So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
Maureen Corrigan, 2014
Little, Brown & Co.
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316230070
Summary
It's a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan points out, many of us first read Fitzgerald's masterpiece when we were too young to comprehend its power.
Offering a fresh perspective on Gatsby, So We Read On takes readers into archives, high school classrooms, and onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel's hidden depths, revealing its surprising debt to noir, its rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and its profound commentaries on race, class, and gender.
With rigor, wit, and infectious enthusiasm, Corrigan inspires us to re-experience Gatsby and, along the way, spins a fascinating story of her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A. from Fordham University; M.A., Ph.D, University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award for Criticism
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Maureen Corrigan is an American journalist, author and literary critic. She writes for the "Book World" section of the Washington Post, and has been a book critic on the NPR radio program Fresh Air for nearly 20 years. She is the author of So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (2014) and Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (2005).
Corrigan holds a B.A. from Fordham University as well as an M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania and is Critic in Residence and a lecturer in English at Georgetown University. Her specialist subjects include 19th-century British literature, women's literature (with a special focus on autobiographies), popular culture, detective fiction, contemporary American literature, and Anglo-Irish literature.
In addition to her work with the Washington Post and Fresh Air, Corrigan's essays and reviews have appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, New York Observer, and Salon.
Along with Robin Winks, she was an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery & Suspense Fiction (1999), a work which won the Edgar Award for Criticism from Mystery Writers of America in 1999.
Corrigan lives in Washington, DC with her husband and daughter.
Books
So We Read On
Corrigan investigates what has made Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby endure over the years. She explores archives, high school classrooms, even the Long Island Sound. Her revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, Gatsby's rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and the book's profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender.
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading
Corrigan reviews the books that most influenced her personally, books that fall into three non-canonical genres—female extreme-adventure tales (narratives recounting "private tests of endurance" in women's lives), hard-boiled detective novels, and Catholic-martyr narratives. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/29/2014.)
Book Reviews
Mixing criticism with memoir...Corrigan contends that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel is greater than we think.... Corrigan asserts, Gatsby still doesn’t get its due.... She makes a good case...that our very familiarity with Gatsby’s Great American qualities has caused us to underrate it—and she does much to restore its stature.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] literary love letter...information-packed, entertaining.... The Great Gatsby...is examined from many angles—literary, sociological, cultural, personal, and historical.... Bursting with intellectual energy and fun facts —Liz French
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Corrigan's research was as intrepid as her analysis is ardent and expert, and she brings fact, thought, feelings, and personal experiences together in a buoyant, illuminating, and affecting narrative about one depthless novel, the transforming art of reading, and the endless tides that tumble together life and literature.
Booklist
[A]n occasionally self-indulgent but mostly spot-on reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest novel....[Corrigan] does a good job of pointing out what we should be paying attention to,... [and her] close reading is welcome, though one hopes that readers will first revisit Fitzgerald’s pages before dipping into hers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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