"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away."This line may have failed to focus our attention when we first read the book in our younger days. Now, however, as a Japanese seismologist and an American geophysicist (and student of Japanese culture), we would be greatly remiss for failing to take greater note of this statement. Indeed, as The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, it occurred to us that the earthquake Fitzgerald might have been thinking of was the Great Kanto earthquake, which occurred on September 1, 1923 and devastated the Tokyo metropolitan area. The Great Gatsby is a story about people in Long Island, New York. The distance between the epicenter of the Kanto earthquake and Long Island is about 10,000 km.
The front page of The New York Times of September 2, 1923 (larger version), carried a headline about the earthquake, along with several stories about various aspects of the disaster. On page 2, a boxed item with the following title appeared: "Japanese Earthquake Recorded Across the World From Hawaii to London by Observatory Instruments." This item tells how the earthquake was recorded on seismographs in Hilo, Hawaii; Berkeley, Calif.; Washington, D.C.; and West Bromwich, England. It seems likely that Fitzgerald read this item that Sunday morning, and that this was the inspiration for his striking sentence.Mid-October 1922-April 1924: Fitzgeralds rent house at 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck, Long Island. Mid-April 1924: Fitzgeralds sail for France. May 1924: Fitzgeralds visit Paris, then leave for The Riviera; stop at Grimm's Park Hotel in Hyares and settle in June at Villa Marie Valescure, St. Raphael. Summer-Autumn 1924: FSF writes The Great Gatsby.