Grateful tribute to Matthew Bruccoli, my friend and literary slugger:

Every year, for at least a couple of decades, I reread The Great Gatsby. But I was never lucky enough to read your definitive edition until I found it in a library in Lima, Peru. It is incredibly more beautiful without all those commas. I know it almost by heart, but I had no sense of Fitzgerald's phenomenal melodic length and rhythm. Thank you, Matt.

Matthew Bruccoli's definitive edition of The Great Gatsby is published in paperback by Scribners, with cover art from the first edition of 1925. (Matt owns the original painting of the cover, which Hemingway describes in A Moveable Feast: "...a garish dust jacket...I took it off to read the book.") Find it at:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743273567/qid=1131017045/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-3894812-4429434?v=glance&s=books&n=507846