The Great Gatsby, American Fictional Triumph?

My sister Anna loves this book. She doesn't know why, she read it in high school, and loved it. On this premise I bought it when I saw it in the book store. It was good. I found out that F. Scott Fitzgerald was friends with Ernest Hemingway and the used to sip coffee at Parisian cafes. Until they had a falling out, due to jealousy on Hemingway's part, the book said this and I doubt it, what did Hemingway resident bad A have to be jealous about. Anyway the book was fine, but given all its hype I expected quite a bit more. I did stumble on an interesting letter that F. Scott wrote to his publisher. You see The Great Gatsby was not well received when it first came out. Its small first edition sold slowly and the small second printing didn't even sell out. This is strange given the novel's high standing in the current literary world. One list I found ranked it 2nd in comparative greatness. What happened in between. Well the little extras in the edition I bought provided the answers. The publisher pulled strings and contacts to get the book entered into education networks. They pushed to have it used in literature classes which is where the vast majority of the novel's readers have encountered it. My thoughts would be that the book is mediocre. I enjoyed reading it, but my mind wasn't blown. I will say it is a novel with substance, if one wished they could deepen their exploration of it but a superficial read generates superficial results. According to the extra commentary F. Scott wrote it in an impressionist style and a student could pull abstract ideas if pressured, but my feeling is that the novel is not so amazing. That a publisher propagated it into education circles to turn a higher profit on a project that didn't produce as expected.