In Gatsby's shadow Book

In his preface, Haeg explains that this book is "not a literary biography but a biography of one man's character--how it was formed by his world, the choices he made, the price he paid for those choices." According to the author, Flandrau had the talent but not the purpose, passion, and resolve required for greatness. Flandrau disliked the self-promotion that Fitzgerald and Lewis, his Minnesota contemporaries, practiced; he believed that great literature would find its own audience. Flandrau despised writing for slick magazines that dumbed down a writer's style--though writing for those very periodicals had honed the clarity and concision that marked Fitzgerald and Lewis at their best. If these two writers shadow Flandrau here, it is because they help explain why Flandrau never fulfilled his early promise as a writer.