Free: The Great Gatsby & Other Major Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald

in Literature | June 3rd, 2013

In some pop­u­lar imag­in­ings, F. Scott Fitzger­ald becomes so asso­ci­at­ed with the jazz age friv­o­li­ty he keen­ly observed, and the social climb­ing of his best-known char­ac­ter, that much of his pre- and post-Gats­by writ­ing gets occlud­ed. While Fitzger­ald may have been an alco­holic spend­thrift who pre­ferred the fin­er things and those who wore them, he was also a very dis­ci­plined and seri­ous writer, espe­cial­ly of short sto­ries, which were his sole source of income through­out much of the ‘20s. Fitzgerald’s des­per­ate­ly pro­lif­ic out­put in the form means that there are a few hasti­ly-com­posed pieces, some light­weight, whim­si­cal fan­tasies, but all of the work is beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten and a joy to read.

The fan­tasies (which include the now-famous “The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton”) reveal quite a bit about Fitzgerald’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with arti­fice. He was a very well-read, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly deep, thinker who approached lit­er­a­ture through fairy tales—Orientalist fables, adven­ture sto­ries, Edmund Spencer’s allegories—and his ear­ly sto­ries mix a boy­ish imag­i­na­tion with the feigned world­li­ness of a Prince­ton under­grad­u­ate. The most sub­stan­tial of those ear­ly sto­ries “May Day,” almost a novel­la, opens in a post-World War One New York City described as a fairy king­dom in the throes of mar­ket-mad­ness:

So gai­ly and nois­i­ly were the peace and pros­per­i­ty impend­ing hymned by the scribes and poets of the con­quer­ing peo­ple that more and more spenders had gath­ered from the provinces to drink the wine of excite­ment, and faster and faster did the mer­chants dis­pose of their trin­kets and slip­pers until they sent up a mighty cry for more trin­kets and more slip­pers in order that they might give in barter what was demand­ed of them. Some even of them flung up their hands help­less­ly, shout­ing:

“Alas! I have no more slip­pers! and alas! I have no more trin­kets! May heav­en help me for I know not what I shall do!”

This excerpt from the open­ing sec­tion of “May Day” reads like Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, but with the sly satir­i­cal under­tone of one of Oscar Wilde’s children’s sto­ries. The sto­ry then shifts to a real­ist mode, intro­duc­ing the famil­iar Fitzger­ald themes of extrav­a­gant wealth and privilege—and their pre­car­i­ous nature. Some of the char­ac­ters embody­ing these traits, a group of Yale grad­u­ates, soon show the moral fail­ings exem­pli­fied by Gats­by’s Buchanans: cal­lous indif­fer­ence to the needs of oth­ers and vain self-regard.

The main plot of “May Day” goes to a very dark place, deal­ing with the kind of upper-class despair Bret Eas­t­on Ellis trades in, with a doomed main char­ac­ter quite obvi­ous­ly a stand-in for Fitzger­ald him­self. A some­what clum­sy sub­plot reach­es at times for a com­ic foil but also sounds a grim note. The story—with its almost vicious depic­tion of class division—is a minor work with major ambi­tion and a com­plex inter­weav­ing of Fitzgerald’s major themes.

“May Day”—first pub­lished in The Smart Set mag­a­zine in 1920 and lat­er appear­ing in the col­lec­tion Tales of the Jazz Age—draws from events of the Cleve­land May Day riots of 1919 and some New York expe­ri­ences in Fitzgerald’s life. Once asked, how­ev­er, if the sto­ry was auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, the author replied, “there are no good biogra­phies of nov­el­ists because they are so many peo­ple.”

You can encounter all of the var­i­ous peo­ple Fitzger­ald car­ried with­in him in the sto­ries and nov­els we’ve gath­ered in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. (Find them below.) And to learn more about Fitzger­ald, in rela­tion to two oth­er 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can mas­ters, you might want to check out Wai Chee Dimock’s Open Yale online course, “Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er,” avail­able on YouTube and iTunes. It oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Cours­es Online.

eBooks

Audio

  • Flap­pers and Philoso­phers
  • The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
  • Tales of the Jazz Age
  • The Great Gats­by
  • This Side of Par­adise

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Listen as Albert Einstein Calls for Peace and Social Justice in 1945

in History, Life, Physics | June 3rd, 2013

einstein justice

Here is a rare record­ing of Albert Ein­stein read­ing his speech on the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, “The War is Won, But the Peace is Not”:

The speech was deliv­ered on Decem­ber 10, 1945, at the Fifth Nobel Anniver­sary Din­ner at the Hotel Astor in New York. Only four months ear­li­er, the Unit­ed States had dropped atom­ic bombs on civil­ian pop­u­la­tions in the Japan­ese cities of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. Ein­stein did­n’t work on the atom­ic bomb, but in 1939 he had signed a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt urg­ing him to pro­cure ura­ni­um and accel­er­ate nuclear research. In his speech, Ein­stein draws a com­par­i­son between con­tem­po­rary physi­cists and the founder of the Nobel Prize, who invent­ed dyna­mite.

