Following up on 100 years of The Great Gatsby, Part 1 – My Great Gatsby, the second part continues to celebrate the book’s 100th anniversary with more reflections and references from one reader’s perspective. To each their own Great Gatsby!
Reading The Great Gatsby in translation
As detailed in the previous post about the book’s Hungarian editions, my journey started with a translation. Honestly, I don’t remember when I read The Great Gatsby in English for the first time. (Full disclosure, I haven’t seen any of the movie adaptations either.) There were only a few copies, or perhaps just one, in the library of the English department, and obviously none in any other libraries. But the translation, which focused more on the text than the censor’s and publisher’s requirements, weathered the times well. To meet censorship, the Afterword was probably good enough, once Comrade A. stamped the permit to publish.
Its well traveled Protestant priest translator, Elek Máthé, had also translated fiction by Sir Walter Scott, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Arthur Miller, Harper Lee, and George Orwell. He became familiar with the United States after visiting parishes in the in 1940, and, luckily, managed to board the last ship back to Europe.
The Great Gatsby, beating the odds
The Great Gatsby is a popular title with Rutgers students, the source of mini-posters they create as part of the library instruction class exercise.
Followed by several other editions and a new Hungarian translation, the first one is memorable simply because it exists, for all the odds, as opposed to Orwell’s works that had a long wait and were published as Samizdat literature. As early as the 1960s, Hungarian readers were able to get an idea of the American Dream, right after an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the Russian influence (and troops) during the 1956 revolution. Over 200,000 people left the country, and about 40,000 found a new home in the United States, severing ties with Hungary – friends and family included.
Oddly, after Fitzgerald’s successes,The Great Gatsby initially had a rather lukewarm reception upon its publication. The book gained recognition only around World War II, partly because copies were distributed to soldiers, and partly because it explored the American Dream from a different perspective.
The American Dream (but at what cost?), is poignantly pointed out in all Hungarian reviews in 1962, along with the author’s alcoholism, heart disease, and early death, but my fellow Hungarians have always been well-versed in reading between the lines. The West Egg as symbol of Western civilization? In your (non-American) dream, Mr. Critic! Looking for the message? The moral compass that tells the reader how to live? There’s none – which everyone found so refreshing in a culture defined by party rules, rules that were arbitrarily imposed and strictly enforced. Well, except for heavy episodic drinking, which had a green light at the workplace, whether a hospital or university, let alone cooperatives and factories.
The Great Gatsby, challenging translators and readers alike
As a translator challenged by minor details from texts rooted in the past, I often wonder about the task here. Just a single example: How can one give back the feel of the commuter life, whether today or 100 years ago? To a specific audience? I don’t envy translators of past centuries without easy access to information, travel, and, of course, the internet. Living in the tri-state area, one has a good grasp of swiftly changing landscapes from urban to suburban. As the book touches upon topics such as urbanization and modernization in its settings of New York City and Long Island, with some imagination, the reader can picture the rapid urban expansion and modernization of the United States in the 1920s. But cutting-edge technology, new consumer goods, and a fast-paced lifestyle might not mean much outside the area. Nothing can replace the on-site exposure, either in Manhattan or on Long Island.
As I recall, my first-ever trip to Long Island was not an earth-shattering experience. We picked up a Mazda Miata convertible purchased there, and driving through the mostly working class neighborhood, Long Island was no different from most hard-working American small towns. But the next time was very different. The goal of that trip was to collect documents and artifacts donated to the Center of Alcohol Studies Library and Archives by an acclaimed New York physician and longtime instructor at the Summer School of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers. The part of Long Island where we arrived was a whole different universe with its spacious two-story mansions. However, compared to the Hamptons, as I discovered later, it still counted as the poor section of Long Island. Ironically, the donation also included a bust of Bill W, one of the cofounders of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was founded in 1939 after Prohibition was repelled and alcohol became free to everyone and anyone. For visual types, a trip like that can inspire the translator, but which publisher would foot the bill?
The Great Gatsby, for ESL book clubs
The Penguin edition, recommended to English Language Learners.
The Great Gatsby is an excellent short text for advanced ESL learners and is listed in the English Language Learners Collection. As a non-native speaker of English and translator, I find so many relevant components lost in translation in most books, which, with a hat tip to the fellow translator, would always make always great conversation starters for non-native speakers.
First, there is the usual challenge of cultural references, which would each warrant their own footnote, untranslatable but relevant to set the tone for a scene, such as the melancholy of the Beale Street Blues. Next is Jay Gatsby’s half-military, half-brotherly language and the contrast between his “new money” and Tom Buchanan‘s “old money” speech, which is there to reflect the shifting social landscape of the 1920s: the newly rich, often benefiting from illicit activities, are set to challenge traditional aristocratic wealth. Last but not least, Daisy’s untranslatable voice, pun intended, which is so well painted in words by the author that one can hear that “indiscreet voice,” as Nick describes it. In English, she clearly sounds incurably dishonest, I wonder what language can interpret that the best.
With its layers allowing personal interpretation across languages, The Great Gatsby would be a perfect candidate for a bibliotherapy-inspired book club discussion with non-native speakers of English, including immigrants facing similar challenges of upward social mobility.
Related resources from Rutgers University Libraries and beyond
The Great Gatsby
- Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The Great Gatsby. C. Scribner. – Available online from HathiTrust Digital Library Full View Worldwide. The full text of the book is also freely available as an ebook from Project Gutenberg.
- Turvey, C., & Fitzgerald, F. S. (Francis S. (2008). The Great Gatsby. Pearson Education. – This is the edition recommended to non-native speakers. 25 print copies are available in the Robeson Library English Language Learners Collection.
The Great Gatsby Centennial
- Fitzgerald, F. S. (Francis S., West, J. L. W., & Churchwell, S. (Eds.). (2025). The Cambridge Centennial Edition of the Great Gatsby (First edition.). Cambridge University Press. – An authoritative collector’s edition provides fascinating cultural and historical context and many rich illustrations. Readers from all backgrounds will appreciate anew Fitzgerald’s classic work of illicit desire and glittering parties among the super-rich in jazz-age New York.
- Scott, A. O. (2025, March 27). It’s Gatsby’s World, We Just Live in It. The New York Times. – Interpreting the book from a contemporary perspective: What does its hero tell us about how we see ourselves?
- Goto, Z. (2025, March 8). It’s the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby and New York is ready to party, old sport. National Geographic. – A hundred years after The Great Gatsby shone a light on extravagant Long Island mansions and secret speakeasies, the spirit of the Roaring Twenties is returning to New York.
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(Digital PUL) – In February 2025, this online exhibit from the Princeton University Library, which holds the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, opened up its collection and curated this exhibit to showcase “the journey of The Great Gatsby to its level of acclaim is also the journey of “Fitz” from an intriguing young writer to a canonized literary superstar, and the media response to his third novel shows the evolution of the cultural perception of Fitzgerald from his early works to his masterpiece.”