Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

“My book, Careless People, is really the biography of a book. It’s the true story behind Gatsby, a mix of biography, social history and literary essay. So it tells the story of the parties and speakeasies and high life in New York and Long Island, what Scott and Zelda were doing, and weaves that in with a broader social history about what’s happening in the world at the time – fascism is on the rise, for example – and then ties that back to Gatsby, explaining how this helps us understand the novel better. My book takes place over four months in 1922, which is when The Great Gatsby is set. The Great Gatsby takes place from June to September 1922, and my book takes place from September to December 1922: September is when the Fitzgeralds returned to New York from the Midwest. They moved to Great Neck, Long Island, which Fitzgerald would transform into West Egg in Gatsby, in October 1922, and the parties that would inspire the novel kicked off.” Read more...

Books About The Great Gatsby

Sarah Churchwell, Literary Scholar