Few authors are more synonymous with a place and point in time than F. Scott Fitzgerald. His Great Gatsby came to define the 1920s and cast a golden aura across Long Island’s North Shore for all time.

On today’s episode, Charles Riley guides us through the birth of The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s struggle to make it into a masterpiece. Charles is the director of the Nassau County Museum of Art and author of Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism.

Further Research:

• Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism by Charles Riley. (find in a library)
• Nassau County Museum of Art
• So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan (find in a library)
• “Where is Jay Gatsby’s Mansion?” via Slate.