'Gatsby' turns 100, but never gets old

I was 14 when I first heard about “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel about the unraveling of the American Dream. My uncle had just read “Gatsby” and swore it was the greatest novel ever written. He gushed about the book so much that my father nicknamed him “Gatz.”

Curious about the fuss, I picked up “Gatsby” that summer. While I liked that the story took place on Long Island, I couldn’t see what was so special about a mysterious rich guy obsessed with winning back a woman he’d lost years earlier. I was even more puzzled when Daisy, Gatsby’s beloved, wept after seeing his wardrobe of expensive shirts. No girl I knew ever got emotional over my Beatles’ T-shirts.

I didn’t know it then, but “Gatsby” would be a big part of my life going forward. The novel showed up in an English class at Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park, two American lit courses at Adelphi University, and a graduate school seminar at New York University. I soon realized that Uncle Gatz had been right about “Gatsby” being a wonderful work of fiction. I’ve taught the book at Nassau Community College, Molloy University, and other schools, enjoying every moment.

“Gatsby” turns 100 on Thursday and is more popular than ever, selling thousands of copies a year and inspiring movies, musicals, translations, graphic novels, video games, and a department store’s worth of merchandise. Its title character has become synonymous with wealth, beauty, glamour, and grandeur.

Not surprisingly, the “Gatsby” mystique looms especially large on our “slender riotous island,” as Fitzgerald calls it in the novel.

Here we can sip Gatsby Red at the East End’s Duckwalk Vineyards, dine in style at Gatsby’s Landing in Roslyn, or have a wedding reception overlooking the Atlantic at Gatsby on the Ocean in Wantagh.

We can tour the “Gatsby”-era Oheka Castle in Huntington (and enjoy drinks during Oheka’s afternoon “Gatsby Hour”), or shop for our dream home at Oyster Bay’s East Egg Realty, whose name recalls the luxurious residences of the novel’s old-money crowd.

We can live it up at “Gatsby”-themed club parties across the Island and even drive on roads that celebrate the novel -- Gatsby Lane in Kings Point and Great Gatsby Way (aka Middle Neck Road) in Great Neck, where the book got its start.

But Fitzgerald’s novel is anything but lighthearted. It’s a sobering meditation on America’s values and morals, especially of the wealthy and their wannabes.

Beneath its Roaring ’20s glitz, “Gatsby” has no shortage of sketchy characters: liars, cheats, schemers, hypocrites, philanderers, bigots, wastrels, and social climbers. And for all his romantic yearnings, Gatsby is himself a bootlegger and a bond fraud, maybe worse.

A brooding novel? Absolutely. But also a book that says something important about the America of Fitzgerald’s time -- and as some of my students have observed, possibly ours, too. What’s more, “Gatsby” is a beautifully written tale, whose poignant ending always moves me.

It’s not every day we can say happy birthday to a literary classic, particularly one set in our own backyard. That’s why I’m raising a toast this spring to “Gatsby.” And I’ll give a nod to Uncle Gatz, who knew a terrific book when he read one.

Reader Richard J. Conway lives in Massapequa.