Directed by the Australian Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, the latest film version of Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ opens in the US on 10 May, in the UK on 16 May. But the new film is only one among a quite extraordinary range of artistic productions testifying to the enduring appeal of both Fitzgeralds.
‘Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald’ by Theresa Anne Fowler was published a few weeks ago. Two more novels are due to appear soon: ‘Beautiful Fools’ by R Clifton Spargo, and ‘Call me Zelda’ by Erika Robuck. (I know nothing of Ms Robuck, but by echoing the opening sentence of ‘Moby Dick’ – ‘Call me Ishmael’ – she is obviously taking quite a gamble.) Yet another untitled novel is also in the stocks. ‘The Great Gatsby Musical’ opened in a London theatre last August and ‘Zelda at the Oasis’, a new play by P H Lin, premiered in New York in December. Meanwhile, ‘Gatz’, which involves a group of actors reading the complete text of ‘The Great Gatsby’ in a single session, has recently packed in audiences around the world including New York, London and Los Angeles.
The multiple ironies at the heart of this amazing Fitzgerald-fest would not be lost on Scott and Zelda. In Jazz Age America, after the success of the 23-year-old Fitzgerald’s first novel – ‘This Side of Paradise’ – the newly-married Fitzgeralds quickly became archetypes of the new phenomenon of glamorous celebrities. Indeed the first half of Fitzgerald’s career, in all its early brilliance and success, seemed to echo the economic boom of 1920s America. A second novel – ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ – followed in 1922 and, like its predecessor, sold close to 50,000 copies. Two collections of short stories also sold well.
In the midst of this narrative of success, the Gatsby story is a very different one. Published in 1925, ‘The Great Gatsby’ was in one sense a triumph. Fitzgerald had finally written a book that got him what above all else he wanted: recognition that he was a major American novelist. The fellow writers and critics whom he most respected were unanimous in their praise: ‘Gatsby’ was a great book.
In terms of sales, though, the story was very different. However hard it is for us to understand – given what the future was to bring – ‘The Great Gatsby’ was a huge disappointment for Fitzgerald in terms of sales. An initial print run of 20,870 copies was eventually sold out; a second printing of 3,000 copies followed, but years later some of these remained unsold. In other words ‘Gatsby’ at the time sold only half as well as the previous two novels. (William Collins, Fitzgerald’s British publisher, decided against reprinting the novel – because ‘the atmosphere of the book is extraordinarily foreign to the English reader, and he simply would not believe in it’.)
It would take Fitzgerald almost 10 years to finish another novel: ‘Tender is the Night’ finally appeared in 1934. By then its author’s life, like that of much post-1929 Wall Street Crash America, had descended into deep depression. For the rest of his short career, Fitzgerald would struggle professionally and personally. Zelda’s mental breakdown meant she was constantly in and out of hospitals and clinics; his own alcoholism was a growing problem. And the days when he could earn an amazing $4,000 for a single story in the Saturday Evening Post were long gone. When he died in Hollywood in 1940 at the age of 44, effectively unemployed, and with the text of a new novel – ‘The Last Tycoon’ – only half completed, he believed he was a forgotten man. And in terms of readership he was right: royalties from his novels had dwindled away to next to nothing.
Yet extraordinarily it took only a few years for a dramatic transformation to occur. Launched perhaps by his fellow-Princetonian, Edmund Wilson’s edition of ‘The Crack-Up’ in 1945, containing essays and letters by Fitzgerald, as well as tributes from contemporary authors, the forgotten man of 1940 was soon re-emerging as a major figure in America’s literary culture. ‘The Great Gatsby’ above all was quickly recognised as a classic American text – required reading in every American high school and college.
In no time it was selling at least 300,000 copies every single year.
With the immense publicity surrounding the new ‘Gatsby’ film, that figure will undoubtedly be surpassed in 2013. Two new paperback editions have already appeared. One tied to the film has a flashy cover which features DiCaprio and the other stars in the film.
Scribners are printing 350,000 copies of this edition, and significantly Walmart stores across the US will stock it alone. However the top-selling title on Amazon in April was the rival paperback edition which reproduces the cover of the original 1925 edition. (Copies of the first printing of that edition with the original cover sell for as much as $150,000.) Francis Cugat’s cover features a strange, deep blue, shadowy vision of two eyes and bright red lips looming over a gleaming New York cityscape. (Fitzgerald may have drawn on this image in describing the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg brooding over the novel’s valley of ashes between West Egg and the city.)
At the moment – before the actual opening of the new film – the version with the 1925 cover seems to be winning the sales battle. Coming up on the outside, however, the e-book version of ‘Gatsby’ may in the end outsell both paperback editions. By the end of 2013 may the total sales of ‘The Great Gatsby’ exceed one million? It’s not impossible. This side of paradise indeed for Scott Fitzgerald.
Andrew Hook is a former professor of English literature at Glasgow University
