Readers and writers: ‘Gatsby’ turns 100, and the place to celebrate is St. Paul

We know you’re busy wrapping holiday gifts, keeping the cat away from the Christmas tree and baking great-grandma’s sugar cookies. Take a break as we look ahead to Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s yearlong celebration of one of the most significant international literary events of 2025, the 100th anniversary of St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring novel “The Great Gatsby.”

Published on April 10, 1925, Fitzgerald had worked hard on his third novel (after “This Side of Paradise” and “The Beautiful and Damned”). He completed the manuscript when he and his wife, Zelda, were living an unhappy summer in the south of France, but he was excited about this book. He wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: “I feel I have an enormous power in me now, more than I’ve ever had in a way… This book will be a consciously artistic achievement, and must depend on that as the first books did not.” The 29-year-old author wrote to a friend: “My book is wonderful. So is the Air and the Sea” (referring to the French Riviera, which hadn’t yet become a playground for the wealthy).

The above quotes are from the new book “F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography,” edited by Niklas Salmose and David Rennie (University of Minnesota Press). This is a collection of 23 essays by writers and scholars who look at Fitzgerald’s complicated life and career, including his turbulent marriage and other aspects of his life and times, divided into two-year chapters beginning with his birth in 1896 at 481 Laurel Ave. in St. Paul to his death in 1940 in Hollywood.

Salmose is a professor of English literature at Linnaeus University in Sweden and a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society board. Rennie teaches English at St. Machar Academy in Scotland. They are expected to fly in for the Jan. 18 launch of “The Composite Biography” at Arlington Hills Community Center, 1200 Payne Ave., first in Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s year of free “Gatsby”-centered programs.

The Friends consider their organization the stewards of all things “Gatsby.” In 2020, the nonprofit organization Fitzgerald in St. Paul became an official part of the Friends, which has pledged to be a “Gatsby” resource during the centennial year. The Friends also incorporate the Minnesota Center for the Book, the Library of Congress’ officially designated entity in Minnesota to promote literacy, reading and libraries statewide.

(Courtesy of University of Minnesota Press)

There’s little need to point out that “Gatsby” is part of American literary culture, considered by some to be a perfect novel. Set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, it is a story of money, social class and betrayal. It has inspired films (with Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio), opera, songs and years of scholarship about the symbolism we might remember from high school — the meaning of the green light on Daisy’s dock, the Valley of Ashes and the failure of the American Dream experienced by the generation that fought World War I.

” ‘The Great Gatsby’ continues to capture the consciousness of audiences even 100 years after publication,” said Alayne Hopkins, the Friends’ senior director of programs and services. “We look forward to exploring what the book and its popularity can tell us about our society and culture. We aim to revisit the work, rather than simply celebrate it.”

It is impossible to separate Fitzgerald from St. Paul, where he is commemorated with a statue in Rice Park and a special nook in the George Latimer downtown library. The house at 599 Summit Ave. where he wrote “This Side of Paradise” is a National Historic Landmark. Our city is so important to Fitzgerald’s writing that the prestigious International Fitzgerald Society held its biennial meeting here in 2002, returning in 2017, the first time this organization met in the same place twice.

Minnesotan Dave Page, who has worked on five books about Fitzgerald, covers the years 1908-1909 in “The Composite Biography,” giving a fuller picture of Fitzgerald’s early years than some biographers have done. In a section titled “Duluth and a Nascent Gatsby,” he writes about how early in Fitzgerald’s life “Gatsby” was entering his imagination. It happened during young Scott’s trip with his mother and sister to Duluth, where the local boat club was sponsoring a celebration that centered on the pleasure yacht of real-life wealthy mining executive Thomas F. Cole.

“One of Fitzgerald’s acquaintances, Bob Kerr, told him about rowing out to help a yacht owner from Long Island Sound; Fitzgerald transferred the story to Lake Superior in ‘The Great Gatsby’ and also provided Dan Cody with many of Cole’s attributes in the novel,” Page writes. (Dan Cody is a mining mogul in his 50s who had achieved wealth and prestige envied by Jay Gatsby.)

Fitzgerald, who made much of his money writing short stories for the Saturday Evening Post magazine, also drew on his experiences as a young man in St. Paul to write some of the most popular of his 160 stories, including “Winter Dreams” and “The Ice Palace.” He spent part of his childhood mingling with children of rich families who lived on and around Summit Avenue, then left the city for Princeton and military service. He returned to write “This Side of Paradise.” After his marriage to Zelda Sayre, the couple lived in White Bear Lake awaiting the birth of their daughter Scottie in 1921. They left St. Paul the following year and Fitzgerald never returned, although he kept in touch with childhood friends.

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald with his wife, Zelda Sayre, and his daughter Scottie in their apartment in Paris, France on July 16, 1925, three months after the publication of “The Great Gatsby”. (Associated Press)

Despite Fitzgerald’s high hopes for “Gatsby,” the novel did not bring him the praise he thought it deserved. Reviews were mixed and sales sluggish, with only 20,000 copies sold. In addition, his marriage was in trouble. Left alone in a rented house in France while Scott completed the novel, Zelda flirted with a handsome French aviator. Biographers are not sure whether she had a physical affair, but Scott felt betrayed. Zelda was also exhibiting the first signs of mental illness. It’s ironic that publication of what some consider the greatest American novel would also begin hard years for Fitzgerald, who later struggled to make enough money to pay tuition at his daughter’s private school and keep up with bills for Zelda’s stays at mental institutions. And always there was his battle with alcohol.

Fitzgerald was only 44 when he died, the Jazz Age long gone. America was coming out of the Great Depression and “The Great Gatsby” was almost out of print. But Fitzgerald was vindicated because his novel has since sold more than 25 million copies worldwide and continues to sell 500,00 to a million copies per year.

‘Gatsby’ programs

Here are Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s “Gatsby” centennial year programs.

Jan. 18: Launch of “F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography,” Arlington Hills Community Center
Feb. 12: “The Great Gatsby” performed by Literature to Life, George Latimer Central Library
April 10: Live reading of “The Great Gatsby” with special guests, Minnesota History Center
April 22: Books & Bars discussion of “The Great Gatsby — A Graphic Noel Adaptation” by Katherine Woodman-Maynard, Urban Growler, St. Paul
March-May: Gatsby & Fitzgerald collection at Minnesota History Center
May: featured book collection, Minnesota Women Authors of the 1920s, George Latimer Central Library
June-July: performance of “The Last Flapper” a play about Zelda Fitzgerald created and performed by Monette McGrath, with a talk at a library to be named and performance at Park Square Theater
July-August: Fitzgerald Around St. Paul walking tours of Fitzgerald’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood with Mark Taylor
Sept. 13: Gatsby at 100 exhibit, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Nov. 1: virtual event about teaching “The Great Gatsby”