*Starred Review* In So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (a take on the novel's last line: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past), Maureen Corrigan book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, critic-in-residence and lecturer at Georgetown University, and author of Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005) attempts to fathom the perpetual fascination of F. Scott Fitzgerald's inexhaustible 1925 masterpiece. A slim yet saturated and gorgeously written book in which every element resonates, it is our Greatest American Novel and a book Corrigan unabashedly loves. Corrigan's immersion in Fitzgerald's novel inspires a dazzling literary appraisal of his assiduously polished, innovatively modern and urban language with its hard-boiled tone. And the word immersion is apt, given all the water imagery Corrigan highlights. She also quotes a letter from Fitzgerald to his daughter with the line: All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath. Like Nafisi, Corrigan pinpoints restlessness as a quintessential American quality, one she perceives in Fitzgerald's knowing depiction of New York City, the great mecca for dreamers with its promise of freedom, new identities, success, and unsentimental sex. She explains why she considers The Great Gatsby to be America's greatest novel about class as well as the vanquishing of God and the worship of idols in the aftermath of WWI, the fantasy that one can truly reinvent one's self, the grandeur of longing, and the spell of illusion. Fitzgerald, Corrigan writes, appreciated the doomed beauty of trying and roamed his own inner geography of yearning. Biographical currents run strongly throughout Corrigan's many-branched, stimulating, and beautifully crafted inquiry. Corrigan marvels over the almost eerie predictive quality of The Great Gatsby and makes sure we appreciate its overlooked humor, intricate patterns, and density of symbols, at every turn replenishing our amazement over its flow, sparkle, and shadow. She glides gracefully from the glimmering depths of the novel to the harsh light on land, where it was forgotten soon after it was published until it was gradually reclaimed, resurrected, and acclaimed, the subject for ongoing discussions both private and in classrooms and book groups, cinematic variations, and even merchandising. Corrigan's research was as intrepid as her analysis is ardent and expert, and she brings fact, thought, feelings, and personal experiences together in a buoyant, illuminating, and affecting narrative about one depthless novel, the transforming art of reading, and the endless tides that tumble together life and literature.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist

Mixing criticism with memoir, NPR book critic Corrigan (Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading) contends that F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great American Novel is greater than we think. According to Corrigan, we were too young to appreciate The Great Gatsby when we read it in high school; we were dead to its themes of nostalgia and regret, overlooked its trenchant social critique, and mistook it for a love story. (Corrigan is adamant that we miss the point if we ask whether Daisy ever loved Gatsby.) To reintroduce and reassess a masterpiece, Corrigan visits the book's Long Island setting, Fitzgerald's grave, and a high school English class. Most illuminating, though, is her research into Gatsby's reception: in the Library of Congress, she investigates how the novel, unheralded on its publication in 1925, became part of the canon by the 1960s. (Fitzgerald's ghost can thank a few friendly critics and the paperbacks issued to GIs during WWII.) Today, Corrigan asserts, Gatsby still doesn't get its due. When she laments that Fitzgerald is the subject of fewer college seminars than are his modernist cohorts, such as James Joyce, her partisanship may seem blinkered. She makes a good case, however, that our very familiarity with Gatsby's Great American qualities has caused us to underrate it-and she does much to restore its stature. 13 b&w photos. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Starred Review. Book critic (NPR's Fresh Air), professor (literature, Georgetown Univ.), and author (Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading) Corrigan pens a literary love letter with this information-packed, entertaining volume. The object of her affection, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, is examined from many angles-literary, sociological, cultural, personal, and historical. The intrepid Corrigan reads and rereads the novel; offers insights into its tropes and meaning; visits dusty archives, graveyards, and even her Queens, NY, high school alma mater; pores over correspondence; and watches all manner of filmed and staged Gatsbys (including what she calls a "noir version") in order to get at the novel's message and its appeal. She traces the book's arc from creation to near-obscurity to literary prominence. Her tone is lively and bright and her enthusiasm for the novel is infectious. You'll feel as if you're attending a lecture by your favorite prof or chatting with a brainy, bookish friend. VERDICT Bursting with intellectual energy and fun facts, this paean to the "great American novel" will appeal to fans of Corrigan's book critiques and Jazz Age scholars, and will, one hopes, impel readers to pick up the brief work for the first (or fourth, or 14th) time. [See "Books for the Masses," Editors' BEA Picks, LJ 7/14, p. 28.]-Liz French, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.