book, "...so we beat on..." was on the gravestone.

Good to know that the Evanston book store in the alley, I forget its name and don't even know if it's still there, has a handwritten and framed postcard by Scott, I used to go there just to feel that much closer to the history...