How “The Great Gatsby” took over high school

In the spring of 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was worried about “The Great Gatsby.” It had been fifteen years since the novel was published, and the author had little to show for it. “My God I am a forgotten man,” Fitzgerald wrote to his wife, Zelda. “Gatsby had to be taken out of the Modern Library because it didn’t sell, which was a blow.” Two months later, in a letter to Maxwell Perkins, his longtime editor at Scribner’s, Fitzgerald wondered whether a cheap paperback reprint might “keep Gatsby in the public eye” and “make it a favorite with class rooms, profs, lovers of English prose—anybody.” Still, his hopes were dim. “Or is the book unpopular?” he asked Perkins. “Has it had its chance?” Seven months later, Fitzgerald was dead. “Gatsby,” it turned out, was not. In the century since its début, in April, 1925, “Gatsby” has been adapted for film at least five times; mounted on the stage, with and without musical numbers; and even turned into a video game, in the style of Super Mario Br ... Read full article.