Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion On American Novels 2

And ready to go, so let me ask you to start things off. All right, thank you michael. Do we have five hours . [laughter] i want to take this paragraph or two and pull it apart. One of the wonderful things about writing a book about the great gatsby is that i can purchase assume pretty much assume, as i think andrew can that were speaking to an audience who has read the novel at least at some point in their lives. So im going to read from the first chapter where nick decides to go visit his cousin Daisy Buchanan who he hasnt seen in a while. Hes invited for dinner, and he walks into the buchanan mansion. With tom buy canna who has to be one of the greatest characters in literature. We walked through a high hallway into a bright, rosycolored space, fragilely bound into the house by french windows at eitherrened. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh glass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling and then rippled over the wipecolored rug making a shadow on it as the wind does upon the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. Their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had justin been blown back in just been blown back in. I must stood for a few minutes listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the grope of a picture on the the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as tom buchanan shut the rear win does and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor. Yes, thats writing. Those of you who love gatsby, go on the Princeton University library web site, and you will see the first draft of the great gatsby in fitzgeralds hand because he didnt type, and you will see how much he labored over that passage over the sound of it. Usually when i read this passage in class, i really emphasize those b sounds to annoy my students and to wake them up. [laughter] fitzgerald is writing like a poet. He loved john keats, he loved shakespeare. So hes going after the musicality of the scene. But hes also trying to convey the fact that the women in the room because city and jordan daisy and jordan baker are not really paying that much attention to nick as he walks in. And i say in my book that this is one of these scenes as you study it where you realize the great gatsby is our Great American novel about class and about where people are on the class hierarchy. We know right away that daisy and jordan are upper class because they dont exert themselves at all. [laughter] and after all, daisy hasnt seen her cousin nick in years. They wait until he comes to them. And so thats going on in that scene as bell, the awareness as well, the awareness of where people are in the pecking order the musicality and also a lot of water imagery which i talk about as being so central to gatsby, because this is a novel thats very aware of how farah nobody how far a nobody like gatsby can swim before he inevitably goes under. And when hes dead im not giving anything away, its on page 2 of the book [laughter] hes dead in his swimming pool. So end of quick lesson. Thanks. That was great, power reap. Really you can just listen to people read from the great the great gatsby like that anytime. Im going to start with the first five words of he canning beforely friendship as my sample, and they are you dont know about me. Its not even the whole sentence, its not even a fifth of the opening sentence. And im starting with such a short piece for several reasons. First, because mark twain took eight years to write Huckleberry Finn, and during those eight years he rewrote that sentence several times putting in the contraction, taking out the contraction, drafting and redrafting. So people often think Huckleberry Finn is just this kind of lazy, sloppy infusion. In many ways it is, but when it came down to getting the tuning fork right for the huckleberry friendships voice friendships voice, mark twain was unrelenting. The second reason ive only picked five words is because if any of us were awe live in 1884 and im reckoning one of us was and we took the opportunity to go see mark twain on stage which was a popular thing to do at the time, youd know he was recognized obviously, as one of the funniest men anywhere as a true performer, but he was also recognized for having an extremely distinctive speaking style with enormous, long pauses between every word. There was even a joke from people who knew him that by the end of the evening as he got a little drunk those pauses could last 30 seconds. [laughter] but the newspaper reviewers said thatyou heard him do it that when you heard him do it alive, it brought something out that you couldnt get on the page, that he made every word into something that means something. And he loved pauses. He just adored them. He said that he played with pauses the way other boys played with toys as a child. So you have to read those five words slow almost as if your sense of the sentence changes with every word as it drops into your brain slowly. First of all five words themselves you dont know about me, thats the first thing mark twain is telling you in huck finn which is you have never met a 12yearold boy narrating a book. You have never met a child in his real voice narrating a book. You dont know about me. But even go word by word, you. How many novels start with you . Not with a many, not with i but with you a second potential in audience a second person an audience. You dont. A brief accusation that theres something you dont do. You dont