PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Marcus is good on the effects that the book would come to have on our culture, from the soundtrack-like embedding of popular music in works of fiction to the Gatsby-esque elements of detective novels and movies ... other connections take us far afield. Covering the various film versions of the novel, Mr. Marcus brings in the other, non-\'Gatsby\' roles performed by the men who played Nick Carraway. We also get a mini-editorial on the financing of election campaigns in the United States. The author’s long-winded, add-on prose style doesn’t help, either ... But Mr. Marcus does his music critic’s best to \'hear the tunes behind Fitzgerald’s words\' and to help us hear them. He often succeeds wonderfully in illuminating the appeal of the book that framed for all time the intertwining of love and money in the American Dream—as pursued by Americans of the Jazz Age, or any age.
