A Literary Tasting Menu: My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee
Simply put, the novel’s heart is not political but sensual.
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Posts Tagged: The Great Gatsby
A Tightrope Act: Frozen Charlotte by Susan de Sola
It’s de Sola’s genuineness in portraying this tightrope act that is Frozen Charlotte’s chief virtue.
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What to Read When the Wealth Gap Continues to Widen
Nina Revoyr shares a reading list to celebrate her newest novel, A STUDENT OF HISTORY.
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Studying the City of Angels: A Conversation with Nina Revoyr
Nina Revoyr discusses her new novel, A STUDENT OF HISTORY.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Tom Barbash
Tom Barbash discusses THE DAKOTA WINTERS.
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A Façade of a Woman: R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries
It is incredible to crack open an American novel and wince upon seeing parts of yourself reflected back so strikingly.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #112: Roz Chast
” I think when you really love something, you notice the minutiae. It’s partly how you make something your own.”
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What to Read When You Want to Make America Great Again
Here is a list of books that help remind us what actually makes America great (hint: it’s not tax cuts).
...moreThe Key of Novels
For The Believer Logger, Prashanth Ramakrishna, Theodore Gioia, and Claire Boyle ask the question: if novels were music, in which key would they be written? The post characterizes a couple of musical keys and gives examples of corresponding works of fiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, for example, would be in C minor: “[A] declaration of […]
...moreThe Great Gorsky
At the Guardian, Serbian-born novelist Vesna Goldsworthy explains how the “strong plot” and structure of The Great Gatsby influenced her novel about Russian oligarchs: I know—especially for some Americans—I’ve trodden upon holy ground by reworking what is for them the literary equivalent of the stars and stripes. One American friend told me she’d once written out Gatsby in longhand just to […]
...moreFitzgerald Can Be Funny, Too
The most recent issue of the Strand magazine includes a previously unpublished short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story, titled “Temperature,” was discovered in the Princeton archives by the managing editor of Strand, Andrew Gulli, who described the manuscript as one of Fitzgerald’s more comedic works: “When we think of Fitzgerald we tend to think of tragic novels he […]
...moreFor Sale: Nick Carraway’s House
The house appears to blend in with its landscape, almost disappear beside canopy trees until it’s in danger of becoming an afterthought. There is nothing particularly regal about it. It’s the type of place one of Fitzgerald’s characters would have driven by and forgotten about by the time his motorcar rounded the next bend, or […]
...moreGatsby’s Not So Great Review
In accordance with the 90th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, Time has republished its original review of the novel. The review is just one paragraph and offers “little hint” of the wide spread fame the book would later achieve.
...moreWhen Critics Miss The Point
For Slate, Cristina Hartmann explains how The Great Gatsby went from a marginal publication to a central part of America’s literary canon. According to Hartmann, much of the novel’s early struggles emerged from criticism that misrepresented Fitzgerald’s satirical position, as critics stood too close to a cultural moment: Fitzgerald’s contemporaries were unable to see the novel for what […]
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So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan
Anne Boyd Rioux reviewed So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan today in Rumpus Books.
...moreJay Gatsby Invades Poland
Polish language speakers are getting a new translation of The Great Gatsby, but a modern translation raises all sorts of linguistic issues. The primary difference, of course, is that the original translator wrote under the iron curtain and without the aid of Google: It was, therefore, more difficult for her to track down various details, such […]
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The Rumpus Review of The Great Gatsby
There has never been a great movie adaptation of a novel. This isn’t to say that there’s never been a good movie that was first a book.
...moreIs The Great Gatsby Worth Seeing?
Want to see the new film version of The Great Gatsby but afraid it won’t live up to the book? At The Millions, five English professors pass judgment on the success of the adaptation. Read it to find out what additional source material Baz Luhrmann drew on and whether Carey Mulligan breathed a life into the […]
...moreLiterature’s Most Famous Party Hosts
Some writers are almost as famous for their raucous boozing as they are for their prose. You could fill a book with tales of literary parties—in fact, professional party planner Suzette Field did just that. The book is called A Curious Invitation: The Forty Greatest Parties in Literature, and she’s expounded on a few of those […]
...moreLove in Lake Forest
At The Paris Review, Rumpus contributor Jason Diamond wonders about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s repeated references to Lake Forest, Illinois, determining that the city’s significance derived from the fact that it was the hometown of Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King, who informed the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. “The next day I got […]
...moreJay Gatsby’s Back
Jay McInerney explains why the American classic The Great Gatsby, the last book that Hannah Kingsley-Ma and Kate Geiselman loved, is making a resurgence this year. After all, Jimmy Gatz “invents a hero called Jay Gatsby and then inhabits this creation, just as we hope to reinvent ourselves, some day, any day now, almost certainly starting tomorrow.”
...moreAn Inspiring Home Meets its End
The grand mansion that many believe was the inspiration for The Great Gatsby will soon be no more. F. Scott Fitzgerald was spotted at lavish parties held at the house, parties attended by the likes of Winston Churchill and the Marx brothers. The 13-acre property on Long Island Sound will be divided and the home […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Peter Smith and Charlie Hoey, the Brains Behind the Great Gatsby Game
When you think about The Great Gatsby, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Booze? Flappers? Car crashes?
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Point of View and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Flexible First Person
We spend an enormous amount of our lives … thinking about other people, their motives, their desires and their opinions.
...moreThe Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
Good news! Your humble Rumpus Sunday editor, who was locked inside the Public Storage in North Berkeley for the better part of last night while helping his nine-months-pregnant friend move, has been rescued by the cops! And today, I’m excited about life and the book blogs because I’m free, so free, and because this week, […]
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