know a brief sudden accusation theres something you dont know, and then you dont know about me, you have never met a child for real before. Five words that set the agenda for the entire book. Huck finn and gatsby are mesmerizing novels and i can assure you that so we read on in huck finns america are mesmerizing studies of mesmerizing novels. Theyre not the first studies of huck friendship and gatsby. There are huck friendship and gatsby. There are, in fact, thousands of academic articles and hundreds of books devoted to the subject of these two novels. So writing a new book about huck finn and about gatsby is something of an audacious act. And im glad you made that leap, each of you because you provide important interventions into the discussion of these two important novels. Could you say a few words about what first led you to the to that audacious leap and what intervention youd really like our audience to know about morning . This morning . Youre right, of course, michael. I refer to the growing gatsby scholarship which multiplies exponentially year by year as the blob. It is so daunting. If you start to write a book about gatsby or huck finn, you really have to say to yourself how much of this do i really need to know before i can stick my toes in the water so to speak . Ive read gatsby at least 60 times and counting. I hope to go on reading gatsby every year of my life until i draw my last breath. I love it. I didnt love it when i first read it in high school. I thought it was a boring novel about rich people and i didnt understand its magic. But as i had to reread it in college and then inevitably teach it in grad school, i really fell in love with nick cowerways carraways voice and that yearning and regret for his lost friend gatsby, really drew me in. I wanted to write this book in a conversational style but informed by psychological hardship. I wanted to by scholarship. I wanted to tell stories which is what we do on radio we tell stories. And i really wanted to try to figure out why fitzgerald wrote this book. Its so very different from the two novels that precede it. Its different from tender is the night. Its got some similarities with his last novel in progress, the loves of the last tycoon, but it really stands apart. I wanted to see what fitzgerald thought he was doing. I wanted to figure out how it came back from the dead because when fitzgerald died in 1940 in hollywood at the age of 44, his last royalty check was for 13. 13. He couldnt even get a copy of the great gatsby on on the book schells of bookstores in hollywood book shelves of bookstores in hollywood. Thats not that unusual a story in American Literature that, you know, a great book dies or isnt recognized during its own time. But what is unusual is how quickly gatsby comes back. By the end of the 40s weve got the second great gatsby movie. 1949 starring alan ladd, you know . Very film noireish type gas by. I wanted to figure out how it came back so quickly, and i wanted to delve deeper into its mysteries. I feel like i could write another book about the great gatsby at this point, you know . Theres so much left to up cover. Uncover. But i did things like go out onto Long Island Sound to look at the point great neck, in the novel. I went down to the university of South Carolina i say down because i live in washington, d. C to look at their gatsby archive, went to princetop, and scariest trip of all, i went back to my Old High School, something i hadnt done in almost 40 years. I wanted to sit in on classes that were reading gatsby for the first time. Because when i get my students, theyve read it already. I wanted to see what their reaction was and i wanted to be in the classrooms i was in when i first read gatsby. And most startling fact of all, my english teacher is still at the high school [laughter] so and it was an incredible two days. The kids were very excited because the awful movie was about to come out so they had a lot to say. I took 20 years to write this book and i know, i was shaking my head like that too. [laughter] and one reason is because everything keeps changing with huck finn and changing and changing and changing. Theres always this kind of feeling in the pit of my stomach that just when i thought i was on top of things, out would come something major new or Something Else profound would happen with this book. And eventually the fact that things kept happening with the book is what kept me going. That and the fact that twain b is incredibly funny, and he concern and you really can just read more mark twain and he rewards that. He keeps he keeps gives you something interesting, something that contrasts with the last thing, something tricky and unknowable. His was the kind of sense of humor that was designed not to confirm your judgments but to challenge your judgments. And i like having my judgments challenged. I really wanted to figure out in this book, but i wanted to figure out this book hopefully the some extent for other people to. Its caught in a lot of ways right now. The debate is really settled and its not going away. Theres a pro side and an anti side. And what was the breakthrough for me was going back to 1884, to 1885. I usually do books by going to places but in this case i brought a microfilm machine from, i think the Texas Library system, actually on ebay. [laughter] and while i raised my child i stayed at home in my study, and i just shipped in newspaper after newspaper from 1884 and i Read Everything there was about how people talked about children and how people talked