My take
I read an annotated Shakespeare play last year. It was a bit overwhelming, nice and helpful, but a bit too much. Gatsby obviously didn't need as much minute translation as Shakespeare did, so this was an utter delight. The intro from Towles was fun though nothing earth shattering, but the story itself finally clicked for me. The images were just as enlightening as the textual descriptions, though those were really fun too. I also loved so much of New York that is in this book. I literally changed a line in my short story (Sam the real estate agent and Javier her client) by adding in a line in the intro about entering the city from the Queens Burroughs bridge. The story made more sense with the intro and annotations than it did the first time. There were moments of glory in the writing itself though nothing earth shattering like in Towles himself or in Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.
