Gatsby's Great Narrator 'Nick' Finally Gets His Own Backstory
Michael Farris Smith followed F. Scott Fitzgerald's "breadcrumbs" to write Nick, a prequel to The Great Gatsby. Revising the book, Smith was struck by the parallels between the 1920s and the 2020s.
Novelist Michael Farris Smith didn't really get The Great Gatsby when he first read it in high school. But when he read the novel again years later, he found himself identifying with the narrator, Nick Carraway; he was drawn to his detachment, his sense of hope.
So he decided to tell Nick's story himself. His new novel, is a prequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 classic. Smith prefers to think of it as a character study of Nick because
