What’s it going to be folks, Great Neck or Westport? We’re talking about the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . In the decades following its publication in 1925 – to mixed reviews, it should be said – this now celebrated, adored and elegantly written tale of money, romance and identity in the Jazz Age, was understood to have taken place in fictional stand-ins for towns on the North Shore of Long Island. However, in a 1996 article in The New Yorker, scholar and journalist Barbara Probst Solomon made a strong case for Westport, where Scott and Zelda spent a roaring honeymoon summer in 1920. His career was taking off, he had money, it was, he said, the happiest period of his life. Solomon’s argument seems not to have gone anywhere in the literary or academic community. It was dismissed by a leading (and possessive?) Fitzgerald scholar, Matthew Bruccoli, who saw himself as in charge of Fitzgerald’s legend. But it did resonate with Westport historian and educator Richard
What’s it going to be folks, Great Neck or Westport? We’re talking about the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . In the decades following its publication in 1925 – to mixed reviews, it should be said – this now celebrated, adored and elegantly written tale of money, romance and identity in the Jazz Age, was understood to have taken place in fictional stand-ins for towns on the North Shore of Long Island. However, in a 1996 article in The New Yorker, scholar and journalist Barbara