Fitzgerald as a bedtime story
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Maureen Corrigan
The other night, my son, as usual, requested a bedtime story. He likes it when I make up stories, and I enjoy it too, but sometimes the well runs dry.
So, I tried borrowing someone else's story. He's getting older, I thought, and he's ready for some more mature material. Once upon a time, I began, there was a man named Jay. Jay didn't grow up with a lot of money, and eventually, he joined the army. When he was in the army, he went to another city to train, and there he met a very beautiful girl named Daisy. Jay and Daisy fell in love.
I had just returned, you see, from listening to Maureen Corrigan at the Free Library of Philadelphia talking about her new book, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. Like Corrigan, I love F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. To me, it's a perfect book. When people ask me (as they often do when they learn that I'm a book person) what my favorite book is, I hesitate. I want to name some obscure title so they'll think I'm a clever intellectual. But I always reply that it's Gatsby that has my heart. I have read the book five times, and every time it moves me with its beauty, its tragic story and, most of all, its utterly perfect writing.
Corrigan has me beat by a long shot. She estimates that she has read the book 50 times, many of those readings in preparation for teaching the book to her Georgetown University English classes. In her new book, she makes a case for why Gatsby is so important, and includes interesting info about the author's life and the book's path to publication.
So moved was I by Corrigan's impassioned case for the book's greatness that I wanted to share a watered down version of the story with my child. He's a smart kid, but even I, his doting mother, don't think he's ready yet for The Great Gatsby. But someday he'll read it and maybe remember a long-ago bedtime tale of a star-crossed romance between two people named Jay and Daisy, and maybe the book will lodge in his heart as well.
Note: Maureen Corrigan will be making another appearance in the Philadelphia area on Nov. 8 to talk about her new book at a "Reader Retreat" I am organizing. To read more about the daylong event and register, go here.
