Jay Parini

How the Party Started

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

By

Virago 437pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

Rarely has a short novel, a spume of brilliant fiction, so defined and illumined a national culture. To overstate the case slightly, America is The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald’s subtle masterpiece. This seems more so now than ever, when the 99 per cent (a phrase of Fitzgerald’s echoed by those occupying Wall Street) gaze on the extravagant 1 per cent with envy and justifiable outrage.  It’s not for nothing that yet another film of the novel arrived this spring in cinemas across the US and the UK, adapted and directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring – who else? – Leonardo DiCaprio as the tale’s eponymous hero. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    • 'We read from left to right and from start to finish. Or do we?' Stuart Hannabus considers the merits of reading i… ,
    • Domestic scandal, sexual abuse and serial killers are on the menu in April's crime round-up. revie… ,
    • What did Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell and Edmund Burke all have in common? Clare Bucknell reveal… ,
    • 'Behind Berlusconi’s greasepaint and his rictus grin, the performance of Toni Servillo suggests the affectless holl… ,
    Follow Us