I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball today.

We're going to party like it's 1925, baby.

You've probably heard somewhere that the great Gatsby turned 100 this year.

People have been celebrating this thing as one of those profound literary achievements that's had a big influence on the culture, and it has.

People who don't seem to have read this book have been using it to celebrate.

I'm looking at you, we're a leader who threw a Gatsby-themed Halloween party.

I didn't want this anniversary to end without trying to think through this book myself,

which is kind of nuts because up until recently, I didn't think I had a terribly deep or profound relationship with this book.

But a few years ago, I got an email from a book publisher asking if I wanted to write the

introduction for a new edition of the Great Gaspi

that was coming out in 2021. And was I interested? I was more like confused. I was like,

you want me to do what? I mean, everybody's written about this book. What could I possibly have to say that's new?

What could I possibly have to say about it that was important?

And then, I did some thinking, and I realized, wait a minute, I have read this book at least three times in three different phases of my life.

Huh, why did I do that?

The very first time I read it, it was because I had to.

Like most students who grew up in this country, it is required reading.

The second time I read it, I was in my early 20s. And what I realized then is that this book was young once too.

It was once contemporary with the time in which it was made, the so-called roaring 20s during the Harlem Renaissance.

You know who else was young once?

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the guy who wrote the Great Gatsby.

And when this book came out in 1925, he was 28 years old.

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