弗朗西斯•斯科特•基•菲茨杰拉德（Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald，1896年9月24日－1940年12月21日），美国二十世纪最杰出的作家之一。《了不起的盖茨比》是其代表作，出版于1925年，是一部以20世纪20年代的纽约市及长岛为背景的短篇小说，被视为美国文学“爵士时代”的象征。它在初出版时并不受欢迎——菲茨杰拉德在世时的总销量只有少于二万四千本。在大萧条以及二战时被忽略，直至20世纪50年代再版时才受到广泛注目。其后的数十年它更成为高中、大学文学课的标准教材。经常有人把它称为20世纪最伟大的英文小说之一。麦兹纳（ArthurMizener）写的传记《天堂的那边》（TheFarSideofParadise），描述这位天才作家甘苦的一生和悲剧的下场，对于他的作品大加赞赏。弗•司各特•菲茨杰拉德曾经这样跟朋友谈论《了不起的盖茨比》，“这部小说的重心放在‘幻象的消灭’之上——正是这种幻象才使得这个世界那么鲜艳。你根本无须理会事情的真跟假，只要它们沾上了那份魔术般的光彩就行了。”名诗人兼文评家T.S.艾略特称之为“美国小说自亨利•詹姆斯以来迈出的第一步”。此书更在美国“现代文库”的20世纪百大英文小说中，名列第二。
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic 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 one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.
