F. Scott Fitzgerald's Characters Rewrite Gatsby

A new memoir by Robert Atwan has begun in Believer magazine from the perspective of Thomas Buchanan, Daisy's husband and the villain of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, according to the Huffington Post. The memoir, which is titled "That Summer, 1922: A Counter Memoir by Thomas Buchanan," is one of a few new versions of Fitzgerald's novel to be written recently. Since the release of Baz Luhrmann's movie of The Great Gatsby has caused a spike in sales of the novel, imitations are likely on the horizon.

However, imitations of novels are not a new phenomenon. In the 1700s, Henry Fielding wrote two sequels to Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Or, Virtue Rewarded after being annoyed by the novel and its success. Fielding was not "troubled with copyright laws" at the time, so he recast Richardson's young and virtuous servant as Shamela a manipulative girl "bent on snaring her stupid master" into marriage.

In 1998, Michael Cunningham's The Hours retold Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel "Mrs. Dalloway" to critical acclaim, winning the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, not every re-imagining is as successful. Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, which showed Hemmingway and Fitzgerald in cafés speaking in their own writing style, was "shredded by critics" for its "literary tourism." Most recently, Tom Carson's 2011 novel Daisy Buchanan's Daughter, a story that follows Pammy Buchanan through the twentieth century, reveals the possible fate of Fitzgerald's characters, as Nick gets old and fat, and Daisy commits suicide.

Atwan's Thomas Buchanan is "not much like Fitzgerald's." But Atwan is at his best when he "shows how well he knows and likes the novel," mimicking Fitzgerald's language. The success of The Great Gatsby and its recent resurgence in popular culture may lead to other characters telling their stories as "more than any other American writer, Scott Fitzgerald and his work have been used for other people's purposes."

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Photo Credit: BWW-Staff

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