Physi­cists find them­selves in a posi­tion not unlike that of Alfred Nobel him­self. Alfred Nobel invent­ed the most pow­er­ful explo­sive ever known up to his time, a means of destruc­tion par excel­lence. In order to atone for this, in order to relieve his human con­science, he insti­tut­ed his awards for the pro­mo­tion of peace and for achieve­ments of peace. Today, the physi­cists who par­tic­i­pat­ed in forg­ing the most for­mi­da­ble and dan­ger­ous weapon of all times are harassed by an equal feel­ing of respon­si­bil­i­ty, not to say guilt. And we can­not desist from warn­ing, and warn­ing again, we can­not and should not slack­en in our efforts to make the nations of the world, and espe­cial­ly their gov­ern­ments, aware of the unspeak­able dis­as­ter they are cer­tain to pro­voke unless they change their atti­tude toward each oth­er and toward the task of shap­ing the future.

But Ein­stein says he is trou­bled by what he sees in the months fol­low­ing World War II.

The war is won, but the peace is not. The great pow­ers, unit­ed in fight­ing, are now divid­ed over the peace set­tle­ments. The world was promised free­dom from fear, but in fact fear has increased tremen­dous­ly since the ter­mi­na­tion of the war. The world was promised free­dom from want, but large parts of the world are faced with star­va­tion while oth­ers are liv­ing in abun­dance. The nations were promised lib­er­a­tion and jus­tice. But we have wit­nessed, and are wit­ness­ing even now, the sad spec­ta­cle of “lib­er­at­ing” armies fir­ing into pop­u­la­tions who want their inde­pen­dence and social equal­i­ty, and sup­port­ing in those coun­tries, by force of arms, such par­ties and per­son­al­i­ties as appear to be most suit­ed to serve vest­ed inter­ests. Ter­ri­to­r­i­al ques­tions and argu­ments of pow­er, obso­lete though they are, still pre­vail over the essen­tial demands of com­mon wel­fare and jus­tice.

Ein­stein then goes on to talk about a spe­cif­ic case: the plight of his own peo­ple, the Euro­pean Jews.

While in Europe ter­ri­to­ries are being dis­trib­uted with­out any qualms about the wish­es of the peo­ple con­cerned, the remain­ders of Euro­pean Jew­ry, one-fifth of its pre­war pop­u­la­tion, are again denied access to their haven in Pales­tine and left to hunger and cold and per­sist­ing hos­til­i­ty. There is no coun­try, even today, that would be will­ing or able to offer them a place where they could live in peace and secu­ri­ty. And the fact that many of them are still kept in the degrad­ing con­di­tions of con­cen­tra­tion camps by the Allies gives suf­fi­cient evi­dence of the shame­ful­ness and hope­less­ness of the sit­u­a­tion.

Ein­stein con­cludes by call­ing for “a rad­i­cal change in our whole atti­tude, in the entire polit­i­cal con­cept.” With­out doing so, he says, “human civ­i­liza­tion will be doomed.”

Note: The full text of “The War is Won, But the Peace is Not” is avail­able in the Ein­stein antholo­gies Out of My Lat­er Years and Ideas and Opin­ions.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

Atheist Ira Glass Believes Christians Get the Short End of the Media Stick

in Life, Philosophy, Radio, Religion | June 3rd, 2013

So, an athe­ist and a devout Chris­t­ian walk into a Taco­ma hotel restau­rant-bar…

Wait, though, it’s not what you think! The athe­ist in ques­tion is pub­lic radio star Ira Glass, ami­ably sit­ting for an inter­view with ama­teur spir­i­tu­al anthro­pol­o­gist and for­mer This Amer­i­can Life guest Jim Hen­der­son. The mutu­al respect is refresh­ing. Hen­der­son makes it his mis­sion to seek out influ­en­tial peo­ple who are “unusu­al­ly inter­est­ed in oth­ers,” and will­ing to “stay in the room with dif­fer­ence.” Glass’ relaxed and chat­ty demeanor trans­lates to mis­sion accom­plished.

The non-believ­ing child of sec­u­lar Jews does his tribe proud by vol­un­teer­ing the opin­ion that Chris­tians get a bum rap in the nation­al media. The por­tray­al of Chris­tians as “doc­tri­naire crazy hot­head peo­ple” does­n’t square with fond rec­ol­lec­tions of for­mer pub­lic radio col­leagues who kept Bibles on their desks and invit­ed him to screen­ings of Rap­ture movies (At WBEZ? Real­ly?).

The civil­i­ty of the dis­course could renew your faith in mankind, what­ev­er your beliefs.

