| "It transpired after a confused five minutes that the
man had heard Gatsby's name around his office in a connection which he
either wouldn't reveal or didn't fully understand. This was his day
off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out 'to see.'
"It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right. Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so became authorities upon his past, had increased all summer until he fell short of being news. Contemporary legends such as the 'underground pipe-line to Canada' attatched themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn't easy to say." Alexandra Beiriger |