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Speaker 1: So one hundred years ago this month, the Great Gatsby,

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Speaker 1: the novel by f. Scott Fitzgerald, arrived on the scene.

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Speaker 1: It was a monumental failure. His previous novels, as well

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Speaker 1: as his many short stories, had made him a household name,

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Speaker 1: but the weak initial sales of Gatsby were a real disappointment,

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Speaker 1: and Fitzgerald actually died fifteen years later thinking he'd been

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Speaker 1: a failure. Worse yet, the main female character in the novel,

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Speaker 1: Daisy Buchanan, was based on a failed romance for Fitzgerald.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. Where did The Great Gatsby originate? And

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Speaker 1: how did it belatedly become one of the great American novels.

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Speaker 1: That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory.

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Speaker 1: Do you like to read the classic novels or maybe

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Speaker 1: watch movies based on them? I am fascinated by those

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Speaker 1: peaks at the past based on a contemporary observation. One

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Speaker 1: of the best books for that kind of experience, in

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Speaker 1: my estimation, is The Great Gatsby by f. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Speaker 1: He was writing about his life as a bit of

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Speaker 1: an inside observer in the social swirl of the ruing

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties on Long Island. But he wasn't exactly an insider.

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Speaker 1: The characters weren't real life people, but they were totally

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Speaker 1: inspired by the people he knew and the events he

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Speaker 1: was a part of. It was a time of total

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Speaker 1: excess money, the jazz age, with wild parties and bootleg liquor,

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Speaker 1: women being freed from the constraints of Victorian expectations and

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Speaker 1: fashion and behavior. Fashion had gone from hiding as much

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Speaker 1: of your body as possible to softer, more clingy, and

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Speaker 1: filmier fabrics. It was, in a way, the first sexual revolution.

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Speaker 1: On a deeper level, Gatsby explores themes of the American dream, money,

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Speaker 1: social class, and the disillusionment of the nineteen twenties. F

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Speaker 1: Scott Fitzgerald painted a vivid picture of those days. He

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Speaker 1: described Gadsby saying he had one of those rare smiles

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Speaker 1: with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that you

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Speaker 1: may come across four or five times in your life.

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Speaker 1: It understood you just as far as you wanted to

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Speaker 1: be understood, believed in you as you would like to

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Speaker 1: believe in yourself. But the character Daisy Buchanan was the

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Speaker 1: romantic center of the story, and she was based on

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Speaker 1: Fitzgerald's real life teenage love, a girl named Geneva King.

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Speaker 1: Sixteen year old Geneva met eighteen year old Fitzgerald at

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Speaker 1: a sledding party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and they had

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Speaker 1: a passionate romance from nineteen fifteen to nineteen seventeen. Problem is,

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Speaker 1: her very wealthy father, Charles King, from Chicago, did not

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Speaker 1: want his daughter, one of the main debutantes of her year,

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Speaker 1: involved with Fitzgerald, telling him that poor boys shouldn't think

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Speaker 1: of marrying rich girls. Fitzgerald was t when the pair

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Speaker 1: broke up, and it broke his heart. He dropped out

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Speaker 1: of Princeton University and joined the army during World War One.

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Speaker 1: Even though he started dating his future wife, Zelda, he

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Speaker 1: continued to write to Geneva until she entered into a

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Speaker 1: marriage to the son of a wealthy family friend arranged

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Speaker 1: by her father. Folks that knew Fitzgerald say Geneva was

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Speaker 1: the love of his life until his death in nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty and the inspiration for numerous characters in his books

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Speaker 1: and short stories, most especially Gatsby's Daisy Buchanan. They were

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Speaker 1: all based on unobtainable upper class women. In Gatsby, he

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Speaker 1: describes the way Daisy speaks. Her voice is full of money.

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Speaker 1: That was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it,

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Speaker 1: the jingle of it, the symbol song of it, high

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Speaker 1: in the White Palace, the King's daughter, the Golden Girl.

