Two great books

Two of my favourite books have a lot in common. Strangely, I’ve only just realized this, although I read both books for the first time more than 30 years ago.

See if you can guess which books they are. Here are some clues:

• Mercifully, they are both short: one has 171 pages, the other 210 (in my versions).
• Both are set in the US and written by men: one American, the other Canadian.
• Both are set in New York: one on Long Island, the other in Manhattan.
• Both are set in the 1920s: one at the start of the decade, the other towards the end.
• Both have money as a key element, although one is a novel and the other a true story.
• Both have a happy beginning but a less happy ending.

OK, here’s one more clue: the titles of both books start with the words The Great... Aha!

Yes, the two books are F. Scott Fitzerarld’s classic novel of the “jazz age”, The Great Gatsby, and John Kenneth (J.K.) Galbraith’s famous description of the stock market crash, The Great Crash 1929.

My copies of these books also have something else in common, which is somewhat bizarre. They are signed by famous people who, at first sight, have nothing to do with the books.

The Great Gatsby bears the signature of Steven van Zandt, otherwise known as "Little Steven", the guitarist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. He signed outside his hotel in Paris in 2002. The book, which I was re-reading at the time, was all I had with me. But it seemed appropriate, as Steven is very much a New York person.

The Great Crash 1929 is signed by two top women’s tennis players: Venus Williams and Ana Ivanovic. Both were playing in Zurich recently and, again, the book was all I had to hand. But this also seemed appropriate: tennis is a rich sport, all players crash at some point, and Ivanovic is studying finance when she’s not playing tennis.

I was re-reading The Great Crash 1929 because this week is the anniversary of the dramatic stock market crash of 29 October 1929, which went down in history as “Black Tuesday”. The current crisis has also led to many comparisons with that crash.

How valid are the comparisons? There are certainly many similarities. I'll write more about those on Wednesday. The last word for today goes to The Great Gatsby, and its stunning final sentence, which provides another link between the two books:

• “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”