The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925
Fitzgerald compressed an entire civilization's tragedy into 180 pages. The dream, the corruption, the green light. Its prose is the most imitated in American literature; its position as the most-assigned novel in American high schools and colleges has held for decades. Modern Library ranked it second.
The case against
Daisy is a rumor, Gatsby is a gesture, and the plot turns on a car crash arranged like a stage trick. Fitzgerald's sentences carry everything, which is why the book survives being taught to death. Read it free of the green-light homework and what remains is a thin, gorgeous melodrama.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
