NEW YORK – Organizers of an event celebrating the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby have revealed their headline guest: the author himself.

One of the seminal depictions of the Jazz Age in America, Gatsby still stands to many as the pinnacle of the narrative imagination of F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of Long Island’s most famous residents for many years in the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald is known for his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, and his second outing, The Beautiful and Damned, but it was the 1925 publication of The Great Gatsby that propelled him to literary immortality. The novel follows the antics of Nick Carraway as he wanders through existence, his adventures scintillatingly punctuated by interactions with the famously dashing yet reclusive Jay Gatsby and his siren quest for happiness with Daisy.

Nearly all sources list Fitzgerald, whose first name at birth was Francis, as having died in 1940. However, one of his many descendants, a man listing himself as G. Mercury Fitzgerald VII, has insisted that the famous author is still alive and has remained so because of a combination of longevity treatments and a remarkably low heart rate all these years – in stark contrast to the life lived by his most famous character creation. 

The event in question, 100 Years of Gatsby, is to take place at an as yet undisclosed Long Island location (which may or may not be in West Egg), and Fitzgerald (the descendant) has promised a very large party (because, as Gatsby says in the novel, “At small parties there isn’t any privacy”) but also insisted that no one named Tom Buchanan would be allowed to attend. (Buchanan was, in the novel, the husband of Daisy, Gatsby’s lost love.)

Mercury Fitzgerald said that attendees would be required to dress the part and that the author would make a short yet very memorable appearance at the event.