Whilst The Great Gatsby (1925) may be thought of as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, we’ve got a better idea for a sequel.

The Great Gutsby catches up with Nick Carraway’s great grandson Chad Carraway as he indulges in the splendours of modern capitalism in Long Island, New York.

Armed with his enormous gut, Chad Carraway doesn’t view his belly as a problem. It’s society’s fault, not his, and what follows is a poignant, funny, and uplifting tale of one young man letting it all hang out.

The Great Gutsby as a Love Letter to Maintaining an Enormous Gut

Written by an unknown ghost writer self-publishing ebooks on Amazon, the work borrows liberally from Fitzgerald’s classic work.

This means some of the prose is quite beautiful in its lyricism.

It also means a lot of the classic text’s magnificence is destroyed by constant references to Chad Carraway’s leering bloody great big beer belly. Behold:

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his gut. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his enormous gut.”

The narrative arc involves Chad’s narcissism—a preoccupation, obsession even, with his gut and his belief it makes him a manly form.

As he notes in the first chapter:

“I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity (to my gut).”

A deeply romantic tale about one man and his gut, Chad’s interest in hot stuff Daisy dissipates as his beer belly comes to dominate his existence:

“His heart beat faster and faster (and his beer belly wobbled) as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his gut would never romp again like the gut of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. Or, at least, tried to. For, alas, his enormous beer belly was the blockade to their potential intertwinement.”

Due to his physical obstacle, Chad realises the path to his fulfilment as a human being is not in the woman of his dreams. But in the ventures of his ever-increasing waistline and the many cocktails and fattening foods he can consume to slake his protruding rump.

Thus, here is a captivating modern tale about excess and the fanciful desire to think inwardly, rather than outwardly, to become larger than the proportion of one’s…

Well, we don’t know actually. We read the book. It’s The Great Gatsby but the noun “gut” inserted in at random intervals.

Lazy? Well, maybe. Perhaps it’s a bitingly effective satire you just can’t get your beer belly around. Think about it.

The Online Reviews From Gut Enthusiasts

Members of the Beer Gut Organisation flocked to the work to celebrate everything to do with bellies, but reviews for The Great Gutsby are scathing.

Here’s an assortment of the best ones:

“Shine a light! I went into this book expecting to read something CELEBRATING manly men and the perfection of the form that is the beer belly (gut). Instead what I read were a bunch of flowery shite with fancy words and wondering about someone called Daisy when he should have renamed Daisy something like, I dunno… Gut! Yeah, that’d been great. And then he marries Gut! because she’s dead fit and is in love with his beer gut. This would be a true message to the Beer Gut Organisation (BGO) and its cause… instead we get the words of a PANSY! Sod it! I’m going for a pint.” beergutblokeoioi

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“this garbage is just that. garbage! im the director of the beer gut organisation and I call bullshit on the great gutsby! theres nothing ‘great’ about this book! id say it isnt great at all. the opposite of that. shit frankly! why if i met the writer of this book id literally HEADBUTT them. uve been warned fella.” Director of The Beer Gut Organisation a Mr. Charlie “Beer Belly” Smith

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“This REVOLTING work is an insult to literature and the fine artistry achieved by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Never in one’s life has one become so appalled by a most repugnant form of literary prose! One is so repulsed by this work one has written directly to The Beer Gut Organisation (BGO) to complain most vociferously this organisation has allowed such a profane work to defame the good name of beer bellies across the land. The Great Gutsby is an act of heresy! One believes all copies should be burned in the streets!” Dame Penelope Winchester III