Book Chats
Novel Picks and Passions
By Anna Katsavos
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic
future that year by year recedes before us. It
eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow
we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. .
. . And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne
back ceaselessly into the past.”
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Set on the fabulous Gold Coast, F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, The
Great Gatsby, is the perfect Book Chat pick
for this issue of TNS. Fitzgerald, considered
the most famous chronicler of 1920s America,
captures the spirit of, what the author himself
coined, the “Jazz Age,” the period following
WWI characterized by unprecedented levels of
national prosperity. By exploring the world of
prohibition, bootleggers, and organized crime
on Long Island, the novel critiques the corrup-
tion, decadence, and lack of morality ushered in
by the country’s soaring post-war economy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) first
won literary acclaim for his early novels, This
Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and
Damned (1921), and his two collections of
short stories, Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). In the fall
of 1922, the author, along with his wife (Zelda
Sayre-to whom The Great Gatsby is dedicated)
and child, moved to 6 Gateway Drive in Great
Neck, across Cow Neck Peninsula, where the
magnificent manor halls of millionaires like the
Vanderbilts, Chryslers, Woolworths, Phipps,
and the Guggenheims stood as fashionable
showplaces of elegance and luxury. (Most
such estates of Fitzgerald’s time are gone now,
though visitors can get a taste of the era by
touring Oheka Castle).
Though there is no conclusive evidence,
Land’s End, one of the few private residences
still in use, is believed to have been the inspi-
ration for Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s house
in Gatsby—yes, the one with the green light
at the end of the dock—although many Gold
Coast purists maintain that Otto Kahn’s man-
sion, Oheka Castle, was the model. Situated
at the northern tip of Sands Point--Hoffstots
Lane on Prospect Point, to be exact--, Land’s
End is a thirteen acre estate that once belonged
to Herbert Bayard Swope (editor of the New
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