about race and how people talked about mark twain. And no matter how many people have covered a subject, you know, its america and sometimes theres an open space out there that surprises you. And while a lot of what i wrote was a synthesis of what people had written before me and theres 120 pages of footnotes in my book to prove it there were still a few open spaces this that those old newspapers that those old newspapers yielded. I think our audience has a fair sense already of the depth of Historical Research that went into each of these two books. And having written Literary History myself i can feel the time and effort that went into every single page and sentence often. They are very his to have cyst approaches to each novel but not in an offputting, antiquarian way. Theyre also books that are very much in touch with contemporary concerns. Now, if an historian 50 years from now were to write about these two studies, what would he or she want to say about contemporary American Society and culture based on an understanding of what you did in your books . Well, one of the things that i wanted to talk about with gatsby was how gatsby, of course, is a novel of its time as well as this vex phrase, this universal classic in American Literature. One thing that i think makes gatsby eternally relevant to us in this country is the way it expresses anxiety about the economy, about where we stand, as i said, in terms of our class situation. I mean, gatsby always seems to come back when weve got an economy thats in the tank because its a novel that really does talk about how real is the American Dream and how secure is your footing even if you may be wealthy today but is that wealth going to continue . Another very contemporary topic that gatsby engages is concern over immigration, concern over race. Of course, were talking im sitting here talking about race next to andrew whos written a book about huck finn which has to be one of the well maybe the greatest american novel about race. Gatsbys about race too. Yeah, it is. And if you remember, theres a scene again early on in the novel where nick and gas by are gatsby are driving across the queensboro bridge into new york. Theyre going in to have lunch with the gangster whos modeled on Arnold Rothstein who actually was a gangster in new york at the time. And its a passage thats often quoted on literary calendars because its so beautiful. Nick says Something Like the city seen from the genes borrow bridge queensboro bridge is always the city seep for the fist time city seen for the first time. And he gives you this beautiful description of the new york skyline. But as theyre driving over the bridge in gatsbys amazing car theyre passed on the bridge. The two white guys are passed first of all by a car in which two finish well three africanamericans are sitting being driven by a white chauffer and then also by a funeral cortege with immigrants from southeastern europe. Its a this is a novel thats very anxious about the direction in which americas going. Its written right after we get the waves of immigrants coming into this country, that second great wave of immigration from southeastern europe, from russia from greece. A lot of the immigrants in that second wave before darker skinned, they didnt speak english. Americas nervous about this. How are these folks going to be, you know integrated into the society . Gatsbys also written during the period of the great migration. And the harlem renaissance in new york. New york has seen an incredible in population in terms of the africanamerican population. Again, its anxious, its nervous. Its a novel thats also anxious about the role of women. Women have just gotten the vote. And dont forget the femme fatale in this novel daisy, well shes behind the drivers seat at a Crucial Point in the novel. Novels very anxious about women in power. So i love to talk about sections like that scene in the novel. Not only are the white guys being passed, but theyre on the queensboro bridge, and for those of you who know any new york history, theyre going over blackwells island which is now Roosevelt Island the site of you know, luxury condos and wonderful restaurants etc. Back then blackwells island was an island for people with incurable diseases, typhoid mary was isolated on blackwells island. It had a womens lunatic asylum. And, you know, a prison. So its not a good site for these, again white guys nick and gatsby, to be driving over as theyre being passed by new immigrants and by people of color. Um, i love that scene on the bridge. Yeah. I really do. I took your question slightly different, michael, ill take it in a slightly different direction. I couldnt have done this book without the digital revolution, and i think that 60 years from now theyre going to say wow this is these were the first years where someone could go online and see the manuscript of the great gatsby or the original manuscript of huck finn and just sit at home and see all of mark twains or f. Scott fitzgeralds changes. That is amazing and allows People Like Us to dig deep into history confidently and easily in a way people ten years ago couldnt. And i think they will talk about that. I also often thought about my book i enjoyed writing my book like i enjoy watching antique road show. [laughter] there remains an obsession with our past, to touch the objects understand the objects and to feel that warmth that can only emanate from surgeon objects almost as though they contain more magic than other ones do. But twain felt that way too. We have to