The Great Gatsby: And Stories from All the Sad Young Men

by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip McGowan (editor), Jennifer Buehler

One of the great American novels--and one of America's most popular--featuring a new introduction by Min Jin Lee, the New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, and extensive resources to enhance discussion of it in classrooms

The basis for the Broadway musical starring Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Young, handsome, and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby seems to have everything. But at his mansion east of New York City, in West Egg, Long Island, where the party never seems to end, he's often alone in the glittering Jazz Age crowd, watching and waiting, as speculation swirls around him--that he's a bootlegger, that he was a German spy during the war, that he even killed a man. As writer Nick Carraway is drawn into this decadent orbit, he begins to see beneath the shimmering surface of the enigmatic Gatsby, for whom one thing will always be out of Nick's cousin, the married Daisy Buchanan, whose house is visible from Gatsby's just across the bay.

A brilliant evocation of the Roaring Twenties and a satire of a postwar America obsessed with wealth and status, The Great Gatsby is a novel whose power remains undiminished after a century. This edition, based on scholarship dating back to the novel's first publication in 1925, restores Fitzgerald's masterpiece to the original American classic he envisioned, and features an introduction addressing how gender, race, class, and sexuality complicate the pursuit of the American Dream and suggestions of a wide variety of multimedia resources for exploring the novel's themes.

Genres: Classics

320 pages, ebook

Published April 8, 2025

About the author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are several stories in this volume.

THE GREAT GATSBY (3 stars)
One of my adult children recommended this book to me, and then when I got it out of the library, said that I wouldn't like it, I think because it's sad.

I enjoyed the description and some of the humorous statements early in the story.

Although this book involves murders, it is not a murder mystery per se. We know whodunit, and it is sad.

One of the reviewers compared Gatsby's ploy to that in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "The Red Headed League".

Favorite quote:
"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of external reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

I think I've seen this smile, not just four or five times in my life, but repeatedly. It reminds me of an uncle of mine, who always seemed delighted to see us, delighted to see everyone, and made us feel as if we were the most important people in the world to him. I asked him about that once, and he said that when he was growing up, our extended family treated him that way, always delighted to see him, and treated him as if he were someone important. Although I didn't know most of those people, or not well, I think my Mamaw also had that same kind of delight in people. So something of that kind of greeting as been passed along in my family. I don't think I have that same kind of magic. I think they had the gift of hospitality.

Fundamentally, none of the friends and acquaintances that Gatsby treated to his parties actually cared about him, apart from the narrator, Nick.

It reminds me of the quote, "Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." - Luke 16:9, NIV.

For Gatsby, this didn't work very well. People took advantage of him for the parties that he hosted, and paid the bills for. (To be fair to the passage in Luke, the context was about helping people in financial need, not in throwing parties, so it was about using wealth in something a little deeper.)

Gatsby had terrible choices in friends, both in his girlfriend, and others he chose to surround himself with. He had lived an empty life without realizing it.

Of course, as becomes apparent later, Gatsby has ulterior motives in hosting all these parties, which doesn't work out well for him either.

SPOILER ... in "A Note About the Stories", Min Jin Lee notes that like Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald did not have very many attend his own funeral, and in the Introduction says that Fitzgerald himself suffered through his wife's infidelity. So the book has parallels in his own life.

Such elegant and silly parties remind me of all the parties in Downton Abby (same time period) or in the book of Esther. I am not much of a party goer, although I do like a small gathering of friends. I enjoyed all the grandeur and clothing in Downton Abby. Gatsby's parties just seemed more chaotic and drunkenly, and Gatsby himself didn't enjoy that either, staying away from the drink and often standing alone.

Min Jin Lee's Introduction spoke about the wealthy people's carelessness and culpability in the deaths and how they get off completely free, as well as Gatsby's fault being that he mistakenly thought he could go back to an earlier, happier time, and find happiness again there. Death by nostalgia, I suppose. I will be a little more blunt. He died because he disrupted someone else's marriage - certainly not deserving of death, and yet setting the stage for it.

WINTER DREAMS (2 stars)
I'm afraid I don't pity the main character, Dexter, at all. He only fell in love with Judy Jones for the way she looked. Of course, attraction is part of it, but he didn't fall at all in love with her personality or the things she cared about or her actions or anything substantial. To him, she is just this ethereal dream that he could never have for long because she'd lose interest in her lovers after a short time. She is selfish, self-admittedly unhappy with life, and cruel or uncaring when she physically hurt that other golfer.

Judy Jones was also guilty of "breadcrumbing" Dexter, in today's vernacular. That is, she did just barely enough to keep him interested in a relationship without really investing in it.

Dexter knew what he was getting into, and tried to tell himself that it was worth it, but then, in the end, ... SPOILER ... he lost everything of value in order to live a shallow life without any real connection to anyone. If anything, Judy Jones fell in love with Dexter briefly, solely because of his money.

My favorite review said, "It's the Great Gatsby all over again," and there do seem to be similar themes, although no murders.

