Reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a rite of passage these days. The novel is mandatory reading for many high schoolers across the country.
NPR's Maureen Corrigan read it when she was in high school and didn't much care for it. She has since fallen for Jay Gatsby in a way Daisy Buchanan never could and so she has written a nonfiction book that examines the life behind the great American novel. Host Frank Stasio talks with Corrigan about So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown and Co/2014), and the time when the beloved novel was not so popular.
"[The Great Gatsby] tells us the central story of the American dream and it shows us the American dream is a sham" -Maureen Corrigan
The 1925 novel has been examined and critiqued by many. Here are a few takes on the classic book and the 2013 movie by Baz Luhrmann.
