Books: Incorruptible Yegg

• Share

THE GREAT GATSBY—F. Scott Fitzgerald—Scribner—($2.00). Still the brightest boy in the class, Scott Fitzgerald holds up his hand. It is noticed that his literary trousers are longer, less bell-bottomed, but still precious. His recitation concerns Daisy Fay who, drunk as a monkey the night before she married Tom Buchanan, muttered: "Tell 'em all Daisy's chang' her mind." A certain penniless Navy lieutenant was believed to be swimming out of her emotional past. They gave her a cold bath, she married Buchanan, settled expensively at West Egg, L. I., where soon appeared one lonely, sinister Gatsby, with mounds of mysterious gold, ginny habits and a marked influence on Daisy. He was the lieutenant, of course, still swimming. That he never landed was due to Daisy's baffled withdrawal to the fleshly, marital mainland. Due also to Buchanan's disclosure that the mounds of gold were ill-got. Nonetheless, Yegg Gatsby remained Daisy's incorruptible dream, unpleasantly removed in person toward the close of the book by an accessory in oil-smeared dungarees.