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Speaker 1: The book describes the pain he felt of never being

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Speaker 1: able to have her, of never quite fitting in in

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Speaker 1: her world. So The Great Gatsby is finally published in

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Speaker 1: April of nineteen twenty five. He's bared his soul in

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Speaker 1: this book. So what happens. It's a miserable failure. His

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Speaker 1: first two novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful

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Speaker 1: and the Damned, as well as his short stories, had

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Speaker 1: made him a household name, a popular author. He was

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Speaker 1: a sensation. Critics said he was the author who chronicled

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Speaker 1: the young jazz age. But when The Great Gatsby came along,

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Speaker 1: they were not impressed. Critics called it boring and unimaginative.

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Speaker 1: They felt the characters were underdeveloped and uninteresting. They called

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Speaker 1: them neither likable nor unlikable, the ultimate insult. Fitzgerald had

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Speaker 1: believed this would be his great novel before it was published.

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Speaker 1: He said, first off, it'll sell about eighty thousand copies,

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Speaker 1: but I may be wrong. He was monumentally wrong, and

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Speaker 1: that translated into really crummy sales. When all was said

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Speaker 1: and done, the Great Gatsby sold less than twenty thousand

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Speaker 1: copies in those years. Fitzgerald was devastated. The characters were

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Speaker 1: so close to him and to the pain of his young,

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Speaker 1: failed romance. In the aftermath, he felt that the young

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Speaker 1: women who were the target audience for this kind of

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Speaker 1: novel didn't appreciate the lack of a likable female character.

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Speaker 1: He felt that critics and maybe even the public misunderstood Gatsby.

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Speaker 1: In describing the world of Gatsby, Fitzgerald said, let me

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Speaker 1: tell you about the very rich. They're different from you

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Speaker 1: and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does

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Speaker 1: something to them. They think, deep in their hearts that

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Speaker 1: they are better than we are. For the remainder of

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Speaker 1: his life, Fitzgerald harbored a sort of smoldering resentment towards

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Speaker 1: the wealthy. It made sense because he never regained his

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Speaker 1: early fame. It was the depression, and people didn't really

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Speaker 1: want to read about insanely rich, irresponsible, beauty full young

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Speaker 1: people life was just too hard. But then World War

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Speaker 1: II starts and some publishers decide that the troops need

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Speaker 1: something to read, so they print over a thousand different

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Speaker 1: books and send over a million copies of them to

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Speaker 1: folks serving overseas and also to POW's The Great Gatsby

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Speaker 1: was chosen to be one of the Armed Services editions.

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Speaker 1: Upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand copies of Gatsby

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Speaker 1: were handed out. NPR more recently said, you read these

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Speaker 1: accounts of the guy's landing on Normandy Beach, and they're

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Speaker 1: reading trying to take their minds off of what's about

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Speaker 1: to face them. It's just such an amazing testament to

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Speaker 1: what books can mean to people at critical times in

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Speaker 1: their lives. One book historian said, without the Armed Services

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Speaker 1: edition of The Great Gatsby, the book may have been

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Speaker 1: lost to history. Fitzgerald died in nineteen forty at the

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Speaker 1: age of forty four, before that edition made his book

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Speaker 1: a classic. Until he died, he was convinced he was

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Speaker 1: a failure. He wasn't even allowed to be buried in

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Speaker 1: his family plot at a Catholic cemetery in Maryland because

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Speaker 1: his books were considered too risque fast forward. The Great

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Speaker 1: Gatsby has now sold over thirty million copies and continues

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Speaker 1: to sell half a million a year. It's been made

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Speaker 1: into at least four movies, as well as ballets, operas,

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Speaker 1: video games, and graphic novels, and it may just inspire

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Speaker 1: all of us to never give up on telling our stories.

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Speaker 1: Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave

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Speaker 1: a review and follow or subscribe for free to get

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Speaker 1: if you have a story you'd like me to cover.

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Speaker 1: On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,

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Speaker 1: Premiere Our Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.

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Speaker 1: Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We

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Speaker 1: have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to

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Speaker 1: reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions

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Speaker 1: on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at

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Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to

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Speaker 1: know