In Search of Bunny Burgess, or Down the Rabbit Hole: Anecdotes, Secret Histories, and The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's notes contain repeated references to an incident with a man named 'Bunny Burgess', a memory associated with the summer during which he composed The Great Gatsby. Ignored by Fitzgerald scholars and biographers, the story of Bunny Burgess vexes standard readings of Nick Carraway as Fitzgerald's authorial proxy. This essay uses the search for Bunny Burgess as a way to challenge the presumptions usually made about both 'biographical criticism' and 'anecdotal criticism', arguing that the anecdote of Bunny Burgess is emblematic of Fitzgerald's authorial practices, as well as the benefits and costs of biographical criticism, becoming a kind of ur-anecdote for Gatsby.