Jen Zoldyck

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Set in the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby tells the story of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, his decadent parties, and his love for the alluring Daisy Buchanan. Dismissed as “no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that” (The Chicago Tribune), The Great Gatsby is now considered a contender for “the Great American Novel.” Fitzgerald wanted to title the novel “Trimalchio in West Egg,” but both his wife and his editor preferred “The Great Gatsby.” Fitzgerald gave in, though he still thought that “the title is only fair, rather bad than good.”

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Written between 1873 and 1884 but not published until 1903, Butler’s novel about the fortunes of the Pontifex family is a thinly veiled account of his own upbringing and a scathingly funny depiction of the hypocrisy underlying nineteenth-century domestic life. George Bernard Shaw hailed the novel as “one of the summits of human achievement” and William Maxwell claimed that it was the one Victorian novel he would save if his house caught on fire.

The story of Bigger Thomas, a poor, twentysomething African-American man living in Chicago, Native Son unflinchingly portrays the damage poverty and racism can inflict. Bigger Thomas is a difficult, even unsympathetic character, but his experiences force the reader to confront the real cost of societal injustice. Loosely based on a series of “brick bat” murders in 1939, Native Son was an immediate bestseller, selling 250,000 copies within three weeks of its publication.

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