Great Gatsby and Great Libraries: Saturday Links

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels are some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read. I remember being awe-struck by the opening paragraphs of Tender is the Night, and The Great Gatsby is a book I have read three times and would still wish to read again. This week, Letters of Note featured an exchange of letters between Fitzgerald and his editor after Fitzgerald had finished writing Gatsby and was submitting it for publication. I completely agree with the editor's opinion:

I think the novel is a wonder. I'm taking it home to read again and shall then write my impressions in full;—but it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour, and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality. It has a kind of mystic atmosphere at times that you infused into parts of "Paradise" and have not since used. It is a marvelous fusion, into a unity of presentation, of the extraordinary incongruities of life today. And as for sheer writing, it's astonishing.... (read more)

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Where better to read writing like Fitzgerald's than in a library that rivals its beauty? Last month, The Art of Manliness featured "The Libraries, Studies, and Writing Rooms of 15 Famous Men." Here are two of my favorites:

Rudyard Kipling's Study

William Randolph Hearst's "Gothic Study"