It’s not that I think it’s *displacing* another work. I don’t really look at books as necessarily “period pieces”. I didn’t like The Great Gatsby because I didn’t see the point of it. There was no redeeming “brightness”. Anywhere. It was just one ugly mess after another. The characters- had no character. But then, I really don’t enjoy tragic, hopeless stories.
It *was* depressing. Pretentious, sordid, & maudlin. I don’t understand why anyone would tell a story like that. Or even more, why anyone would want to read it- let alone others keep re-telling it.
I like Edith Wharton better & Hemingway even less than Fitzgerald. It’s just a matter of personal taste.
Its’ brightness was in the lyrical prose. It’s a model that other writers (J.D. Salinger especially) have aspired to.