remember he was writing in the 1870s and 1880s about his childhood, the 1830s and the 1840s. You think about those 40 or 50 years difference, and now think about the number of Television Shows or movies that go back 40 or 50 years and bring it back to us with a kind of searching but almost satirical quality. Mad men, for instance. Downton abbeys a good example but not quite us. Were always going about three or four decades back for our fashion, for our music, for our politics to reexamine them and thats exactly what twain was doing. I feel like in that book he almost touched upon this ongoing impulse to just understand that group. And to some extent thats because people in their 40s or 50s, they get a lot of control of the culture, and they think pack to their childhoods back to their childhoods. Twain was doing that too. Andrew, huck finn is one of the most unique and memorable narrators in American Literature. A young boy whose irony is not at all selfaware. Its built into the character. I think you importantly remind us that huck finn is less a novel about race than it is about boyhood written at a time when questions of youth and youth identity were entering the popular and even professional discourses in ways that hadnt been the case before. Could you say a bit more about how a child narrator gives us access to these really interesting questions about childhood itself . Sure. Sure. Thanks michael, for the question. Yeah the major idea of my book is that for the last 50 or 60 years when we talk about race and Daisy Buchanan<\/a> who he hasnt seen in a while. Hes invited for dinner, and he walks into the buchanan mansion. With tom buy canna who has to be one of the greatest characters in literature. We walked through a high hallway into a bright, rosycolored space, fragilely bound into the house by french windows at eitherrened. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh glass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling and then rippled over the wipecolored rug making a shadow on it as the wind does upon the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. Their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had justin been blown back in just been blown back in. I must stood for a few minutes listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the grope of a picture on the the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as tom buchanan shut the rear win does and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor. Yes, thats writing. Those of you who love gatsby, go on the Princeton University<\/a> library web site, and you will see the first draft of the great gatsby in fitzgeralds hand because he didnt type, and you will see how much he labored over that passage over the sound of it. Usually when i read this passage in class, i really emphasize those b sounds to annoy my students and to wake them up. [laughter] fitzgerald is writing like a poet. He loved john keats, he loved shakespeare. So hes going after the musicality of the scene. But hes also trying to convey the fact that the women in the room because city and jordan daisy and jordan baker are not really paying that much attention to nick as he walks in. And i say in my book that this is one of these scenes as you study it where you realize the great gatsby is our Great American<\/a> novel about class and about where people are on the class hierarchy. We know right away that daisy and jordan are upper class because they dont exert themselves at all. [laughter] and after all, daisy hasnt seen her cousin nick in years. They wait until he comes to them. And so thats going on in that scene as bell, the awareness as well, the awareness of where people are in the pecking order the musicality and also a lot of water imagery which i talk about as being so central to gatsby, because this is a novel thats very aware of how farah nobody how far a nobody like gatsby can swim before he inevitably goes under. And when hes dead im not giving anything away, its on page 2 of the book [laughter] hes dead in his swimming pool. So end of quick lesson. Thanks. That was great, power reap. Really you can just listen to people read from the great the great gatsby like that anytime. Im going to start with the first five words of he canning beforely friendship as my sample, and they are you dont know about me. Its not even the whole sentence, its not even a fifth of the opening sentence. And im starting with such a short piece for several reasons. First, because mark twain took eight years to write Huckleberry Finn<\/a>, and during those eight years he rewrote that sentence several times putting in the contraction, taking out the contraction, drafting and redrafting. So people often think Huckleberry Finn<\/a> is just this kind of lazy, sloppy infusion. In many ways it is, but when it came down to getting the tuning fork right for the huckleberry friendships voice friendships voice, mark twain was unrelenting. The second reason ive only picked five words is because if any of us were awe live in 1884 and im reckoning one of us was and we took the opportunity to go see mark twain on stage which was a popular thing to do at the time, youd know he was recognized obviously, as one of the funniest men anywhere as a true performer, but he was also recognized for having an extremely distinctive speaking style with enormous, long pauses between every word. There was even a joke from people who knew him that by the end of the evening as he got a little drunk those pauses could last 30 seconds. [laughter] but