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100 years ago Motor Magazine published its third installment of Fitzgerald's "The Cruise of the Rolling Junk," one of the first literary road trip narratives tracing Scott and Zelda's misadventures from Westport CT to Montgomery AL in the summer of 1920. (A fictionalized account it should be noted). For many years "Cruise" was a hard text to track down; even after Matthew J. Bruccoli's company reprinted it in 1976, that limited edition was rare and expensive. 20 years ago a set of the three Feb-April issues went for more than $6000.
Since 2012 the story has been available for cheap in a paperback UK edition, but you can nab a decent used copy of the Bruccoli edition for $60 or so. Of course, we only read it in the official Cambridge Edition version, collected in Jim West's LAST KISS.
Someday it will turn up online scanned!
Thank you for this! I managed to get a secondhand copy on Amazon for a modest outlay.
It had a modest impact at least!
Wow, that’s expensive!
I love it.
Fitzgerald hated cars for their trouble, noise, expense and failure to deliver despite continual high maintenance. An English Lit prof told me that "Jordan Baker" in "The Great Gatsby," was a composite of two horrible cars that Scott and Zelda bought and which offered great glamourous promise but failed them. One was made by the Jordan Motor Car Company. The other by the Baker Motor Vehicle Company.
Would you recommend this 2011 publication?
e-pub for five bucks www.ipgbook.com/the-cruise-of-the-rolling-junk-products-9781843916291.php
99 years old today! 🍸🎂🥳💚
Loved Gatsby and Tender is the Night! The Beautiful and Damned is more of a "slog" but I'm pushing through it. It has beautiful "prose" but I think Fitzgerald fell in love with his prose to the detriment of the STORY ... thus far..
The great American Odessey.
One of the world's most famous book covers in literary history
The best novel ever!! 🙃
I love it.
Sad how he died,drank too much.
The Great American Novel!
Richard Selden
Andrew C Davies
One more to go...🥳🥳🥳
Fifty years ago this month, all editorials could talk about (besides a little thing called Watergate) was the latest movie adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY starring---oh heck, we all know who was in it. The real question: good or bad? The movie was a moneymaker (not a blockbuster, but a solid performer) but it was also a merchandizing bonanza. "We are going to Gatsbysize America," producer David Merrick told one reporter.
(Click on jpeg for whole article)
I wish I could somehow unsee-it, just to see it for the first time again! My favourite book in the world, on screen! 🙃🙂💕
Recently I was looking at the period in which Stephen King headed off to write The Shining in Boulder, Colorado (1974-75) and was intrigued to learn that The Great Gatsby was being shown on the same day as The Exorcist in the local cinema. The films had been released within weeks of each other. Stanley Kubrick seemed to have both movies in mind when he directed his own version of The Shining five years later (which was quite different from the novel).
some of the best words written on scott's masterpiece. a then as now approach used by prof Heather Cox Richardson in her DAILY assessment of the news and always comparing it to what is now happening. my whole life, been bummed out by hippies turning around and selling their hard bought gains for "success". donovan saw it coming. we were warned. but it halted my life for a decade. scott and zelda buried in rockville, maryland.
Lois Chiles should have played Daisy ("her voice is full of money”).
If you're listening to Blanchard House's AMERICAN DREAMER podcast on Gatsby, you'll discover that much of the research comes from Alan Serjent's amazing detective work, which builds on insights from our Society member Horst Kruse. We highly recommend Alan's website The Monocled Mutineer, which goes into even greater depth into the mysterious "count" or "baron" from Germany who insisted he was the real Jay Gatsby:
Max Von Gerlach, Max Stork — The Inspiration for The Great Gatsby
www.monocledmutineer.co.uk
“He started as one man I knew and then changed into myself.” That’s how the author described his most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. And on the evidence currently available there’s no reason to doubt him. Discoveries made by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Horst Kruse suggest that the ‘one man’ he...
We're excited to share that Blanchard House's podcast on the mysterious origins of Jay Gatsby is up and it's FANTASTIC! You probably know the name Max Gerlach and you're maybe even familiar with the newspaper clipping he sent FSF and Zelda in 1923 with the telltale words "old sport" jotted on it. But this investigation goes much deeper into the elusive Gerlach than ever before, using his biography as a way of exploring central issues in the novel. Mainly, it's a fun piece of storytelling with a lot of familiar names and voices. We really like the attention given to Horst Kruse, who pursued this purported inspiration for Jay Gatsby (or one of many inspirations for him) with the zeal of Inspector Javert. Lots of great Fitzgerald studies lore in here too. Maybe you've heard about the time Matthew Bruccoli hired an actual private detective to investigate Gerlach---well, meet Howie Comen (and his train set). As with most podcasts, the thesis is less important than the fun of the pursuit and the eclectic if not eccentric cast of characters.
Because this production is an Audible original, you can't get it on Spotify or Napster. But you can start a free trial with Audible and cancel after you listen to all four hours. We recommend you give Blanchard House's Agatha Christie podcast, "Agatha Christie and the Dandelion Poisoner," a spin while you're there. It's great too!
The Fitzgerald Review is looking for someone who might be interested in writing a review of the podcast for our 2024 issue. Drop us a line if you're interested!
Here's a link to Blanchard House's website: www.blanchard-house.com/releases/american-dreamer-who-was-jay-gatsby
Another person that FSF might have used to model Gatsby on was Cushman Rice. FSF Society member Dan Hardy had almost finished a book on this when he passed away unexpectedly. The game a talk at the 2007 London conference and here is a NPR interview with Hardy in 2006. I tried to get his widow to publish the manuscript but I don't think she ever did. He had done a lot of research. Another lost piece of FSF info.
“He started as one man I knew and then changed into myself” — F Scott Fitzgerald. By and large I most of Gatsby’s DNA can be traced to Scott. Perhaps he saw a good deal of himself in Gerlach .... and other distant cousins.
Glad to hear about podcast of one of my favorite delights—the literary rabbit hole of conjecture.
Foreigners will be considered? 🤔🤔
Greetings from our president, Jackson Bryer!
Board member Erin Templeton during the summer of 2019 in the room in which Scott and Zelda stayed in 1926 in Salies-de-Béarn, France:
Two of our members from Brasil, Marcela Lanius and Roberta Fabbri Viscardi, also in Salies-de-Béarn in 2019 (the last time we could all be together!):
