“After a lifetime of rereading, teaching, and touring with The Great Gatsby, Corrigan has come to love it and regard it as the Great American Novel. In So We Read On, she tells us why in unabashed fan-girl fashion, which makes her book as pleasurable to read as Fitzgerald’s.… It’s smart and compelling, persuasive without demeaning other interpretations.… If you love Gatsby, or want to understand why it deserves such adulation, So We Read On is a gorgeous treat.”
—Steven Moore, Washington Post
“Second only to the pleasure of rereading Gatsby is the pleasure of talking to someone about it, and Maureen Corrigan is the ultimate someone: boundlessly erudite, blazingly funny, and infectiously passionate. Corrigan makes the story behind The Great Gatsby as enthralling as the novel itself, and she isn’t just talking here about our greatest American novel but our turbulent American identity itself, in all its confusion and grandeur. As with the book that inspired it, my only complaint about So We Read On is that it comes to an end.”
—Susan Choi, author of My Education
“Maureen Corrigan has produced a minor miracle: a book about The Great Gatsby that stands up to Gatsby itself.”
—Michael Cunningham, author of The Snow Queen
“Too genuine and moving to be resisted.… A generous spirit warms every page of So We Read On.”
—Wendy Smith, Boston Globe
“Corrigan has an infectious sense of excitement about the novel, the furthest thing from academic deadness imaginable.… She has done some terrific reporting.”
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
“We have to be thankful to Maureen Corrigan for letting us in on her intriguing love affairs with great books, as in this wonderful account of her grand passion for The Great Gatsby. She reminds us that perhaps one true promise of that elusive green light at the end of the dock resides in our creative imagination, and the intimate relationship between a book and its reader.”
—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
“So We Read On abounds in pleasures of the text, whether it is tracing the theme of water in Gatsby, dipping in and out of Fitzgerald’s biography so as to illuminate the novel or the state of mind of the man who wrote it, or ingeniously linking the book’s underside—its ‘shadowy atmosphere of criminals, bootleggers, and violence’—with a genre of hard-boiled novels and noir films that postdate it.… The biggest compliment I can give this book is that it will send you back to the source, as it sent me. And that it leaves indelible impressions of both the novel and its author.”
—Daphne Merkin, New York Times Book Review
“Corrigan’s research was as intrepid as her analysis is ardent and expert, and she brings fact, thought, feelings, and personal experiences together in a buoyant, illuminating, and affecting narrative.”
—Booklist
“No one is better at bringing a book to life than Maureen Corrigan. Her vividly personal evocation of Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby is at once a labor of love, the story of a quest, and a mother lode of information and insight. As a biography of a novel, it reads like a novel.”
—Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden
“While Corrigan is hardly alone in her evaluation of Gatsby, she’s perhaps unique in her ability to write in such a lively and engaging way about Fitzgerald’s life, the book, and the era in which it’s set.”
—Terry Gross, National Public Radio
“Maureen Corrigan’s brilliant Gatsby book takes you on a revealing expedition into the wilds of American literary culture. It might be called How Gatsby Became ‘Great.’ An intoxicating cocktail of talent, celebrity, gangster noir, and the vicissitudes of reputation that create a classic.”
—Ron Rosenbaum, author of The Shakespeare Wars
“Delightful.… We learn an enormous amount about Gatsby and Mr. Fitzgerald and the social and literary worlds from which they sprang.… The enthusiastic and accessible voice we hear in Corrigan’s radio reviews comes through in this book.”
—Eileen Weiner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“So We Read On is a fine book on many levels, almost too many to list. This book is a love story about a book. It’s an expression of love for one of the most lyrical and engaging and prescient novels in the English language. Maureen Corrigan writes not only with passion about her subject, she writes with an understanding of America and the elusive goal represented by the green light on Daisy’s dock.”
—James Lee Burke, author of Wayfaring Stranger
“A literary love letter.… Bursting with intellectual energy.… Corrigan’s tone is lively and bright and her enthusiasm for the novel is infectious.”
—Liz French, Library Journal
“An impassioned guide to The Great Gatsby by a highly qualified and devoted fan.”
—Julia Jenkins, Shelf Awareness
“So We Read On is a marvelous mix of the high and the low: solid literary criticism delivered in a user-friendly manner, coupled with the backstory of the book’s creation, replete with the sordid details of Scott (and Zelda) Fitzgerald’s sad, unfulfilled promise.… With So We Read On, Corrigan for the most part is preaching to a choir of acolytes already at the altar of Gatsby, but it is a sermon as smooth and palatable as the novel itself.”
—Robert Weibezahl, BookPage
“Gatsby is a book that keeps on giving, and Corrigan shows you how.… Anyone with a great appreciation for biography and literary culture will love So We Read On, thanks to Corrigan’s flowing language and keen knack for details.”
—Meredith Turits, Bustle