the newspaper reviewers said thatyou heard him do it that when you heard him do it alive, it brought something out that you couldnt get on the page, that he made every word into something that means something. And he loved pauses. He just adored them. He said that he played with pauses the way other boys played with toys as a child. So you have to read those five words slow almost as if your sense of the sentence changes with every word as it drops into your brain slowly. First of all five words themselves you dont know about me, thats the first thing mark twain is telling you in huck finn which is you have never met a 12yearold boy narrating a book. You have never met a child in his real voice narrating a book. You dont know about me. But even go word by word, you. How many novels start with you . Not with a many, not with i but with you a second potential in audience a second person an audience. You dont. A brief accusation that theres something you dont do. You dont know a brief sudden accusation theres something you dont know, and then you dont know about me, you have never met a child for real before. Five words that set the agenda for the entire book. Huck finn and gatsby are mesmerizing novels and i can assure you that so we read on in huck finns america are mesmerizing studies of mesmerizing novels. Theyre not the first studies of huck friendship and gatsby. There are huck friendship and gatsby. There are, in fact, thousands of academic articles and hundreds of books devoted to the subject of these two novels. So writing a new book about huck finn and about gatsby is something of an audacious act. And im glad you made that leap, each of you because you provide important interventions into the discussion of these two important novels. Could you say a few words about what first led you to the to that audacious leap and what intervention youd really like our audience to know about morning . This morning . Youre right, of course, michael. I refer to the growing gatsby scholarship which multiplies exponentially year by year as the blob. It is so daunting. If you start to write a book about gatsby or huck finn, you really have to say to yourself how much of this do i really need to know before i can stick my toes in the water so to speak . Ive read gatsby at least 60 times and counting. I hope to go on reading gatsby every year of my life until i draw my last breath. I love it. I didnt love it when i first read it in high school. I thought it was a boring novel about rich people and i didnt understand its magic. But as i had to reread it in college and then inevitably teach it in grad school, i really fell in love with nick cowerways carraways voice and that yearning and regret for his lost friend gatsby, really drew me in. I wanted to write this book in a conversational style but informed by psychological hardship. I wanted to by scholarship. I wanted to tell stories which is what we do on radio we tell stories. And i really wanted to try to figure out why fitzgerald wrote this book. Its so very different from the two novels that precede it. Its different from tender is the night. Its got some similarities with his last novel in progress, the loves of the last tycoon, but it really stands apart. I wanted to see what fitzgerald thought he was doing. I wanted to figure out how it came back from the dead because when fitzgerald died in 1940 in hollywood at the age of 44, his last royalty check was for 13. 13. He couldnt even get a copy of the great gatsby on on the book schells of bookstores in hollywood book shelves of bookstores in hollywood. Thats not that unusual a story in American Literature<\/a> that, you know, a great book dies or isnt recognized during its own time. But what is unusual is how quickly gatsby comes back. By the end of the 40s weve got the second great gatsby movie. 1949 starring alan ladd, you know . Very film noireish type gas by. I wanted to figure out how it came back so quickly, and i wanted to delve deeper into its mysteries. I feel like i could write another book about the great gatsby at this point, you know . Theres so much left to up cover. Uncover. But i did things like go out onto Long Island Sound<\/a> to look at the point great neck, in the novel. I went down to the university of South Carolina<\/a> i say down because i live in washington, d. C to look at their gatsby archive, went to princetop, and scariest trip of all, i went back to my Old High School<\/a>, something i hadnt done in almost 40 years. I wanted to sit in on classes that were reading gatsby for the first time. Because when i get my students, theyve read it already. I wanted to see what their reaction was and i wanted to be in the classrooms i was in when i first read gatsby. And most startling fact of all, my english teacher is still at the high school [laughter] so and it was an incredible two days. The kids were very excited because the awful movie was about to come out so they had a lot to say. I took 20 years to write this book and i know, i was shaking my head like that too. [laughter] and one reason is because everything keeps changing with huck finn and changing and changing and changing. Theres always this kind of feeling in the pit of my stomach that just when i thought i was on top of things, out would come something major new or Something Else<\/a> profound would happen with this book. And eventually the fact that things kept happening with the book is what kept me going. That and the fact that twain b is incredibly funny, and he concern and you really can just read more