Thursday, March 11, 2010

Seven best novels about WASPs

Tad Friend, author of Cheerful Money, named a "7 Best Novels About WASPs" list for Flashlight Worthy.

One novel on the list:
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald was a wistful snob, ever anxious about his place in the firmament: as a youth, finding his father listed in the St. Paul Social Register as a “grocer,” he penciled in the word “wholesale” before it. And in this book he transmutes that anxiety into Jay Gatsby's poignantly ardent social climbing. The self-made Gatsby longs, tragically, for the approval of those who — as Ann Richards once said of George H.W. Bush — were born on third base and thought they hit a triple.
Read about the other books on the list.

The Great Gatsby appears among Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, Jackie Collins' six best books, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels.

--Marshal Zeringue