Doffing a hat to the ‘old sport’

Jay Gatsby is rich. Jay Gatsby is suave. Jay Gatsby is well-spoken. Jay Gatsby throws the greatest parties.

Jay Gatsby is a murderer. Jay Gatsby is a bootlegger. Jay Gatsby is a fake.

Who the hell is Jay Gatsby?

A hundred years after its publication, the mystery at the heart of this exquisite novel by F Scott Fitzgerald continues to intrigue its readers. Gatsby, his doomed love, Daisy Buchanan and the novel’s befuddled narrator, Nick Carraway, are among fiction’s most memorable characters and the novel itself, among the most loved.  

The making

F Scott Fitzgerald, the writer, was something of a precocious sensation. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, published when he was not yet 24, was a smash hit. In its first week of publication, it sold 20,000 copies. The Beautiful and the Damned, published in 1922, was just as successful.

And then the author went off the rails — drinking far too much, living it up and writing far too little.

By April 1924, even as his publishers awaited his third novel, he was nowhere near finished, and a flurry of letters went back and forth between the writer and his anxious publishers. Fitzgerald’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, prodded and coaxed him to finish ‘Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires’ (the original title). By June, Fitzgerald promised, only to break it. Weeks of silence and suspense. No one knew where the novel was at. And no one wanted to ask.

In late October, though, Perkins received a package from France (where Fitzgerald was living then). It contained the manuscript of ‘Trimalchio at West Egg’, the new title, which Fitzgerald was very insistent upon. Compared to his previous novels, this one was short — only 50,000 words. It was done … or was it? Nonplussed, Perkins got to work, nevertheless.

The hero behind the novel

In 1924, Maxwell Perkins was in his late thirties and had been with Scribner’s (Fitzgerald’s publishers) for close to a decade-and-a-half, initially in their advertising department before switching to editing. Scribner’s was a staid and conservative publisher, content to stick to their knitting, publishing ponderous worthies like John Galsworthy and Henry James. In 1919, Perkins had fought his grey-headed fellow editors to be allowed to publish Fitzgerald. The success of This Side of Paradise had muted all opposition. Now, he had to wrestle editorially with Fitzgerald’s latest.

The length of the novel did not bother Perkins. But there was way too much mystery around Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s first draft. Recognising that this was at the heart of the novel’s plot, Perkins did not seek to change it fundamentally. Instead, he urged Fitzgerald to insert ‘little touches of various kinds’ that tantalisingly accentuated Gatsby’s mysterious persona and hinted at the source of his fabulous fortune. There were other plot-related embellishments that Perkins proffered. Fitzgerald argued his case, in particular for the final scene of denouement at the Plaza Hotel, that brings together most of the novel’s loose ends. Perkins complied on some, insisted on some.

Fitzgerald, as always, was living beyond his means, and now that the manuscript was delivered, requested an advance payment. By now, he was up to his ears in the advances he had extracted from Scribner’s. But Perkins, as he would do, time and again, persuaded his finance department to wire the money to the writer.

Soon, even as 1924 gave way to 1925, Fitzgerald responded to Perkins’ edits and also accepted his suggestion for the title. The novel would thus go forth into the world in April 1925, titled The Great Gatsby.

The reception

As it stands, going by the sales of the novel on publication, Gatsby performed poorly. It sold less than 20,000 copies in its first year. Its tepid reception had much to do with Fitzgerald’s descent into alcoholism and melancholia and his early death in 1940.

However, during World War II, the novel’s popularity boomed. It was shipped in large numbers to US soldiers serving overseas. Later in the 1950s, it made its way into academia and came to be regarded as the quintessential ‘Great American Novel’. Its 1925 cover featuring sad-looking eyes (painted by Francis Cugat) almost became as famous as the novel itself. (see pic)

Over the years, there have been several movie versions — the first one in 1926 (since lost). Subsequent versions were made in 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. The 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow is widely regarded as the best. The recent 2013 version starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby also featured Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby’s associate. The 2000 version, panned as the weakest, featured Toby Stephens of Lagaan fame as Gatsby.

As the novel finds newer readers, Gatsby’s signature phrase ‘old sport’ awaits adoption by a whole new generation.