num_pages: 352
description: It's a staple on almost every high school reading list in the country. It's a book that has remained current for over half a century fighting off critics and changing tastes in fiction. But do even its biggest fans know all there is to appreciate about The Great Gatsby?Maureen Corrigan the book critic for Fresh Air and a Gatsby lover extraordinaire points out that while Gatsby may be the novel most Americans have read it's also the ones most of us read too soon -- when we were too young too defensive emotionally too ignorant about the life-deforming powers of regret to really understand all that Fitzgerald was saying (it's not the green light stupid it's Gatsby's reaching for it as she puts it). No matter when or how recently you've read the novel Corrigan offers a fresh perspective on what makes it so enduringly relevant and powerful. Drawing on her experience as a reader lecturer and critic her book will be a rousing consideration of Gatsby: not just its literary achievements but also its path to classic (its initial lukewarm reception has been a form of cold comfort to struggling novelists for decades) its under-acknowledged debt to hard-boiled crime fiction its commentaries on race class and gender.With rigor wit and an evangelistic persuasiveness Corrigan will leave readers inspired to grab their old paperback copies of Gatsby and re-experience this great novel in an entirely new light.
language: English
title: So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
publisher: Little, Brown and Company