The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nick Carraway rents a cottage on Long Island beside the mansion of Jay Gatsby, who throws enormous parties. Gatsby, born James Gatz, got rich through shady dealings to win back Nick's cousin Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is married to Tom, who is cheating with Myrtle Wilson. Nick arranges a reunion and the affair begins. After a showdown in New York, Daisy, driving Gatsby's car, kills Myrtle. Gatsby takes the blame. Myrtle's husband George shoots Gatsby in his pool, then himself. Almost nobody attends the funeral. Nick goes back West.

• It was nearly called Trimalchio. Fitzgerald's working title was Trimalchio in West Egg, after a party-throwing upstart in Petronius's Satyricon. He considered other titles before settling on The Great Gatsby for its 1925 publication.
• The cover painting predates the finished book. Francis Cugat painted the disembodied eyes over a night-lit carnival skyline, known as 'Celestial Eyes,' before Fitzgerald finished the manuscript. It then became the cover of the 1925 first edition.
• Soldiers helped rescue it from obscurity. During World War II, the Armed Services Editions program distributed about 150,000 copies of the novel to American troops, helping revive a book that sold modestly after its 1925 release.

• “Gatsby was driving the car that killed Myrtle.” Wrong driver. Daisy is behind the wheel of Gatsby's yellow car when it hits Myrtle. Gatsby tells Nick he will say he was driving, and George Wilson later shoots him for it.
• “Gatsby dies in a car crash.” No wreckage anywhere. George Wilson shoots Gatsby while he floats on an air mattress in his swimming pool, then turns the gun on himself.
• “Nick and Jordan live happily ever after.” Not even close. Nick ends things with Jordan Baker in the final chapter, then heads back to the Midwest, thoroughly done with the East.

• If they say: “Gatsby was just obsessed with money, right?”
  You say: “Money was the tool. He bought a mansion across the water from Daisy's house, where the green light sits at the end of her dock, and threw parties hoping she would turn up.”
• If they say: “Gatsby threw those parties because he loved parties.”
  You say: “I say the parties were bait. Jordan Baker tells Nick he hoped Daisy would wander in, and once she had been to his house, he fired his servants and the parties stopped.”