ABSTRACT
The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s most fully realized novel. Its vivid statement about the American Way and its poignant presentation of the ambiguous human situation guarantee it a lasting place among American cultural artifacts. In Fitzgerald’s life story, Gatsby-in-process represents a peak in his creativity. In his preface to the Modern Library reissue of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald wrote that never before had he tried “to keep his artistic conscience as pure as during the ten months put into doing it”. Money troubles were always near the top of Fitzgerald’s list of problems. He could never write fast enough, or popularly enough, to overtake the cost of his chosen lifestyle and the illnesses of his wife which related to that lifestyle. The religious-aesthetic dimension, the study’s concern with the transmutation of life into art, indicates that Fitzgerald’s Catholic moral principles were so ingrained as to continue to color his life and work.
