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noirverse's review against another edition
4.0
An entertaining and informative read about Fitzgerald's life with a strong sense of the Roaring 20s. It was a little challenging to keep up with the parade of new people popping up, and I didn't fully buy the idea that Gatsby could be connected to an unsolved murder case, but it still gave an interesting look on the crime scenes of the day.
bluestjuice's review against another edition
4.0
I found this so interesting. Churchwell compiles here something of a biography of the Great Gatsby, piecing together biographical information about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's lives with a wealth of contemporary historical data, particularly a famous double murder mystery that dates from the same year and can be easily argued to have a profound effect on the themes and tropes of the novel. Gatsby is a book that reveals more every time I read it, and this book elaborated it more, fleshing out the sources and inspirations for the themes, and summarizing much known information about Fitzgerald's writing process and ambitions while composing this work. They were fascinating people who lived in a fascinating time, if not perhaps the most admirable.
ksdambro's review against another edition
2.0
I think what might have been a good book was lost in an attempt at clever construction. I became so impatient and wanted to yell, "Just tell the story!" Frustrating.
brighteyes1178's review against another edition
5.0
I've read The Great Gatsby probably fifty times in the course of teaching it for the last twelve years, and looked up background info on Fitzgerald at least once a year, and I was shocked at how much I didn't know about what was behind its genesis. And what is behind it is pretty fascinating. Fitzgerald plagiarized his entire life and the lives of everyone around him, yet created something wholly new and his own. I think I'm even more impressed with Gatsby as a work of art after reading this even than I am in trying to discuss the scope of it with teenagers every year.
This is a biography of the both the book and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and to a lesser extent, the Jazz Age. And it's almost as if writing about beautiful, well-constructed prose makes the author, Sarah Churchwell, construct her own narrative beautifully and with choice diction. She never lost my attention once, even in her fancier flights of vocabulary.
I will say that if this book interests you and you haven't read Gatsby in a long time, you should reread it first. Having involuntarily memorized much of the book through reading aloud and reading hundreds of essays and assignments that quote long passages, I didn't have trouble. But there were even a few passages that I struggled to place, so if you aren't an American lit teacher but this sounds good, I'd say read both.
This is a biography of the both the book and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and to a lesser extent, the Jazz Age. And it's almost as if writing about beautiful, well-constructed prose makes the author, Sarah Churchwell, construct her own narrative beautifully and with choice diction. She never lost my attention once, even in her fancier flights of vocabulary.
I will say that if this book interests you and you haven't read Gatsby in a long time, you should reread it first. Having involuntarily memorized much of the book through reading aloud and reading hundreds of essays and assignments that quote long passages, I didn't have trouble. But there were even a few passages that I struggled to place, so if you aren't an American lit teacher but this sounds good, I'd say read both.