ABSOLUTION: (3 stars)
I do feel sorry for Rudolph in this story. I think it must be a hard thing for someone to go to confessional (something I've never done), and genuinely try to confess and answer questions. I suspect it would be harder for a child whom, perhaps, is not used to the open intrusion into his soul. Older people, I imagine, would be more used to it, and more willing to open their souls, but even there, pride can tempt all of us to hide or say the wrong thing.

I can very well understand how Rudolph's reflexive answer may not be the honest one. I try and tend to be an honest person, but I've blurted out a lie whenever I simply didn't want to argue with someone anymore - before I've had a chance to think of something to say that's truthful but not quite so blunt. "No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good." - C. S. Lewis in "Mere Christianity". Usually, with a little more time, I can think of an answer that's both truthful and more diplomatic. I've found it's good to have set phrases in advance to fall back on. All that is a bit much for a child.

It's also a different thing to be growing in integrity because you inwardly want to be, and being shamed and coerced into it. Rudolph simply wasn't ready yet to be thinking of such things to that depth, and it's the coercion that makes this story sad.

His father coerces him because his father's afraid for his son's trajectory in life (which is also sad), and this system, at least seen from Fitzgerald's viewpoint, seems coercive as well.

And maybe I just don't understand Catholicism well enough, but it seems as if they would do well to remember that God loves them, that He offers forgiveness, that we don't have to be afraid because He delights to show mercy. (Micah 7:18) That's His thing. Or, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9. I feel like there are a thousand reassurances that Rudolph's father or the priest could've offered him that they didn't.

It is also disappointing that neither the father nor the priest have the wisdom to address the situation. It sounds like the priest even went mad, causing Rudolph to come to the conclusion, "There was something ineffably gorgeous somewhere that had nothing to do with God." I would've said rather, that the gorgeous things have God hidden behind them (as Creator), and sometimes it relaxes us to see them, or to focus on them when life gets too painful or complicated.

I hadn't realized that Rudolph is supposed to be a younger version of Gatsby, or is supposed to grow into Gatsby. I can envision an experience like this turning him in that direction.

One of the other reviewers quoted someone named Tanner as saying, “There is a crucial difference between Dexter Green’s desire to possess the glittering things and Father Schwartz’s advice to stand back from the glittering light, and it lies precisely in the latter’s apprehension that getting too close might be dangerous, ruinous to the vision of earthly (and heavenly?) delights.” I hadn't noticed the contrast before. It was hard for me to pick out anything meaningful out of the priest's mad ramblings. The reviewer then added, "Gatsby is a voyeur, a shadow silhouette."

THE SENSIBLE THING (2 Stars)

There's not much to say about this one. It's so similar to pieces of "The Great Gatsby" and "Winter Dreams" that I don't understand the point in writing it. Or reading it. One of the other reviewers mentioned how Fitzgerald's writings are a study on disappointment with dreams or with perhaps The American Dream, and this would be in line with that. SPOILER ... The main character, George O'Kelley, gives up a career for a fiancé who won't marry him, and then pursues his career with regret. There are obvious comparisons to "The Great Gatsby."

THE RICH BOY (2 stars)

Once again, Fitzgerald writes about a man who spoils his chance of a happy romance with his arrogance, only to find himself lonely. I find the arrogance and the way Anson uses women repugnant. None of the characters are likeable. It is also hypocritical of him to bully a man into a suicide because of an affair, when Anson himself had done the same things.

"His despair was helpless before his pride and his knowledge of himself." I find that to be an apt description of Anson.

One of the other reviewers said that Anson is an opposite character to Gatsby, because Anson belongs to society and Gatsby does not, and because Anson is more in love with the idea of being in love than he is with an actual person, and Gatsby pursues Daisy.

Another reviewer said that we, as readers, are drawn to the arrogance of the rich. Um, no, I don't think so.

"There is a large class of men whose egotism can't endure humor in a woman." I've read once that women are much less likely to joke and laugh with men present. I don't really care what men think, when things strike me as funny. I enjoy life by laughing.

[Paulina · Rating 5 out of 5]

(My rating here is 4.5/5, rounded up because it's closer to 5 than 4)

I’ll start by saying this “review” is really just notes and thoughts for myself, just like all my “reviews” are, but there you have it.

I am one of the many American teenagers who read this novel in high school. I liked reading in high school but I did not like The Great Gatsby—I found it very melodramatic and I thought all the characters were annoying and uninteresting. In hindsight, I really do not see the merit in assigning a book so squarely centered around the lives and problems of people in their late 20s and early 30s to teenagers. I don’t think the ideas presented in the novel are interesting or even on some level understandable to a teenager, and they certainly weren’t to me, hence my decision to revisit the text now that I am age 29.

So as you could guess, I was shocked at how much I got from this book. I suspected I would enjoy it more, but I did not expect to get SO sucked in. Fitzgerald’s writing pulled me in immediately. I love his prose—it’s very clean, not overly complicated, but not without flavor. It tells the story but keeps it artistically interesting. There’s a wit and rhythm to his writing that attempts to come off as effortless, as if the words have always existed just as they do before you, but you can tell each word was actually toiled over, and that makes the reading experience so much more charming.

