Authored by Brittany E. Partinico

On March 13, 1926, the “Great Neck News” editorial first addressed the allegations present in Owen Davis’s playwright depiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” where critics surmised that the peninsula of Great Neck was loosely based on his fictionalized “West Egg” (Lanigan 1926, 18). Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, not only sparked enlightenment in American culture and addressed the “American Dream” regarding cumulative wealth, but also sparked a debate amongst New Yorkers and Long Islanders as to whom was synonymously represented as the infamous “gaudy, West Egg” (Pumphrey 2011, 115-119). The presumptions of critics did not sit well with Great Neck residents, with feelings that the correlation to the novel would evoke preconceptions and undesirable impressions of Great Neck. Great Neck residents felt the “unfair” symposium by critics was presumptuous based on the lack of factual evidence present in the novel as well as the bias being reflected merely on Fitzgerald’s short-lived residency in Great Neck (Lanigan 1926, 18).