The Great Gatsby - Softcover

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 4871878406 ISBN 13: 9784871878401

Publisher: Ishi Press, 2009

Synopsis

The Great Gatsby is regarded as "The Great American Novel". A first edition of "The Great Gatsby" came up for auction on June 10, 2009 and was knocked down for the astounding price of $155,000. The picture in that auction catalog has been used to create the cover of this reprint. The cover is the most famous part of the book. The cover of The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of jacket art in American literature. Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel, with Fitzgerald so enamored of it that he told his publisher he had written it into the novel. Little is known of Francis Cugat other than that he was the older brother of famous Cuban bandleader Xavier Cugat.

About this title

Review:

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. Perry Freeman, Amazon.com

Review:

"One of the greatest works of American literature ... a timeless evocation of the allure, corruption and carelessness of wealth." (The Times)

"A stunning illumination of the world ... not only a miracle of talent but a triumph of technique." (Aaron Beck, Psychiatrist)

About this edition

• Publisher: Ishi Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 4871878406
• ISBN 13: 9784871878401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208
• Illustrator: Dean Bruce