SOURCE: Mansell, Darrel. “The Jazz History of the World in The Great Gatsby.” English Language Notes 25 (December 1987): 57-62.

In the following essay, Mansell suggests possible sources of and purposes for a reference to a jazz work in a scene of Gatsby.

Fitzgerald said in retrospect that his first novel had actually been not one book but three, and his second novel two. He wanted his third novel to be more coherent: more spare, economical and “intricately patterned.” Indeed he wanted the new one to be “perfect.”¹

The critical consensus has been that what he produced is close to perfect. In The Great Gatsby there seem almost no loose, unworking parts—no automobile wheels lying in the ditch like the one after a Gatsby party, “unconnected to the car by any physical bond” (Chapter III). The novel is said to have “perfection of form,” to be “compact,” “tightly structured...