The study of these characters is fascinating, too. I have been thinking non-stop since I picked up this book about Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Jordan, Nick, etc., turning over their various traits and behaviors, musing at how people come to be in these certain positions, and wondering at what I think of these people or who I think is better/worse than whom. It’s an additional point of interest to think over how little has changed in human behavior since the 1920s.

This specific edition of the book was incredibly enjoyable to read both for the in-text notes and more historical context it provides, too. I adored Min Jin Lee’s introduction. There’s too much to say about it to include in this already-too-long review, but I’ll at least note that the way the introduction contextualizes the novel within Fitzgerald’s own life—his relationship to women, to other men, to money, to class—it really puts the story in a light that I did not appreciate when I read it in high school. I can’t stop thinking at how he must have turned over the events of his life in his head, distilling them into these fictional characters. I like how no one is right here, not even Nick or Gatsby. Everyone is a bastard, but at the same time, everyone has SOME sort of sympathetic trait or perspective, even Tom! And it really makes you think about morality and ethics and what makes a good or bad person. It’s masterfully done.

The single place I really was left wanting was that I think the ideas and themes of the novel could have been pushed even further. Nick is a famously passive character, and I think I disagree with the choice to make him that way. I think this story would be more interesting if Nick had more agency, if he was more involved in the drama, if seeing how it plays out before him influences him in some way. Instead he passes judgment in his head but nothing really seems to affect him. I think there’s a bit of a missed opportunity there.

That being said, it’s hard to judge a novel that was written 100 years ago by my standards for a piece of writing today. I know back then they had a very strange need for all stories to have some sort of first-person narrator, like they were afraid of third person POV? And I think that is some of the cause of the “Nick problem,” so to speak, so I just can’t criticize it too harshly.

I’d like to comment on the short stories included in this edition, too. I was incredibly grateful they were included because wow, how INTERESTING to see these other Gatsby-related ideas Fitzgerald was tooling around with. It adds some of that missing depth I was reaching for in the novel itself. I’m not sure I agree with Fitzgerald’s choice to cut so much of it down! I get that he was preserving “mystery” but I thought these stories lent a lot to the characters and I enjoyed each one immensely. “The Rich Boy” was easily my favorite because I think it captures so much of Fitzgerald’s typical ideas and themes in a direct fashion, yet keeps room for the drama and style that makes his writing so fun to read.

I will forever be grateful that I decided to revisit this book and I’m extra grateful for those who came together to work on and release this particular edition. Including the historical context, the notes on Fitzgerald’s life, and the selected short stories enhanced my experience thoroughly and I will be chasing down more of Fitzgerald’s work because of it!

[Spiderorchid · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Great Gatsby" is without a doubt one of the best accounts of the essence of the 1920s - the poverty of the working class and the excesses of the rich.

Fitzgerald captured the obsession with wealth and success in Gatsby's party guests, the desolation of the poor as seen with the Wilsons and the perspective of the cynical bystander, Nick Carraway. And then there's Gatsby, the personification of the American Dream, with his rags-to-riches story, his allure - and his touching, naive dream to "repeat the past" with a woman who is mostly an idea in his own head that doesn't have much to do with the actual living person.

The premise is great. The criticism of the times is scathing. Where Fitzgerald's writing doesn't work for me are the characters. Somehow, they stay kind of vague, more like cardboard cutouts moving around and saying the lines but lifeless... perhaps that was the point.
It is the reason why I like the 1974 movie version better than the book. But that's a matter of personal taste.

Definitely recommended for anyone interested in a critical look at the "Roaring Twenties" in America.

[chi · Rating 3 out of 5]

╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴ ⊹ꮺ˚

(finished.) ⸝⸝˙🍸 ꕀ 16/12/2025! F. Scott Fitzgerald was the 21st century’s master groveller, and works like Gatsby just solidifies the notion. Never will i ever read a novel where a chance, messily rushed outing leads to sloppy third wheeling which leads directly to a blatant heat of the moment romantic standoff during a supposed trip to town which then just leads to the demise of the novels namesake all in the span of 150 pages.

For all its pomp and narrative appeal and behind it’s capturing of a 1920’s jazz era, with its stock investment booms and ridiculous cast of air headed men and women with a lot of money, lies a quite somber tale of fruitless pursuits, chasing after the wind, tragedy, racial imbalances and a scathing white democracy merciless to any rags to riches up comer in their shallow elite circles that goes far beyond the cliche narrative of a somewhat down-to-earth stock investor who’s more then a little depressed babysitting a lovestruck, mega rich lonely adult man child who fruitlessly attempts to lure his rich white married muse to his lavish house parties that offer fantasy, booze and freedom in an age where people thought that they could simply buy life away.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time I read this was in 2015 for AP Lit. Don’t know why I picked it up again. All the men in this book are losers (except maybe Nick). F. Scott Fitzgerald is a loser too lol
I did not read the short stories

[Grace Konstanty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok so everyone HATES the characters in the Great Gatsby but I didn’t remember hating them so of course I re read. Actually though, the only character I really did not like was Tom! I thought the rest of them were not great people, but honestly I get it. Life sucks when it’s summer in the 1920s!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished the Gatsby portion; DNF/DNStart the short stories. Read in NYC.