On January 1st 2021, as per custom, a number of literary works entered the public domain after their copyright terms expired. Now free from copyright restrictions, those works are now free for anyone to use. One of these texts was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. For decades, readers have been enamoured with the characters of enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby; the optimistic yet increasingly cynical Nick Carraway; the privileged yet unhappy Daisy and Tom Buchanan; accomplished golfer Jordan Baker; the flamboyant gangster Meyer Wolfsheim; and the downtrodden Myrtle Wilson. Published in 1925, the novel was a bleak, critical look at the established “old money” elite and the ambitious, social-climbing crowd who came into “new money.” It also served as a critique of the American Dream, the social class system, race, identity, and gender.

The Great Gatsby (Public Domain)

Looking closer, the reader will find a number of parallels between Fitzgerald and his literary creation. Both men were from the Midwest; Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, while the fictional James Gatz was from North Dakota. Both fought in World War One. Gatsby briefly studied at Oxford before withdrawing, and Fitzgerald studied at Princeton University before dropping out twice due to focusing more on his writing and social life. In similar fashion to Gatsby’s drive to reinvent himself, Fitzgerald sought to emulate and live like the privileged elite, but he remained resentful towards the wealthy upper class.

However, there are a number of differences between the two men. Unlike Gatsby hailing from a poor farming family, Fitzgerald was from a modest, middle-class Catholic family background, and his father struggled as a furniture-manufacturer and as a salesman. During his time at university, Fitzgerald fell in love with a Chicago heiress named Ginevra King, whom he based the character of Daisy Buchanan on. Unlike the literary character finding out his love interest had married someone else, Fitzgerald had his heart broken by King’s family, who disproved of his lower-class roots and pushed for their relationship to end. He attempted to reunite with King several years later, but due to his recurring battles with alcohol, this was a futile effort. Fitzgerald married novelist Zelda Sayre later on, but it is believed that he never really got over King and her family’s rejection of him.

One interesting similarity between Fitzgerald and King is within their connection through writing. According to biographer James L.W. West, King created a story of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to an unfaithful husband, and she longs to reconnect with her former lover. The story concludes with the lover amassing enough money and running away with her. King sent this story to Fitzgerald in early 1916, and he kept the manuscript for the rest of his life. Ultimately, King came to the realization that the middle-class Fitzgerald did not fit in with her wealth family and upper class status. It stands to reason that Fitzgerald may have been inspired by his lover and the collapse of their relationship. Not only did King inspire the creation of Daisy, she appears to have given Fitzgerald the motivation to create a story in which rich careless people “smashed up things… then retreated back into their money.”

Ginevra King (Town & Country Magazine)

The more shady aspects of Gatsby were inspired by another real-life individual. During his time in New York, Fitzgerald became acquainted with a neighbour on Long Island named Max Gerlach. Born into a German family, Gerlach came to America as a youth and joined the U.S. Army in the last year of World War I. Much like Gatsby, he claimed to have studied at Oxford, hosted lavish parties, threw out shirts after only wearing them once, and used the phrase “old sport” regularly. Gerlach also enjoyed telling tall tales such as being distantly related to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, but there is no evidence to back up this claim. He also engaged in bootlegging alcohol during the Prohibition era and amassed a fortune. Evidence has revealed that, in the late 1920s, Gerlach established and ran a speakeasy on New York City’s West 48th Street that was owned by mobster Arnold Rothstein, who served as the inspiration for the Meyer Wolfsheim character of the novel. Fitzgerald and Zelda frequently visited New York and were quite familiar with the venue. Unlikely the fictional Gatsby, Gerlach had no Daisy counterpart, and his downfall occurred with the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the end of Prohibition. Depressed over his situation, he attempted suicide but only rendered himself blind. In later years, Gerlach attempted to reach out to Fitzgerald by contacting the author’s biographer about being an inspiration for Gatsby, but his claims were not believed. He died in 1958, and it was revealed he had conducted a written correspondence with Fitzgerald over the course of several years. One of these surviving letters began with the phrase, “How are you and the family, old sport?” Perhaps Gerlach came to accept and embrace the connection to the character he inspired.

