Inside The Great Gatsby - by A E Elmore (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book brings more understanding to Fitzgerald's famed novel by revealing the hidden subtext of its literary foundations of classical and modern writers. Elmore challenges the interpretation of Gatsby as a tragic failure of the American Dream, demonstrating the enduring national belief in the possibilities of the future.

Book Synopsis

Inside The Great Gatsby: The Hidden Subtext is a revolutionary analysis of the famed novel that reveals its important previously unknown literary foundations drawn from classical and modern literature, including the works of Dante, Milton, Conrad, Spengler, Frazer, Weston, Joyce, Eliot, and the King James Bible. Other studies of the novel have focused primarily on its biographical, cultural, or social issues, but none prior to Elmore's have systematically examined the unrecognized debts Gatsby owes to previous literary works. The ultimate irony is that Gatsby, lauded as one of the greatest novels in the English language, earned its stature based solely on recognition of only a part of its whole-the literal narrative, or surface story-without realization or acknowledgment of its foundational subtext, the hidden layer that links it to the universal library of human experience, most of which remained undetected until the centennial year of the novel's original publication.

Review Quotes

A. E. Elmore's Inside "The Great Gatsby" The Hidden Subtext is a revolutionary study that will become a standard reference text and a springboard into future interpretations of the novel. No other book-length study begins to explicate Gatsby, chapter by chapter, as fully and as sensitively as Elmore's, and it is easy to imagine the new readings that will have their origins in Elmore's systematic analysis--some expanding and extending his analysis of various allusions, and others challenging some of his provocative conclusions.

Every scholar should have a friend as devoted as John Kuhnle. When A.E. Elmore, a founding member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society in 1990, passed away a decade ago he left behind a manuscript that many of us had previewed in piecemeal form at conferences across the decades. Thanks to Kuhnle's dedicated editing, Inside The Great Gatsby: The Hidden Subtext is now available to provide a great overview of the 1925 classic to first-time readers. Elmore's close reading focuses with scrupulous precision on the network of symbols and connotations that give Fitzgerald's style its power, making his prose come alive. Even longtime fans wll find new insights here to add to their appreciation of the text.

About the Author

A.E. Elmore (1938-2016) taught English at Athens State University from 1987 to 2013.