A Centenary

It was on this day 100 years ago that The Great Gatsby was published. Fitzgerald was aiming to create something altogether superior to his earlier works – 'not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere yet radiant world'. With Zelda and their young daughter he left New York for Europe to work intensively on the new novel while staying somewhere quieter and less expensive (though his idea of quietness was somewhat flexible: on a 1926 visit to the Riviera he wrote that there was 'no one' at Antibes, except 'me, Zelda, the Valentinos, the Murphys, Mistinguet, Rex Ingram, Dos Passos, Alice Terry, the MacLeishes...' etc, etc. – the list continues.) Fitzgerald wrote most of The Great Gatsby on the French Riviera, and finished it off in Rome. 
When it was published, it had mostly good reviews, but didn't sell well. The initial print run of 20,000 sold out, but a second printing of 3,000 didn't sell, and copies were still in the warehouse when Fitzgerald died 15 years later. He blamed the title, which he'd never liked – and, interestingly, the lack of strong female characters, as women were the ones buying fiction. Then as now? Surely more so now, though...
After publication Fitzgerald wrote to Edmund Wilson that 'of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about'. I'm not entirely sure I do, either, despite having read it several times over the years. It has a strongly distinctive feel – it seems to be the feel of a masterpiece – but is it one? Does it have the substance? I'm not at all sure. It certainly has a great, if enigmatic ending, though: 'Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And then one fine morning – And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'