Introduction to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. To one who has spent his professional life in the world of fiction, the request to write an introduction offers many facets of temptation. The present writer succumbs to one of them. With as much equanimity as he can muster, he will discuss the critics among us, trying to revolve as centripetally as possible about the novel which comes hereafter in this volume. To begin with, I must say that I have no cause to grumble about the press of any book of mine. If Jack, who liked my last book, didn't like this one, well, then John, who despised my last book, did like it. So it all mounts up to the same total. But I think the writers of my time were spoiled in that regard. Living in generous days, when there was plenty of space on the page for endless ratiocination about fiction, a space largely created by Mencken because of his disgust for what passed his criticism before he arrived and made his public, they were encouraged by his bravery and his tremendous and profound love of letters. In his case the jackals are already tearing at what they imprudently regard as a moribund lion, but I don't think many men of my age can regard him without reverence, nor fail to regret that he got off the train. To any new effort by a new man he brought an attitude. He made many mistakes, such as his early undervaluation of Hemingway, but he came equipped. He never had to go back for his tools. And now that he's abandoned American fiction to its own devices there's no one to take his place. If the present writer had seriously to attend some of the efforts of political diehards to tell him the values of a métier he has practiced since boyhood, well then, babies, you can take this number out and shoot him at dawn. But all that is less discouraging in the past few years than the growing cowardice of the reviewers. overworked, they seem not to care for books, and it's been saddening, recently, to see young talents of fiction expire from sheer lack of a stage to act on. West, McHugh, and many others. I'm circling closer to my theme song, which is that I'd like to communicate to such of them who read this novel a healthy cynicism toward contemporary reviews. But under your vanity one can permit oneself a suit of chain mail in any profession. Your pride is all you have, and if you let it be tampered with by a man who has a dozen prides to tamper with before lunch, you're promising yourself a lot of disappointments that a hard-boiled professional has learned to spare himself. This novel is a case in point. Because the pages weren't loaded with big names of big things and the subject not concerned with farmers who were the heroes of the moment, there