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Chapter 1. Max von Gerlach, the Man Behind Jay Gatsby: A German Immigrant Story and Its Impact on the Composition of The Great Gatsby
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1 Max von Gerlach, the Man Behind Jay Gatsby A German Immigrant Story and Its Impact on the Composition of The Great Gatsby “...what better right does a man possess than to invent his own antecedents?” Nick Carraway assessing Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby:The Revised and Rewritten Galleys (1990), p. 161 Introduction There is all but universal agreement that F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby occupies a preeminent place inAmerican literature, in terms of popular appeal and critical acclaim, and that Jay Gatsby, the protagonist, more so than any other character inAmerican fiction,embodies national themes and aspirations .The complex story of the novel’s achievement is thus fully deserving of the attention it has been given, its verification worthy of further effort. In its powerful mythical implications and profuse dependence on American materials, both historical and contemporary,The Great Gatsby has indeed left much room for speculation about the author’s actual sources of inspiration .The large number and wide range of parallels and correspondences that have been proposed, literary and otherwise, and the number of real people that have been suggested as models for its cast of characters—Jay Gatsby in the man Behind Jay gatsBy 5 particular—are as much a measure of its universal quality as of the interest that the author and his work continue to command.But at the same time the abundance of such proposals also hints at the failure of scholarship to determine basic elements of the history of the making of the novel and calls for a continuing effort at clarification. Jay Gatsby, above all, in his commanding presence of nearly 90 years’ standing, is holding out a challenge to explore his actual roots, intriguing as they are in their persistent obscurity. It is in response to this challenge that I return to the case of Max Gerlach. Apart from Edward M.Fuller,William F.McGee,and Robert C.Kerr,whose contributions to his characterization are considered minor, Gerlach was the only model for Jay Gatsby expressly identified by name in 1947 by Zelda Fitzgerald, the author’s wife, shortly before her death.And in 1951 Gerlach himself spoke up and claimed to be the individual who inspired Fitzgerald’s protagonist. Despite all research efforts, however, Gerlach remains elusive as an historical personage,so that the extent and the exact nature of his influence on the inception and the composition of The Great Gatsby continue to be a matter of debate.Prompted early by Gerlach’s German name and carried on in friendly rivalry with Matthew J.Bruccoli,my own explorations eventually led me to the fortuitous discovery of materials in the NationalArchives and Records Administration in bothWashington, DC, and College Park, Maryland ,concerning Gerlach’s military career in the USArmy duringWorldWar I, as well as court records in the US District Court for the Southern District of NewYork concerning his bootleg activities.Working from these and other documents relating to his life both before and after the war, I was able to trace central motifs of the novel and a long list of specific details to incidents in Gerlach’s life and thus substantiate previous speculations concerning his role in the genesis of the book.What had escaped my notice at the time— and what I have discovered only since the publication of my findings in The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review in 2002—is an essential fact that turns out to hold a key to both Gerlach’s personality and its appeal to the author of The Great Gatsby—that the circumstances of his life in combination with those of the times he lived in had suggested to Gerlach that he proceed to construct and reconstruct varying accounts of his biography in the interest of his own advancement .His very success in this endeavor of necessity entailed the likelihood of error for those engaged in the study of his activities.This turned my [34.201.8.144] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 05:49 GMT) 6 chapter 1 own research into an uncommonly challenging, at times frustrating, but also thoroughly rewarding longtime scholarly adventure on two sides of theAtlantic , an adventure not without its share of pleasant surprises.When proof continued to refuse to emerge to support the widely held view of Gerlach as a wealthy Long Island bootlegger,for instance,the search for further details of his life happened to take me to libraries and archives in Germany rather than in the United States...