Scott Fitzgerald was called the laureate of the Jazz Age. The Great Gatsby is a cynical celebration of the post-Great War Long Island/New York world of get-rich-quick. The narrator, Nick Carraway, sympathetically records the pathos of Gatsby's romantic Dream which founders on the reality of corruption, the insulated selfishness of Tom and Daisy, and the cutting edge of violence. 'His style sings of home, his message is despair', wrote Cyril Connoly. It is terse, spare, lucid, imperishable, a novel of compassion, wry wisdom and narrative verve.