The cover of the first printing of
The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of art in American
literature. It depicts disembodied eyes and a mouth over a blue skyline, with
images of naked women reflected in the irises. A little-known artist named
Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in
the midst of writing it.The cover was completed before the novel; Fitzgerald
was so enamored with it that he told his publisher he had "written it
into" the novel.Fitzgerald's remarks about incorporating the painting into
the novel led to the interpretation that the eyes are reminiscent of those of
fictional optometrist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg(depicted on a faded commercial
billboard near George Wilson's auto repair shop) which Fitzgerald described as
"blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no
face, but instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a
non-existent nose." Although this passage has some resemblance to the
painting, a closer explanation can be found in the description of Daisy
Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark
cornices and blinding signs.Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast that
when Fitzgerald lent him a copy of The Great Gatsby to read, he immediately
disliked the cover, but "Scott told me not to be put off by it, that it
had to do with a billboard along a highway in Long Island that was important in
the story. He said he had liked the jacket and now he didn't like it."
