The Great Gatsby -- And Where He Is Buried

I always get a kick out of the timing of some posts. Earlier this morning I posted some data regarding the housing needs projection for the Bakken oil patch. I hinted where the data was presented.

Now, a reader sends me a link to an article which provided that answer in a very unexpected way.

At the second link, which is about The Great Gatsby (and still playing in Williston):

My favorite scene in the movie - blink hard and you will miss it - is the scene of the dirt poor life of early 20th century North Dakota that James Gatz came from before he re-styled himself as Jay Gatsby of West Egg on Long Island, New York. The location of Gatsby's boyhood North Dakota upbringing was not an invention of the film, like hip-hop music in the 1920's. It is in the Fitzgerald novel. Fitzgerald himself was from Minnesota where he likely had heard stories of the extreme poverty and brutal climate of western North Dakota.

History teaches that times and fortunes change, and times and fortunes have changed a lot in North Dakota. Recently, at the University Club in downtown Chicago, more than a dozen North Dakota business leaders spoke at the Opportunities in North Dakota and the Bakken Summit. Topics included oil and gas, real estate, and service businesses. Wow, Mr Gatsby, if you could see North Dakota now.

This is a must-read article. Of course, I wouldn't post anything about the Bakken that isn't a must-read, would I?

A big "thank you" to the reader for sending me this link/story. I had seen the headline earlier but had not visited the site until I got that note.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

By the way, I don't recall reading The Great Gatsby in high school or college. I read it for the first time about three years ago. In fact, I read it a couple of times; I don't think I really "got it" the first time I read it. I was always fascinated by "West Egg." Oh, yes, that reminds me. I was in my F. Scott Fitzgerald phase. I was trying to remember why I would have read The Great Gatsby. But that was it. I was in my F. Scott Fitzgerald phase, reading bios of him and Zelda. I think I've talked about Zelda before on this blog. Oh, yes. Here it is. I won't repeat.

For those who are interested in a bit of trivia, here's an interesting story on where F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, was born in St. Paul, Minn.; he's associated with that city, as well as Paris, the Riviera and New York. But he's buried in Rockville, Md., outside Washington, D.C., next to a highway between strip malls and train tracks.

At the time of his death, Fitzgerald considered himself a failure. After the Great Depression, readers and publishers were no longer interested in tales of the Jazz Age, and he was hard-pressed to find his novels on bookstore shelves.

When he died unexpectedly before Christmas in 1940, Fitzgerald's wife and his lawyer arranged for his body to be sent from California to Maryland, to be buried next to his father in a family plot at St. Mary's Catholic Church.