Gerlach- the Real Gatsby? (New York Municipal Office)

Production on Gatsby began in 1922 and lasted well into 1924. Fitzgerald worked on the novel during his numerous trips to Europe while having a tempestuous marriage with Zelda. Some of the characterizations and dialogue in the novel were directly inspired by Zelda herself; Daisy’s hopes for her daughter to be “beautiful little fool” stemmed from real-life comments made by Zelda having given birth to her and Fitzgerald’s only child. The selection of a proper title proved to be quite a challenge for the author. His preferred choice was Trimalchio in West Egg, but his editor, Maxwell Perkins, vetoed this idea on the grounds that readers would have trouble understanding the meaning of “Trimalchio”, let alone pronouncing it properly. Other proposed titles included The High-bouncing Lover, Under the Red, White and Blue, Gatsby, and Gold-hatted Gatsby, Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires, and On The Road to West Egg. Ultimately, Zelda and Perkins suggested The Great Gatsby as the best choice, which Fitzgerald came to agree with. Privately, however, he felt ambivalent about the title in later years.

There are two misconceptions about Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby. First, there is the myth that the novel was a complete flop upon initial release in April of 1925. While the reviews were warm and favourable, the book’s first printing only sold under 23,000 copies within the first year of its publication. Some critics believed the novel was bleak, grim, and cynical in nature, and they declared it to be the end of the author’s success. Ultimately, Gatsby was not the runaway hit that Fitzgerald hoped it would become. The author felt that critics and audiences did not understand the point he was trying to make, as well as their failure to see the parallels between himself and his literary creation. The second misconception is that Fitzgerald was broke and died penniless. In reality, the author made a lot of money from his works and their adaptations, but he never could hold onto it for long. Prior to the publication of Gatsby, Fitzgerald tried his hand at adapting his short story “The Vegetable” into a Broadway play, but it only got one previous performance and proved to be a financial bomb. He never worked in theatre again and resumed writing short stories to pay off his debts.

Ultimately, Fitzgerald’s life and career fell apart during the Great Depression of the 1930s. With his work in decline, he became a screenwriter in Hollywood but found little success while indulging in alcoholism. He also struggled with Zelda’s mental health battles; it is believed she had schizophrenia and possibly bipolar disorder, which resulted in her being placed in a mental institution. Fitzgerald completed one more novel after Gatsby; the result was the warmly-received Tender Is the Night. However, it was an utter disappointment that sold only 12,000 copies. Fitzgerald was working on another book –The Last Tycoon– when he died in 1940, and it was published posthumously (in an edited, reworked form) the following year. Ironically, the novel was well-received and praised by critics and audiences alike. Tender Is the Night also became renowned in later years and regarded as a masterpiece of Fitzgerald. Some critics even called it superior to The Great Gatsby and one of the best American novels ever written.

Fitzgerald (Library of Congress)

During World War II, Allied soldiers were given copies of The Great Gatsby to read, and the novel began to catch on in terms of popularity. Several troops were taken with the depiction of the Roaring Twenties and the uneven nature of the American social class system. A massive distribution of 155,000 copies to soldiers sparked a newfound interest in Fitzgerald by the war’s end. Scholars and critics began re-examining the author’s works, and Gatsby soon became popular reading in high schools and universities. It is now regarded as a strong contender for the “Great American Novel” and one of the best stories ever written.

Over the past eight decades, The Great Gatsby has grown in acclaim and readership. There have been a number of adaptations, such as stage shows, radio plays, and television dramatizations. Even Hollywood has adapted the novel for the silver screen- the first time being a 1926 silent film version that Fitzgerald and Zelda were disappointed with. Later film adaptations included the 1974 version starring Robert Redford, and the 2013 version with Leonardo DiCaprio. There are also two ballet adaptations that were produced in 2009 and 2010, respectively. In addition, two stage musicals based on the novel have been produced in recent years. One of them is running on Broadway, and a transfer to London’s West End theatre district is in the works.

Following the novel becoming public domain, alternate retellings and interpretations of Gatsby have flooded the literary market. One of these is author Michael Farris Smith’s Nick which focuses on the backstory of the narrator. Another recent take on the story is Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful, which examines issues of sexuality and gender from Jordan Baker’s point-of-view. In addition, AJ Odasso created The Pursued and the Pursuing, which serves as both a retelling and a sequel of sorts.

Perhaps there is still more life left in The Great Gatsby than people could have imagined. Readers might come to expect more from Fitzgerald’s mysterious character, given the real-life basis and parallels with modern “self-made men” in today’s world. It stands to reasons that the story is just as relevant in the 21st century as it was during the 1920s.

Not bad for a novel that was deemed to be a flop.