F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel — narrated by Nick Carraway — tracing Jay Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy Buchanan and the American Dream's corruption by old money — the most taught American novel and the canonical text on the American Dream.
Creates the American Dream critique as literary canon — The Great Gatsby's argument (that the American Dream is inextricably corrupted by class, that the past cannot be recovered, and that Gatsby's romantic idealism destroys him) is the most precisely articulated in American fiction; its prose rhythm (the closing green light passage) is the most quoted paragraph in American literary culture.
No recorded contemporaries.
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