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The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Presents Gatsby Centennial Readings
On April 10, 2025, The Great Gatsby---widely heralded as among the greatest of all American novels---celebrates its centennial. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society is marking this landmark with a weekly chapter-by-chapter reading of the novel featuring eleven of the most significant American fiction writers of our day. Episodes will be released weekly beginning on February 13. Here is the schedule:
February 13 Chapter 1 Jonathan Franzen
February 20 Chapter 2 Jane Smiley
February 27 Chapter 3 Ann Beattie
March 6 Chapter 4 Joseph O’Neill
March 13 Chapter 5 Robert Olen Butler
March 20 Chapter 6 Richard Russo
March 27 Chapter 7 Kim Stanley Robinson/ Maxine Hong Kingston
April 3 Chapter 8 Francine Prose
April 10 Chapter 9 Gish Jen/ Alice McDermott
Episodes are also available for download on the Fitzgerald Society website (www.fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org) and on the Society's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@f.scottfitzgeraldsociety8488). It's truly a different and unique experience luxuriating in Fitzgerald's luminescent prose hearing his cadences read aloud by these voices.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Presents Gatsby Centennial Readings
Gatsby@100 Chapter 7 featuring Kim Stanley Robinson and Maxine Hong Kingston
Kim Stanley Robinson is, according to The New Yorker, “generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers.” He is the author of more than twenty novels, including the Orange County Trilogy, the Mars Trilogy, and the Science in the Capital Series. His 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future won the Best Foreign Novel award at the 2024 Grand Prix L’Imaginaire, honoring the best fiction or science fiction book published in France in 2023. His most recent book is The High Sierra: A Love Story (2022).
Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her 1980 non-fiction book China Men won the National Book Award; her 1989 novel Tripmaster Monkey won the PEN West Award; and her 2006 anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace won the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing. In 1997, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton, and in 2014 President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts.
Chapter 7 finds the rising drama of Jay Gatsby's quest to prove himself worthy of East Egg explode as the cuckolded Tom Buchanan outs our mysteriously ostentatious man of wealth as "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere." After a clash at the Plaza Hotel, Nick and company are complicit in the shocking demise of Myrtle Wilson, mowed down by a "death car" under the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. As Nick realizes, Gatsby faces a moment of doubt in his ability to realize the special destiny he believes he deserves.