Today Is...The Publication Of The Great Gatsby

There are some books that are claimed as classics and are well deserved of the title and some that feel as if they have been slapped with a sticker marked classic by literary types but don't really live up to it and that's how i feel about 'The Great Gatsby'.
The Great Gatsby was a decent enough novella, set in one summer of Roaring Twenties America, the high end of society at the time, it is a slow builder with a brutal ending and the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, does a very good job of creating the era in your minds eye but he was very much living by his mantra that you should write what you know about as he and his wife were very much part of the glitz, glamor, and debauchery of the Roaring Twenties high society.
The book was largely ignored at the time it was originally published and it wasn't until the book was given away free to US soldiers during the second World War that it became widely read and that is where i believe the term 'classic' comes from.
The book, originally titled 'The Great Trimalchio of West Egg' became 'The Great Gatsby' at the insistence of the publishers, was read by the 150,000+ military, became synonymous with America WW2 in much the same way that whenever i hear certain songs it takes me back to a certain time and place and my good or bad experiences of that time so The Great Gatsby will hold many memories for the soldiers of that time, passed onto the next generation and that was how this 'classic' was born, a great PR move.
I may be wrong but that's how i see a good, if short, book becomes elevated to a status that it doesn't in all honestly deserve.
That said, i would recommend it as a decent enough read but there is a reason why it barely sold at the time and it took a captive audience during a World War to elevate it above the other novels languishing in the bargain bin of the local bookshops.