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Why ‘The Great Gatsby’ Parties On From Page to Stage, 100 Years After Publication


With F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel now in public domain, there are multiple adaptations on stages in New York and beyond, and new novels too.

That show was joined last month by “ Gatz,” the audacious theatrical version that stages the novel — every single word of it — over six and a half hours, in an Off Broadway production at the Public Theater. To an extent, the “Gatsby” proliferation has a pretty simple explanation: The novel entered the public domain in 2021, so now the story is fair game for producers and creators — not only onstage but in bookstores, with recent literary remixes including Nghi Vo’s fantasy-inflected “The Chosen and the Beautiful” and Anna-Marie McLemore YA redux “Self-Made Boys,” in which the Gatsby and Nick characters are trans men. But the public domain angle doesn’t fully explain the property’s enduring appeal, or why “Gatsby” has resurfaced in pop culture again and again over the past 100 years.

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