{"id":10321,"date":"2025-04-30T01:46:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T01:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=10321"},"modified":"2025-04-04T01:18:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T01:18:28","slug":"100-years-great-gatsby-pt1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/100-years-great-gatsby-pt1\/","title":{"rendered":"100 years of The Great Gatsby, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re reading this because your paper is due tomorrow and the search engine, with its black magic, spitted out our site among the first ten hits, you are out of luck. Or are you? Keep reading my celebration of this the timeless classic with “My Great Gatsby,” observing the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s memorable book.<\/p>\n

My Great Gatsby<\/h4>\n
\"Book<\/a>

The Great Gatsby<\/i> meets the Alcohol Studies Collection in the RU Libraries Annex. Photo: J. H. Ward<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pictured is my tattered copy, in Hungarian, falling apart at the seams, published in 1971 with 36,500 copies via a popular series in Hungary called Olcs\u00f3 K\u00f6nyvt\u00e1r<\/em><\/a> (translates approximately into “Frugal Library”). Published by the major literary publishing house in the country, the series featured mostly “promoted” literature, with an occasional “permitted” category book through the three P\u2019s (promoted, permitted, prohibited) distribution system. These small, soft cover books included Russian literature classics, such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and many others strongly promoted (that I have been trying to forget), from classic and contemporary Hungarian literature, timeless classics from world literature, as well as a few outliers deemed by professional brainwashers harmless to readers, such as The Great Gatsby. <\/i>Featuring a sanitized blurb on the cover, The Great Gatsby<\/i> looked interesting, and was also a steal for three Hungarian forints, about the price of a quart of gasoline at that time (not that anyone could afford a car).<\/p>\n

My yellowing copy is not the first edition. The Great Gatsby<\/i> was first published by Magvet\u0151 Press in 1962 in a short story anthology entitled \u00dajra Babilonban<\/i> (Babylon Revisited), which presented F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s five works to the Hungarian audience, with a 4-page Afterwords<\/i> by Mih\u00e1ly S\u00fck\u00f6sd \u2013 literary historian, author, journalist, and acclaimed expert of American literature. That was also part of the deal. The ignorant masses had to be enlightened and educated by those paid to do so, which meant hand feeding carefully filtered information censored by the government \u2013 in this case, about how wealth and ambition lead to a total moral decline. There were always scholars eager to step up to the task, hence the mostly negative reviews in literary magazines and newspapers from1962-63 hidden in archives.<\/p>\n

The Great Gatsby,<\/i> 100 years later<\/h4>\n

Digitized by our Hungarian colleagues, reviews are so much fun to read in 2025, for example, the one lamenting about the potential the author missed (to educate the crowds or what?) Or another about how the reader needs to wade through boring paragraphs to get to the real gems. But the best demanded “realism” (for the uninitiated, it means “socialist realism,” the didactic use of literature, with its mandatory idealized representation of life in socialism) from the author.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>

Meanwhile, the title page of a publication also from 1925, a collection of poems in praise of drinking. Authors include Yeats, Blake, Thackeray, and more. Source: Alcohol Studies Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jay Gatsby, the romantic villain, fit into the party line narrative, if properly mansplained. Portraying the wild, hedonistic culture that emerged in defiance of Prohibition, the book, after all, depicted a “decaying western culture rotting away in a far away universe.\u201c Featuring free-flowing alcohol, jazz, and reckless indulgence, Gatsby\u2019s lavish parties do capture the era\u2019s materialism and extravagance. His rise to wealth, hinted to be tied to bootlegging and other illegal activities, reflects how Prohibition fueled organized crime, as criminal enterprises profited from the illegal sale of alcohol.<\/p>\n

A little bit too much booze? Oh well. Alcohol was not a big deal in the Hungarian culture at that time (or now, if we are perfectly honest). I vividly recall our nineteenth century literature professor in the 1970s, who kept looking at his watch as we were getting closer to 9 a.m. during his lecture, because the university buffet, although open in earlier hours, started to serve alcohol at 9, as per the law. The other common denominator in literature classes in college, high school, and middle school was the struggle as we were always prompted to find “the” message: look for the moral of the story, for a role model to praise or for an evil capitalist to denigrate. In hindsight, publishing The Great Gatsby<\/i> in such a popular series with very high circulation was probably easily justified.<\/p>\n

If you are reading The Great Gatsby<\/i> in Hungary, remember, Prohibition is more than just a historical setting, it becomes a powerful metaphor for the moral decay and hypocrisy spanning centuries. Characters in the novel pretend to maintain facades of respectability while engaging in various forms of moral corruption. The same law that was meant to improve society led to increased lawlessness, corruption, and violence. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the wealthy elite privately indulging, while publicly, they supported temperance.<\/p>\n

If you made it to the end and your paper is still barely shaping up, I hope now you know what to do. Write about “Your Great Gatsby!” Here are a few resources to help. Stay tuned for Part 2!<\/p>\n

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Related resources from Rutgers University Libraries<\/h4>\n

The Great Gatsby<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n