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The Real Gatsby George Gordon Moore - by Mickey Rathbun (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- When Mickey Rathbun began to investigate a rumor that her grandfather, George Gordon Moore, had been a model for Fitzgerald's iconic character Jay Gatsby, she discovered closer connections than she had ever imagined.
- Author(s): Mickey Rathbun
- 282 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Historical
Description
About the Book
"A family memoir about uncovering the life of the author's grandfather, George Gordon Moore, who was reputed to have been F. Scott Fitzgerald's model for Jay Gatsby"--Book Synopsis
When Mickey Rathbun began to investigate a rumor that her grandfather, George Gordon Moore, had been a model for Fitzgerald's iconic character Jay Gatsby, she discovered closer connections than she had ever imagined. In her remarkable, compelling, and beautifully crafted memoir, The Real Gatsby: George Gordon Moore, she examines the striking parallels between the real person and his fictional doppelganger. Beyond their hardscrabble western origins, formative sojourns in England, extravagant lifestyles fueled by suspected criminal activities, and pursuit of unattainable women, Moore and Gatsby shared a heightened appreciation for the exquisite possibilities of life, what Fitzgerald called "romantic readiness."
These similarities were hardly coincidental; Moore played polo and partied with the social set that inspired The Great Gatsby. Tommy Hitchcock, the legendary polo player on whom Fitzgerald based Gatsy's Tom Buchanan, was Moore's close friend, business partner, and housemate.
Rathbun's book is an honest exploration of her grandfather's astonishing life and legacy. With unflinching candor, she engages themes that are as relevant today as in Fitzgerald's time: our single-minded obsession with wealth and social cachet and the mirage of the American Dream.
Review Quotes
Irresistible memoir of early 20th century extravagance, scandal, and family heritage.- Publishers Weekly Editor's Pick
In this memoir/biography, a woman chronicles the extraordinary life of her grandfather, who may have been the model for F. Scott Fitzgerald's legendary Jay Gatsby.
...Rathbun paints a striking picture of Moore, a complex man, intellectually brilliant but morally challenged, who was capable of great loyalty and patriotism... Moreover, the author brings to electrifying life a unique period of American history, one featuring wealth and optimism, but also the gathering storms of war and economic collapse that would challenge the nation's buoyancy. Moore was devastated by the stock market collapse of 1929, though he never stopped scheming, often dishonestly, to regain his squandered affluence. Yet Moore's questionable ethics don't make him any less captivating a character-he willfully fashioned an incredible existence, one enjoyed on a breathtaking scale of grandiosity. A party he threw at the famed Ritz in New York City in 1912 was described by a reporter as a bash that "in magnificence and sumptuousness has never been surpassed in the history of brilliant entertainments held in that smart hotel." This is a marvelous blend of personal and grand history, one in which the former is illuminated by the latter, and vice versa. It is also a deeply readable account, filled with drama and authorial insights.
An engrossing history of a remarkable man and the time that shaped him. -Kirkus Reviews
"Poignant, haunting, unflinchingly candid, Mickey Rathbun's uncovering of her grandfather's secrets puts something fascinating and original into the nation's literary bloodstream: a brand-new Gatsby. George Gordon Moore is not only the most plausible model we've yet encountered for the aspirational hero of Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, but an actual Gatsby himself-the self-made American tycoon who chases his dream from East to West, veering between nobility and scandal as he resorts to shadier and shadier means to stay afloat, even swerving across the Atlantic to woo an English Daisy named Diana Manners. He ultimately inflicts as much damage as delight when his fantastic Diamond-as-Big-as-the-Ritz life imitates the boom-to-bust arc of Fitzgerald's art."
-David Michaelis, author of Eleanor
"With The Real Gatsby, Mickey Rathbun has found the elusive joining point of history and family. That her grandfather may have been an inspiration for Fitzgerald's character is the spool around which this saga is spun. Rathbun presents a large-living man in a reckless era-her narrative has a colorful depth that hardly needs Gatsby at all."
-Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
"Almost everyone has a mysterious or troubling forebear but not everyone can make a compelling case that their grandfather was Fitzgerald's model for the title character in The Great Gatsby."
-Madeleine Blais, author of Queen of the Court: The Many Lives of Tennis Legend Alice Marble and Uphill Walkers: A Family Memoir