mark twain and he rewards that. He keeps he keeps gives you something interesting, something that contrasts with the last thing, something tricky and unknowable. His was the kind of sense of humor that was designed not to confirm your judgments but to challenge your judgments. And i like having my judgments challenged. I really wanted to figure out in this book, but i wanted to figure out this book hopefully the some extent for other people to. Its caught in a lot of ways right now. The debate is really settled and its not going away. Theres a pro side and an anti side. And what was the breakthrough for me was going back to 1884, to 1885. I usually do books by going to places but in this case i brought a microfilm machine from, i think the Texas Library<\/a> system, actually on ebay. [laughter] and while i raised my child i stayed at home in my study, and i just shipped in newspaper after newspaper from 1884 and i Read Everything<\/a> there was about how people talked about children and how people talked about race and how people talked about mark twain. And no matter how many people have covered a subject, you know, its america and sometimes theres an open space out there that surprises you. And while a lot of what i wrote was a synthesis of what people had written before me and theres 120 pages of footnotes in my book to prove it there were still a few open spaces this that those old newspapers that those old newspapers yielded. I think our audience has a fair sense already of the depth of Historical Research<\/a> that went into each of these two books. And having written Literary History<\/a> myself i can feel the time and effort that went into every single page and sentence often. They are very his to have cyst approaches to each novel but not in an offputting, antiquarian way. Theyre also books that are very much in touch with contemporary concerns. Now, if an historian 50 years from now were to write about these two studies, what would he or she want to say about contemporary American Society<\/a> and culture based on an understanding of what you did in your books . Well, one of the things that i wanted to talk about with gatsby was how gatsby, of course, is a novel of its time as well as this vex phrase, this universal classic in American Literature<\/a>. One thing that i think makes gatsby eternally relevant to us in this country is the way it expresses anxiety about the economy, about where we stand, as i said, in terms of our class situation. I mean, gatsby always seems to come back when weve got an economy thats in the tank because its a novel that really does talk about how real is the American Dream<\/a> and how secure is your footing even if you may be wealthy today but is that wealth going to continue . Another very contemporary topic that gatsby engages is concern over immigration, concern over race. Of course, were talking im sitting here talking about race next to andrew whos written a book about huck finn which has to be one of the well maybe the greatest american novel about race. Gatsbys about race too. Yeah, it is. And if you remember, theres a scene again early on in the novel where nick and gas by are gatsby are driving across the queensboro bridge into new york. Theyre going in to have lunch with the gangster whos modeled on Arnold Rothstein<\/a> who actually was a gangster in new york at the time. And its a passage thats often quoted on literary calendars because its so beautiful. Nick says Something Like<\/a> the city seen from the genes borrow bridge queensboro bridge is always the city seep for the fist time city seen for the first time. And he gives you this beautiful description of the new york skyline. But as theyre driving over the bridge in gatsbys amazing car theyre passed on the bridge. The two white guys are passed first of all by a car in which two finish well three africanamericans are sitting being driven by a white chauffer and then also by a funeral cortege with immigrants from southeastern europe. Its a this is a novel thats very anxious about the direction in which americas going. Its written right after we get the waves of immigrants coming into this country, that second great wave of immigration from southeastern europe, from russia from greece. A lot of the immigrants in that second wave before darker skinned, they didnt speak english. Americas nervous about this. How are these folks going to be, you know integrated into the society . Gatsbys also written during the period of the great migration. And the harlem renaissance in new york. New york has seen an incredible in population in terms of the africanamerican population. Again, its anxious, its nervous. Its a novel thats also anxious about the role of women. Women have just gotten the vote. And dont forget the femme fatale in this novel daisy, well shes behind the drivers seat at a Crucial Point<\/a> in the novel. Novels very anxious about women in power. So i love to talk about sections like that scene in the novel. Not only are the white guys being passed, but theyre on the queensboro bridge, and for those of you who know any new york history, theyre going over blackwells island which is now Roosevelt Island<\/a> the site of you know, luxury condos and wonderful restaurants etc. Back then blackwells island was an island for people with incurable diseases, typhoid mary was isolated on blackwells island. It had a womens lunatic asylum. And, you know, a prison. So its not a good site for these, again white guys nick and gatsby, to be driving over as theyre being passed by new immigrants