The enduring appeal of The Great Gatsby

During his 1920s heyday, F. Scott Fitzgerald enjoyed fame and glamour comparable with any modern rock star. And, as with so many rock stars, the myths that have collected around him obscure the more fascinating — and tragic — reality.

Fitzgerald is remembered as the epitome of what he himself dubbed ‘the Jazz Age’, when America reacted against stringent Prohibition laws with a decade-long drinking orgy; the original ‘It’ girls danced the Charleston on the roofs of taxi cabs; and mobsters such as Al Capone machine-gunned each other in the streets. 

It all took place amid a boom-bust economic cycle — very much like our own — which culminated in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

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