Lit Du Nord: Minnesota Books and Authors

By Nick Healy

Getting in on the Gatsby game

Since the copyright expired on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most acclaimed and beloved novel last year, things have gotten complicated for “The Great Gatsby” completists.

Bookshelves might sag under the weight of new editions after a rush of 2021 releases from various publishers, including five handsomely packaged versions from five imprints owned by Penguin Random House. The new editions come with introductions and commentaries from authors and critics including John Grisham, Min Jin Lee and Wesley Morris, and several feature arresting covers.

The appeal of the new covers can make buying decisions especially difficult for fans. As much as readers love the famous blue cover featuring Francis Cugat’s painting “Celestial Eyes,” it can be hard to resist something fresh and beautiful.

The new images likely won’t last in the way of Cugat’s painting, which appeared on the 1925 first edition and, after a long absence, returned on a 1979 paperback edition. In the last 40-some years, Scribner sold millions of copies of Gatsby with that familiar cover.

But the expiration of the copyright is more than a green light to publishers who want to grab a share of Gatsby sales without the nuisance of paying for rights or royalties. Writers and artists of all stripes are at liberty now to do what they want with Fitzgerald’s story and his characters.

Since Jan. 1, 2001, when “The Great Gatsby” officially entered the public domain, numerous versions of the work have surfaced: illustrated editions,

Nick by Michael Farris Smith

graphic novels of the story, a Gatsby-related vampire tale (“The Great Gatsby Undead” by Kristen Briggs), and a novel that imagines the life of Nick Carraway before he moved into the cottage next door to the Gatsby mansion.

That last idea belonged to Michael Farris Smith, who began writing his novel “Nick” several years before the copyright on Gatsby expired, working under the notion that Fitzgerald’s story was already in the public domain. He was incorrect about that, but his error gave him a marketing advantage. Smith’s novel was ready for release the moment Nick Carraway no longer belonged solely to his original creator.

Smith deserves credit for having a good idea and having the nerve (gall?) to pursue it. Nick Carraway is, of course, the narrator of “The Great Gatsby,” and as has been discussed in literature classes far and wide, he is an observer of the drama involving Jay Gatsby and the careless couple Tom and Daisy Buchanan. He’s a bystander, but he’s an awfully smart and cleareyed one.

“Nick” begins with Carraway as a soldier in World War I, fighting in France several years before the time of events depicted in “The Great Gatsby.”

He fights in trenches and tunnels, and Smith writes about the war in a gritty style that makes its misery feel full and real. Smith deserves credit for the skill of his war writing, even when it’s hard to read.

In Paris on leave, Carraway falls for a woman named Ella, who lives as a squatter in an attic where theater costumes are stored while fighting goes on and theaters are closed.

Ella urges him not to return to the front. She says they can go off together and begin a new life. She tells him the nameless dead

and missing are uncountable and no one will ever come looking for him.

When Carraway must decide between the dream Ella describes and the burden of his real-life duty, Smith seems to have had in mind some events Carraway would later encounter in Gatsby. Unfortunately for Carraway and for readers, Ella disappears from the story too soon.

Back in the States after the war, Carraway ends up in New Orleans, and Smith’s story veers into dark territory. He creates a scarred version of Nick that doesn’t align with the character readers know from Gatsby.

If Smith’s book were named Mick Holloway, little in it would remind readers of “The Great Gatsby” at all. Take away moments like when Carraway’s father says, “And you need to remember, Nick, not everybody has the same advantages that you have,” and you’re left with cause to shrug and wonder why.

One of the bright spots of the public-domain boom for “The Great Gatsby” is a graphic novel created by Minnesota native K. Woodman-Maynard.

Published by Candlewick Press and intended for a young-adult audience, Woodman-Maynard’s book is fun and full of small delights. She distills the story effectively. It works like a graphic novel should and not like an abridgement of Fitzgerald’s prose crammed into story panels.

She uses her art to expand and enliven the experience, and she’s clever about incorporating memorable passages from the original.

When, for example, Nick arrives at the Buchanans’ place early in the story, purple clouds above the sprawling mansion bear the words, “Why they came east, I don’t know. They drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”

Woodman-Maynard’s graphic novel makes a pleasing choice if you want to add a new Gatsby experience to your life and to your bookshelf.

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