OTHER THINGS CHANGED AND UNCHANGED IN THE EDITING OF GATSBY. Sarah Graham identifies some other editing decisions in revising GATSBY that are not structural but which add to the felicities that are everywhere in the book:
* “Daisy” was originally called “Ada”. “Daisy” seems better—fresh, hopeful, American.
* Gatsby’s guests gossip about the mystery man: that “he killed a man once” and was “a German spy during the war”. That speculation remained but the suggestion that Gatsby is “a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm” was dropped from the final edition. I agree. Gatsby is an American figure with no hint of European aristocracy.
* I was delighted to see that some of the great lines in the book were there from the beginning. Graham gives examples, including: “Her voice is full of money.” and “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy.”