The Great Gatsby, when first published in 1925, initially received lukewarm reviews that Fitzgerald attributed to a misunderstanding of the novel.
“Of all the reviews,” he said, “not one has the slightest idea what the book was about.” Shunning theory, Paul Levitt analyzes the meaning of Gatsby, in some cases page by page, to highlight the novel’s revolutionary theme, which Fitzgerald makes clear with three references to 1917, the year of the Russian revolution.
For the first time, Levitt’s book, In The Great Gatsby: A Close Reading, explores those aspects of the novel that have been sadly ignored or misunderstood, providing the reader with refreshing revelations, undimmed by scholarly jargon, of the novel’s far-reaching significance.