and by people of color. Um, i love that scene on the bridge. Yeah. I really do. I took your question slightly different, michael, ill take it in a slightly different direction. I couldnt have done this book without the digital revolution, and i think that 60 years from now theyre going to say wow this is these were the first years where someone could go online and see the manuscript of the great gatsby or the original manuscript of huck finn and just sit at home and see all of mark twains or f. Scott fitzgeralds changes. That is amazing and allows People Like Us<\/a> to dig deep into history confidently and easily in a way people ten years ago couldnt. And i think they will talk about that. I also often thought about my book i enjoyed writing my book like i enjoy watching antique road show. [laughter] there remains an obsession with our past, to touch the objects understand the objects and to feel that warmth that can only emanate from surgeon objects almost as though they contain more magic than other ones do. But twain felt that way too. We have to remember he was writing in the 1870s and 1880s about his childhood, the 1830s and the 1840s. You think about those 40 or 50 years difference, and now think about the number of Television Shows<\/a> or movies that go back 40 or 50 years and bring it back to us with a kind of searching but almost satirical quality. Mad men, for instance. Downton abbeys a good example but not quite us. Were always going about three or four decades back for our fashion, for our music, for our politics to reexamine them and thats exactly what twain was doing. I feel like in that book he almost touched upon this ongoing impulse to just understand that group. And to some extent thats because people in their 40s or 50s, they get a lot of control of the culture, and they think pack to their childhoods back to their childhoods. Twain was doing that too. Andrew, huck finn is one of the most unique and memorable narrators in American Literature<\/a>. A young boy whose irony is not at all selfaware. Its built into the character. I think you importantly remind us that huck finn is less a novel about race than it is about boyhood written at a time when questions of youth and youth identity were entering the popular and even professional discourses in ways that hadnt been the case before. Could you say a bit more about how a child narrator gives us access to these really interesting questions about childhood itself . Sure. Sure. Thanks michael, for the question. Yeah the major idea of my book is that for the last 50 or 60 years when we talk about race and Huckleberry Finn<\/a>, we have a serious and controversial conversation. But that when we talk about chirp, we regard it as a light children, we regard it as a lighthearted romp. Theres cartoons everywhere. This has been the case for 50100 years. But if you go back to 1886 and 1885 you will see there was an extremely serious, heart felt debate about how we raise our children that was, in fact, mark twain wrote and published the book in the middle of what was called the bad boy crisis. And everyone was afraid that their children, especially the boys had too much access to violent Popular Culture<\/a> and it was making them violent. [laughter] and they were thinking specifically of these thin little dime novels like pirate novels and western novels which were built in such a way that you could slip them inside a textbook and read em, and you could return them and get new ones. So, i mean, the publishers knew what they were doing. And the newspapers were filled with stories of kids reading those books and going on marauding hijinks stealing, even murdering having way too much access to guns. And in the context of a serious debate like that twains book drops right in the middle of it. And someone like huckleberry friendship is a complete Huckleberry Finn<\/a> is a complete taunt of that tie log. Dialogue. He is the kind of kid that was being sent off to work farms. Hes the kind of kid that they were doing everything they could to control. And he said and mark twain he smoked tobacco and tobacco was like a drug would be for us. His best friend, tom was in a gang. It was a joke gang, but it was still a gang. And the gang attacked a sunday school picnic. And they were worried about gangs, and they were worried about all of these things. Huck was illiterate, he smoked, and is he was the antihero of the time. And twain made him into a hero. But the thing that makes it work, and this is the crucial thing, is the awe then disty of the authenticity of the voice. Twain was raising his own children at the time. He kept copious notes on how they talked which are amazing and were only published for the first time about six months ago by the way. University of california book. Go get it if you love mark twain and read how much he loves his children but, b, how much the way he thought about his open children filtered into huck finn. And it was almost as if it was a parents impulse almost as if he said, you know, i trust my children, i trust their voice. And im going to let their voice speak. And then you can judge for yourself. He did not like overbearing parents. He tried as hard as he could not to be one with mixed results as you might well guess. He could actually be almost another kid in his own family, and i think that must have been deeply irritating to his wife. But in the end, that was the game he played. And by the end of his life, he joked that a thousand years from now historians would think he had two sets of chirp, how did