AmericanStudies: April 12-13, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Fellow GatsbyStudiers
[On April 10th,
1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published
by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my
problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and
important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So
this week I’ve highlighted a handful of them, leading up to this weekend post
featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]
Four great
public scholarly takes on Fitzgerald’s novel, and a request for more!
1)
Matthew
Teutsch: My friend and online collaborator Matthew has written about
Fitzgerald’s novel multiple times, but I particularly enjoyed the chance to
read this multi-part account (part two is linked at the bottom) of his
excellent Fulbright lecture on the book (and not because he engages so
thoughtfully with my own takes, although I sure do appreciate that).
2)
Stephanie
Powell Watts: In that lecture Matthew also engages with Watts’s take on the
book in this LitHub piece, which remains one of the single most thoughtful intersections
of autobiography and analysis I’ve ever encountered. A must-read!
3)
Wesley
Morris: Morris’s intro to the 2021 Modern Library edition of the novel,
reprinted by The Paris Review at that hyperlink, is also a must-read
(honestly all four of these pieces are for anyone who wants to engage with
Fitzgerald’s novel beyond its own stunning prose). I particularly like that he
doesn’t take for granted our reading of the book—yes, it’s often assigned by
teachers, including me, but we should still think long and hard about why we
read it, as Morris models so thoughtfully here.
4)
Jillian Cantor: I tried
to engage with Daisy Buchanan a lot and Myrtle Wilson a bit in my earlier posts
this week, but there’s still much more to say about women in Fitzgerald’s
novel, and Cantor’s LitHub piece says a great deal very powerfully.
5)
Add your suggestions (including your own work)
here!
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts, yours or others’?
