PHOTOGRAPH: Poet Alan Walowitz with his copy of The Great Gatsby Anthology in front of 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck, New York, where where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived from 1922 to 1924 — and where, according to a recent book, Fitzgerald wrote much of The Great Gatsby.
AUTHOR’S NOTES ON THE PHOTOGRAPH: Interestingly, and probably to the relief of the current owners, there’s no historical marker in front of this Long Island house to indicate its literary and historical importance. But now there’s a picture of a proud contributor, holding his copy The Great Gatsby Anthology, which I’d gladly give to the current owners of the property if they’d like to display it.
The photo above — courtesy of the Great Neck Public Library — was probably taken at a time closer to when the Fitzgeralds lived there. The photo below — by Joshua Bright for The New York Times — shows the house in all its reconfigured and updated grandeur. It’s quite a lovely house, not quite fitting the Buchanans, but probably grander than the house Fitzgerald imagined for Nick Carraway.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My poem “Great Neck Record” appears in the The Great Gatsby Anthology — and other poems of mine can be found in journals and on ezines and blogs (including Silver Birch Press) many of which can be easily googled. I do live in Great Neck but, not in Fitzgerald’s part of town. I teach some days at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and other days at St. John’s University, on the other side of the Nassau-Queens border.
Silver Birch Press 