Jay Gatsby
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Jay Gatsby is the titular fictional character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire who lives in a luxurious mansion on Long Island where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States. Fitzgerald based many details about the fictional character on Max Gerlach, a mysterious neighbor and World War I veteran whom the author met in New York during the raucous Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Gerlach threw lavish parties, never wore the same shirt twice, used the phrase "old sport", claimed to be educated at Oxford University, and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser.
Jay Gatsby as portrayed by Warner Baxter in The Great Gatsby (1926)
In the original 1925 text, Fitzgerald has Gatsby claim that he served in the U.S. 16th Infantry Regiment (pictured above) of the 1st Division. Fitzgerald subsequently revised the text and changed the unit to the U.S. 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Division.
Jay Gatsby has been described by critics as a false prophet of the American Dream, often represented by the Statue of Liberty and signifying new opportunities in life.
Image: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1929 photo portrait by Nickolas Muray) Cropped
The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
The front dust jacket art of the first edition, known as Celestial Eyes
George Wilson and his wife Myrtle live in the "valley of ashes", a refuse dump (shown in the above photograph) historically located in New York City during the 1920s. Today, the area is Flushing Meadows–Corona Park.
The confrontation between Gatsby and Tom occurs in the twenty-story Plaza Hotel, a château-like edifice with an architectural style inspired by the French Renaissance.
Edith Cummings, a premier amateur golfer, inspired the character of Jordan Baker. A friend of Ginevra King, she was one of Chicago's famous debutantes in the Jazz Age.