I recently read that there is a prequel to The Great Gatsby scheduled for publication in January 2021 when the copyright expires on F.Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel. On January 1, 2021, the iconic book enters the public domain in the United States and we can anticipate a flood new editions of Gatsby  in an array of formats. However, Little, Brown has found another way to cash in on the  expected wave of Gatsby-mania. On January 5, 2021 they will be publishing a title called Nick–a Great Gatsby prequel by Michael Farris Smith. The book promises to focus on Nick Carraway’s life prior to his enmeshment with Jay Gatsby.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I don’t think the world needs, or really wants, a Gatsby that was not actually written by Fitzgerald. I admit that I have been a life long evangelist for the classic novel and believe that it verges on sacrilege to presume to know the world of Nick Carraway that Fitzgerald imagined beyond what he wrote in Gatsby. To be honest, I’m not into “fan fiction” or reconceptualized novels. There are an infinite variety of stories to be told; tell your own.