Sarah Churchwell - Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transf

Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald’s contemporaries couldn’t bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall.

- Sarah Churchwell

source: Sarah Churchwell (2013). “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby”, p.13, Hachette UK

topic: Fall, America, Excellence, Jazz Age, Harbinger