You can watch oth­er parts of the longer inter­view on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is in Ira’s camp. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Alfred Hitchcock Talks with Dick Cavett About Sabotage, Foreign Correspondent & Laxatives (1972)

in Film, Television | June 3rd, 2013

On the list of the most inter­view­able auteurs in film his­to­ry, Alfred Hitch­cock must rank par­tic­u­lar­ly high. I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to find myself on the busi­ness end of that sar­don­ical­ly stern gaze myself, but when Hitch­cock agreed to sit down and talk, he real­ly sat down and talked. For the ulti­mate case in point, we have his big inter­view with cin­e­mat­ic col­league François Truf­faut, avail­able both as twelve hours of MP3s and, in book form, as that main­stay of the cinephile’s shelf, Hitchcock/Truffaut. Those two film­mak­ers had their immor­tal series of inter­views in 1962; a decade lat­er, Hitch­cock would turn up on nation­al tele­vi­sion for a chat with that auteur of the nation­al chat show, Dick Cavett. You can watch choice seg­ments of their con­ver­sa­tion on Youtube.

At the top of the post, Hitch­cock tells Cavett about the for­ma­tive trau­ma vis­it­ed upon him by his moth­er. “I think my moth­er scared me when I was 3 months old,” he recalls. “You see, she said, ‘Boo!’ It gave me the hic­cups. And she appar­ent­ly was very sat­is­fied.” (No prizes for guess­ing what effect it made this mas­ter of sus­pense want his work to have on audi­ences.) Just above, you can hear Hitch­cock­’s thoughts on a lax­a­tive com­mer­cial that ran dur­ing one of the show’s breaks: “I won­der why all those peo­ple doing sports and all that sort of thing — where they would need a lax­a­tive after such vig­or­ous move­ment all over the place.” Rest assured that he does get around to talk­ing film­mak­ing, specif­i­cal­ly about the process­es behind For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent (below) and Sab­o­tage, but per­haps noth­ing here reveals the work­ings of Hitch­cock­’s mind more than his con­vic­tion that “puns are the high­est form of lit­er­a­ture.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock: The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Cir­ca 1970

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Patrick Stewart Talks Candidly About Domestic Violence in a Poignant Q&A Session at Comicpalooza

in Life, Sci Fi | June 3rd, 2013

Patrick Stew­art came to Comic­palooza (aka The Texas Inter­na­tion­al Com­ic Con­ven­tion) as a spe­cial guest. It’s not hard to imag­ine why, espe­cial­ly giv­en his roles on Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion and the X‑Men film series.

Dur­ing a Q&A ses­sion with con­ven­tion atten­dees, Stew­art field­ed a ques­tion that asked every­one to leave behind the fan­ta­sy world and con­front some cold real­i­ties. Since 2006, Stew­art has worked with Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al and Refuge, a UK char­i­ty for abused women, to make a mean­ing­ful dent in the lev­els of domes­tic vio­lence expe­ri­enced in our soci­eties. Still haunt­ed, Stew­art per­son­al­ly wit­nessed domes­tic vio­lence in his own home as a child. As a young­ster, he felt pow­er­less to stop it. But, as an adult, he can now put his celebri­ty on the line and ask men to be part of the solu­tion, not the prob­lem. The video, which gets more mov­ing as it goes along, also makes the case for improv­ing treat­ment of PTSD — a prob­lem unto itself, and also some­thing that con­tributes to domes­tic vio­lence, espe­cial­ly dur­ing times of pro­longed war.

Note: the influ­en­tial speech ref­er­enced in the con­ver­sa­tion appears below.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry and Patrick Stew­art

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard Commencement Speech: Failure is Just Part of Moving Through Life

in Graduation Speech, Harvard, Life | June 1st, 2013

If you watch enough com­mence­ment speech­es, if you gath­er the col­lec­tive wis­dom of peo­ple who “have made it” in life, you start to see a trend. The key to life isn’t being smarter than the rest, though that does­n’t hurt. The key is resilience — your abil­i­ty to deal with inevitable fail­ures, learn from your mis­takes, dust your­self off emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly or finan­cial­ly, and then move for­ward. It’s eas­i­er said than done, but essen­tial. J.K. Rowl­ing, who went from home­less­ness to writ­ing Har­ry Pot­ter, deliv­ered that mes­sage at Har­vard sev­er­al years ago. Now Oprah Win­frey, who emerged from the Jim Crow South to become Amer­i­ca’s most endur­ing TV per­son­al­i­ty, returns to Har­vard to tell stu­dents her ver­sion of that sto­ry:

There is no such thing as fail­ure. Fail­ure is just life try­ing to move us in anoth­er direc­tion. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like fail­ure. … Give your­self time to mourn what you think you may have lost, but then here’s the key: Learn from every mis­take because every expe­ri­ence, encounter and par­tic­u­lar­ly your mis­takes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then fig­ure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to devel­op an inter­nal moral, emo­tion­al GPS that can tell you which way to go.

For more insights into con­struc­tive­ly man­ag­ing fail­ure, you can vis­it these talks below:

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

Conan O’Brien’s Har­vard Grad­u­a­tion Speech

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

via Har­vard Gazette

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 19 ) |

« Go Back
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.