AMST 246: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner with Prof. Wai Chee Dimock

Lecture 4 - Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby [September 13, 2011]

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Overview:

Professor Wai Chee Dimock begins her discussion of The Great Gatsby by highlighting Fitzgerald’s experimental counter-realism, a quality that his editor Maxwell Perkins referred to as “vagueness.” She argues that his counter-realism comes from his animation of inanimate objects, giving human dimensions of motion and emotion to things as varied as lawns, ashes, juicers, telephones, and automobiles.  She concludes with a short meditation on race in The Great Gatsby and encourages a closer reading of the novel’s instances of racial differentiation.

Reading Assignment:

Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Resources:

Credit List [PDF]