Critical Reception of The Great Gatsby
Jacob Rheaume
F. Scott Fitzgerald began planning the novel that would eventually become The Great Gatsby June 22 at White Bear Lake in Minnesota. After the first draft of his play The Vegetable, he wrote to Max Perkins. From very early on, Fitzgerald was clear that he wanted to write something new. During the summer of 1923, he began writing a draft that would eventually become The Great Gatsby. This is believed to be true from the surviving letters sent to Willa Cather. The characters were Jordan, Vance, and Ada. Jordan Baker Daisy and Caraway would follow.
The first printing of The Great Gatsby was on 10 April in 1925. The first printing of the novel yielded 20,870 copies, with 3000 to follow in a second printing. Surprisingly enough Fitzgerald earned less than 7,000 dollars form the two printings combined.
The critical reception of the novel was greatly varied, headlines ranged from, “Fitzgerald’s latest a dud” to others like Gilbert Seldes, of the New Criterion, who proclaimed, “The Great Gatsby is a brilliant work”. On April 12, in New York World, the author felt as though, “There is no important development of his characters and many other titles would be equally appropriate.” Ruth Snyder was equally bitter stating that, “Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of to-day.” Perhaps the most negative reaction to The Great Gatsby came from Ruth Hale of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, who boasts, “Find me one chemical trace of magic, life, irony romance or mysticism in all of The Great Gatsby, and I will bind myself to read one Scott Fitzgerald book a week for the rest of my life.” As an afterthought she adds, “The boy is just puttering around”. H.L. Mencken also had a few unkind words to say about the novel in The Baltimore Evening Sun, “The clown Fitzgerald rushes to his death in nine short chapters.” He goes on to claim, “The story is obviously unimportant.” Laurence Stallings of New York World proclaimed, “If you are interested in the American novel this is for you.” It seems as though The Great Gatsby has done well enough in the 80 years since its publication that most literary critics give more credence to the opinions of those who gave The Great Gatsby warmer reviews.
Many more reviewers saw that The Great Gatsby was a work of significant literary value. As Harry Hansen suggests, “The Great Gatsby is American to the Core” he adds, “Fitzgerald knows his time and his people.” In The St. Paul Pioneer Press, an article appeared in which the author described the novel as “far the best of his novels.” Phil A. Kinsley of The Philadelphia Record, notes, “Mr. Fitzgerald has redeemed himself…for his previous lapse into literary sin.”
There were those critics who were more fickle in their reviews of The Great Gatsby and those authors account for the mixed reviews that the novel received. In The Independent one author wrote, “The Great Gatsby is not a good book but it is superior to his others.” Another similar account appeared in the New York Post on May 5 1925, in which the author wrote, “It does not seem to us a great novel but as an index of the direction in which one of our young writers is going.” One of the problems they found with the novel was that, the plot and its developments work out too geometrically and too perfectly for The Great Gatsby to be a great novel.” Still another suggested that The Great Gatsby had “Great Potentialities.”
It seems as though the authors who praised Gatsby did so for the ‘Realistic” quality of his characters and the eventful plot. Others enjoyed and praised Gatsby for the “American-like” qualities it was said to posses.
Over all Reviews
15 Good.
3 Neutral
4 Bad(Note this is the number of reviews that I read but does not necessarily reflect the actual number of good, bad and neutral reviews given)
Jacob Rheaume