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
Worlds of the Imaginary Ep 1: H. G. Wells's The Time Machine
In this inaugural episode of our subseries Worlds of the Imaginary, Troy University freshman Jason Frye and Kirk Curnutt discuss the grandfather of all sci-fi novels: H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, first published in 1895 when its author was still in his twenties. Although not the first-ever time travel adventure (Wells himself had previously published a story called "The Chronic Argonauts"), the story of an unnamed scientist who roars 800,000 years into the future established the template for humanity's desire to rocket around the clock. Our hosts discuss the political symbolism of the two races the traveler encounters, the Eloi and the Morlocks, and why the story includes a love interest, Weena, when there's no love. We also discuss the narrative frame and the killer ending, dropping references to Superman, Planet of the Apes, and other quintessential time travel tales.