The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Great Gatsby (1925)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

West Egg, Long Island New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 26/26 

New York: 103/103

    Last book from New York state- certainly to be the biggest state, I'm guessing. I'm guessing the California won't have more than 80 books for the whole state. I can't actually remember when I read The Great Gatsby last, or first, for that matter, but I know I've read the book at least twice and seen two different versions of the movie- the 1974 Robert Redford one directed by Francis Ford Coppola and the Leonard DiCaprio 2013 version by Baz Luhrmann. 

 I don't think it's a stretch to call The Great Gatsby the first hit of the mass-media era- most people today don't even realize that it was a bit of a bomb when it was released and only achieved canonical status in 1926 when a theatrical version proved to be a huge hit and toured the country etc. My sense is that the idea of the novel as a piece of expandable intellectual property started with The Great Gatsby.  The Great Gatsby is also the UR example of the "Great American Novel" genre, the idea of a novel that purports to tell a deeper truth about American society beyond the lives of its characters.  Few of the books of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list have fit that category thus far- editor Susan Straight has shown a strong preference for the YA bildungsroman, strong and diverse representation among racial, ethnic and gender lines.   Straight has stuck to her one book per author rule- I think Colson Whitehead could have had at least three of his books in this chapter.  She has largely eschewed genre fiction outside of detective fiction, which has made it in both as genre titles and as genre/literary fiction cross-overs- where are all the future New Yorkers?   

 New Jersey to close out Chapter 2 next and then it's off to  Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina, (Chapter 3) before doubling back northward to do Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas (Chapter 4).