Fast cars and beautiful women at Nirvana: W. Gould Brokaw, the real Jay Gatsby

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W. Gould Brokaw at the wheel of his Renault racing car, Ormond Beach, 1904.
Dan wrote up a very thoughtful piece last week on the idea that troubled used car dealer and bootlegger Max Gerlach was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s inspiration for the Great Gatsby. It’s a theory that Fitzgerald scholars have floated before, but Dan examined it from the car angle, with access to materials from recently digitized sources that previous investigators didn’t have. His conclusion was that, more likely, Ger…

Bootleggers, used car dealers and The Great Gatsby – on the trail of Max Gerlach

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The intertwining of the automobile into the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby involves more than just props to illustrate the Jazz Age setting: The plot hinges on Myrtle Wilson’s death by automobile, and Fitzgerald even named one of the characters, Jordan Baker, after two American automotive marques. Also, as it turns out, automobiles lie at the heart of one of the book’s largest mysteries.
Literary types and Fitzgerald fanatics have long debated the real-life inspiration…