The author intended the story to be repugnant

Maxwell Perkins defends The Great Gatsby

The first edition of The Great Gatsby (Image: Wikimedia)

It took many years for The Great Gatsby to achieve the widespread acclaim it enjoys today, and when F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, fifteen years after its publication, he considered the novel a failure. One person who consistently found himself defending its significance—from the very beginning—…