The Great Gatsby: Ignored, Forgotten, and then Saved by the War

$5 . That's all Scott Fitzgerald received in royalties for The Great Gatsby in 1929 . By 1939, he was buying all copies himself to keep it alive... But by 1949? 200,000 copies in print . WHAT happened? Let me show you how World War-II made this obscure book an all-time classic:

The first half of Fitzgerald's career was a dream: his two novels were bestsellers. They made him rich and famous. Hollywood came calling . The second half was a nightmare: his wife tried to drive him off a cliff, his most ambitious works failed, he died a poor alcoholic man.

By 1940, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was dead, and he was too. Both forgotten. But when America entered the war in 1942, the top brass faced a strange new problem: Bored soldiers In war, there's a lot more ennui than action. Waiting, traveling, waiting Solution? Books.

Publishers, librarians, & the army came together to create "Council on Books in Wartime" in 1942. Their goal: Finding "weapons for the war of ideas." 1225 books selected . Among them: The Art of War, Shakespeare's plays, and...The Great Gatsby . But why did Gatsby stand out?

Critics think the soldiers liked The Great Gatsby for the parties. Wrong. Soldiers love it because Fitzgerald was one of them. He signed up to fight WW-I, intending to die. His gf had spurned him because he has no money. He was a burnt idealist, like all men eventually become.

Fitzgerald loved Ginerva King. Her father told him: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls." Jay Gatsby's problem is the same . He throws his entire soul at the problem, becomes obscenely rich, but can't control the final outcome. Masculine tragedy: lack of control.

Each copy of The Great Gatsby was read 7 times on average. Soldiers tore up different chapters and passed it around so everyone could read. Throwing copies in the garbage was like, one soldier said, "striking your grandmother." And then soldiers came home with their copies...

Cut to 1951 . The madness for The Great Gatsby gets compounded with the publication of another hit book, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. It's protagonist Holden Caulfield says: "I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me."

By now, the Great Gatsby has sold 25 million copies . 400 weeks on bestsellers list . 500K new copies sold each year . Fitzgerald achieved his goal: "An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward."

"All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase - I love you." - Fitzgerald

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