So 100 years ago this month, the Great Gatsby, the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, arrived on the scene.

It was a monumental failure. His previous novels, as well as his many short stories, had made him a household name.

But the weak initial sales of Gatsby were a real disappointment. And Fitzgerald actually died 15 years later, thinking

he'd been a failure. Worse yet, the main female character in the novel, Daisy Buchanan,

was based on a failed romance for Fitzgerald. I'm Patty Steele. Where did the Great Gatsby originate,

and how did it belatedly become one of the great American novels?

That's next on the backstory.

We're back with the backstory.

Do you like to read the classic novels or maybe watch movies based on them?

I am fascinated by those peaks at the past based on a contemporary observation.

One of the best books for that kind of experience in my estimation is the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

He was writing about his life as a bit of an inside observer in the social swirl of the

roaring 1920s on Long Island,

but he wasn't exactly an insider. The characters weren't real-life people,

but they were totally inspired by the people he knew and the events he was a part of.

It was a time of total excess, money, the jazz age, with wild parties and bootleg liquor,

women being freed from the constraints of Victorian expectations and fashion and behavior.

Fashion had gone from hiding as much of your body as possible to softer, more clingy and filmier fabrics.

It was, in a way, the first sexual revolution.

On a deeper level, Gatsby explores themes of the American dream, money, social class,

and the disillusionment of the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald painted a vivid picture of those days. He described Gatsby, saying he had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that you may come across four or five times in your life. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

But the character Daisy Buchanan was the romantic center of the story, and she was based on

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