The Great Gatsby

Starred review from December 2, 2002
Audio reviews reflect PW's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version. Fiction THE GREAT GATSBY F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by Tim Robbins. Caedmon Audio, unabridged, six cassettes, 7 hrs., $27.95 ISBN 0-06-009890-2 Readers in that sizeable group of people who think The Great Gatsby
is the Great American Novel will be delighted with Robbins's subtle, brainy and immensely touching new reading. There have been audio versions of Gatsby
before this—by Alexander Scourby and Christopher Reeve, to name two—but actor/director Robbins brings a fresh and bracing vision that makes the story gleam. From the jaunty irony of the title page quote ("Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!") to the poetry of Fitzgerald's ending about "the dark fields of the republic" and "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," Robbins conjures up a sublime portrait of a lost world. And as a bonus, the excellent audio actor Robert Sean Leonard reads a selection of Fitzgerald's letters to editors, agents and friends which focus on the writing and selling of the novel. Listeners will revel in learning random factoids, e.g., in 1924, Scott and Zelda were living in a Rome hotel that cost just over $500 a month, and he was respectfully suggesting that his agent Harold Ober ask $15,000 from Liberty
magazine for the serial rights to Gatsby.

May 18, 2020
This respectable graphic adaptation of Fitzgerald’s canonical novel succeeds as homage, and mostly as a satisfying social critique in its own right. In the introduction, Fitzgerald’s great grandson, Blake Hazard, acknowledges the challenges inherent to adapting the 1925 classic to a comic, observing that “the language itself is in some ways the main character.” And while Fordham (To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel) must pare down the text, he does a fine job distilling the haunted romanticism of Fitzgerald’s narrative, which describes the doomed love between the enigmatic Gatsby and the lovely but numb Daisy, who is married to the brutish, racist Tom Buchanan. The clean, Art Deco–like backgrounds by Morton (His Dream of the Skyland) evoke the beguiling but ultimately empty nouveau-riche milieu of Gatsby and the Buchanans in suburban Long Island, as well as the dreary gray world of Myrtle and George Wilson in working-class Queens. There the two classes collide, drawing to a tragic conclusion. Though the paper-doll-like character designs are appropriately reminiscent of period illustration, their wide stares and stances feel stiff. While perhaps inevitably lacking the complexity of the original, the fidelity of this graphic adaptation should satisfy Fitzgerald devotees. Agents: Dorian Karchmar and Jay Mandel, WME; Alyssa Henkin, Trident Media Group; and Jenny Savill, Andrew Nurnberg Assoc. 

June 1, 2020

Seeking a fresh start after returning home from the trenches of World War I, Nick Carraway moves to West Egg, NY. His cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom, introduce him to the life of luxury enjoyed by the lavishly wealthy. But their lifestyle pales in comparison to that of Nick's neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who routinely throws raucous parties on the grounds of his enormous gothic mansion. Nick is intrigued when Gatsby seems interested in becoming his friend but soon discovers that Gatsby is using him to get closer to his cousin--for Daisy is Gatsby's singular obsession, and the inspiration for the elaborate mythology he's constructed around himself. VERDICT Fordham (To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel) retains much of Fitzgerald's singular prose, which Morton (His Dream of the Skyland) illustrates with an eye toward period detail and restraint that blossoms into expressive tableaus of vivid color at key moments. Here, Fitzgerald's incisive expos� of the shallow excesses of the elite feels startlingly fresh nearly 100 years after its original publication.

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