Careless people : murder, mayhem, and the invention of the Great Gatsby / Sarah Churchwell.

Previously published: London : Virago, 2013.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Guest List -- Preface -- Prologue: 1924 -- September 1922. Chapter one: Glamour of Rumsies and Hitchcoks; Chapter two: Ash Heaps. Memory of 125th. Gt Neck -- October 1922. Chapter three: Goddards. Dwanns Swopes; Chapter four: Vegetable Days in New York. Memory of Ginevra's Wedding -- November 1922. Chapter five: The Meeting all an invention. Mary; Chapter six: Bob Kerr's Story. The 2nd Party -- December 1922-December 1924. Chapter seven: The Day in New York; Chapter eight: The Murder (inv.) -- 1925-1940. Chapter nine: Funeral an invention -- Envoi: The Orgastic Future.

"Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books, delighting readers across the world. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail the relation of Fitzgerald's classic to the chaotic world he in which he lived. Fitzgerald set his novel in 1922, and Careless People carefully reconstructs the crucial months during which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald returned to New York in the autumn of 1922 - the parties, the drunken weekends at Great Neck, Long Island, the drives back into the city to the jazz clubs and speakeasies, the casual intersection of high society and organized crime, and the growth of celebrity culture of which the Fitzgeralds themselves were the epitome. And for the first time it returns to the story of Gatsby and the high-profile murder that provided a crucial inspiration for Fitzgerald's tale. With wit and insight, Sarah Churchwell traces the genesis of a masterpiece, discovering where fiction comes from, and how it takes shape in the mind of a genius. Blending biography and history with lost and forgotten newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival material, Careless People is the biography of a book, telling the extraordinary tale of how F. Scott Fitzgerald created a classic and in the process discovered modern America"--