Panned book became the great American novel
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Quite a few have called The Great Gatsby the great American novel and consider it the best book ever. There are even four Gatsby movies created so far. The book has sold over 30 million copies. But, sadly, the book only took off after the death of the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald had success when he released his first two novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, in the early 1920s. His third novel, The Great Gatsby, was published in 1925. had high expectations but did not meet them critically or commercially. Fitzgerald passed away in 1940, believing the book and his literary career were failures.
After his death, more and more people started reading The Great Gatsby. Then, in 1944, the book received renewed critical acclaim and reached a wider audience. Finally, by 2020, The Great Gatsby sold nearly 30 million copies and is considered a masterpiece by many.
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TIL that The Great Gatsby was largely considered forgettable and a commercial failure when it was published in 1925. It was only after WWII, during which free copies of novels were sent to US soldiers overseas, that the book was re-examined and became a core part of American high school curriculums.
by u/lappy482 in todayilearned
Quotes
In The Great Gatsby Mr. Fitzgerald has made a valiant effort to be ironical. His style is painfully forced.... We are quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of to-day.
Ruth Snyder
The Great Gatsby is a thin novel, not longer than 315 short pages. It lacks the lyrical and poetic outbursts of Fitzgerald's earlier work.
Ralph Coghlan
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References
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Opinion: 'The Great Gatsby' Enters Public Domain But It Already Entered Our Hearts
The classic 1925 novel of love foiled, ambitions foisted, class and betrayal sold fewer than 25,000 copies before Fitzgerald died. It has since sold nearly 30 million.
NPR
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Why Did It Take So Long for The Great Gatsby to Be Recognized as a Masterpiece?
Fitzgerald’s contemporary critics and reviewers would be befuddled by English teachers’ reverence for the novel. To them, Gatsby was nothing more than a pretty little ditty of a story. Oops?
Slate
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The Great Gatsby' by the numbers
Today, the now-classic 1925 novel is his publisher Scribner's most popular title. A staple on high school reading lists, it's a perennial on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.
USA Today
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Why It Took So Long For ``The Great Gatsby'' to Be Considered A Literary Classic?
When it was published in 1925, Gatsby sold a disappointing 21,000 copies, less than half of sales for ``This Side of Paradise’’ and ``The Beautiful and Dammed,'' Mr. Fitzgerald's first two novels. And there were reportedly still copies from the second printing in the Scribner warehouse when Fitzgerald died in 1940.
Newspaper Alum
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
Not until the early 1950s did interest in Fitzgerald revive, and when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry. A closer look at his life and career reveals a writer with an acute sense of history, an intellectual pessimist who doubts Americans’ ability to survive their infatuation with material success.
History