that work . And when you read the back and forth, youll see how much he invests love and faith in a real child into huck finn as a way of combating a dialogue he felt would ultimately oppress children. Gatsbys one of the brilliant observer narratives because its about the hero gatsby, but the storytelling is done by another unforgettable narrater, nick carroway. So, power p lean, can you tell us what is going on with a young narrator on the cusp of 30 from an elite ivy league education, part of the american upper crust . Why does fitzgerald give him the task of narrating the life of the up by your boot straps gatsby . What does that tell us about social class especially . Yeah, yeah. Well, first fits year old didnt. If you go and look at that first draft of gatsby online on princetops web princetons welcome back site, youll see that at first we had a third person narrator. Omniscient. Fitzgerald, thank god ditched that idea. Nick is carried away by gatsby. Nick is carried away by the memory of his dead friend. When the novel opens, two years have passed. Were supposed to think that the present time of the novel is 1924, and nick is looking back two years to the summer of 1922. Having this partiallyinvolved first person narrator allows gatsby to retain his mystery. Because we dont know an awful lot about what is true and what is not true about james gats or j. Gatsby as he later becomes. Theres a lot of, you know stories and lies and myths floating around gatsby. Some readers didnt like that. Edith wharton famously wrote to f. Scott fits yerld and said, you know fitzgerald, and said, you know, i like the book. [laughter] i think you could have done a little bit more with gatsbys background but youll say thats my way and thats not the way of your generation to leave this ambiguity and these holes. She was right. She was also very worried about the dog that myrtle buys . What happened to the dog. [laughter] wharton was a great dog lover so she was concerned about the dog. Also with nick as ive said before nick is reaching out, you know, trying to grasp his dead friend, gatsby. Its a very timeconscious novel. Time is running out. And yet as you has said, you can read it without an awareness of any of these patterns or symbols and goes down as smoothly as though you were eating whipped cream. Another one of fitzgeralds achievements here. Its important though, that we dont trust nick completely. He is not a 100 reliable narrator and i think Holden Caufield<\/a> salingers great character, owes a lot, our course to huck fenn and also nick carroway. Theres this sense that nick is hold something things back, and we fine out once in a while that he hasnt told us everything. So its a novel that urges us to be aware of what the what kind of stories were hearing and to think about them critically. I think i read somewhere that mark twain was the most photographed human being of the 19th century and maureen im grateful you include so many great snapshots that fitzgerald or people around him took during the period that the november veil was being novel was being written. And its a good to go for us they were before the age of the selfie because they would probably be prolific selfie takers because both twain and fitzgerald were very conscious cultivators of their larger than life personas, and gatsby and finn have taken on this afterliveses that are more than the novels, and in a sense you both point out that boat the novelist and their characters exist in our contemporary consciousness in ways that kind of distract us from some of the crucial concerns of the novels themselves. Could you say a bit about how you handled these larger than life personalities you had to wade through . I am i went with it. I loved that twain was copyrighted in his own name, and hed walk out in new york city in the last ten or 15 years and put on the white suit just to be seen. Lets not kid ourselves about that. He really enjoyed the attention. And i also loved the list of the most photographed people. Mark twain at one point Michael Jordan<\/a> muhammad ali a great list. But one of the things i enjoyed most doing my book was following twains become tour with Huckleberry Finn<\/a> and reading the accounts of him performing on stage, and then the larger than life Media Presence<\/a> he created. Little bits of business designed to attract the attention of the newspapers. He would take interviews from his bed so the interviewers would go into his hotel room and hed be inned and take the interviews and or have a fake fight, or hed go on a train and hed go in the smoking car lower all the windows to get the smoke to go out and just over and over, these Little Things<\/a> that would irritate or animate everyone around them but made it clear he was his own man traveling through this world and just article after article. When he traveled with Huckleberry Finn<\/a> he started the his book tour the day after a president ial election, which was a hotly disputed one for weeks afterwards, with the electoral vote in doubt. And that upper righthand side corner of every newspaper where the major store goes, mark twain, president ial election, down here. Theres reasons we still think about him. But it was part of it. He was a performance artist, a copyrighted out there presence, and i think we should love that and respect that and enjoy that, and weave it into our discussion of the literary. I didnt know he was mark twain was doing a john and yoko interview from the bed. Talk about performance artists. My gosh. I feel with fitzgerald, michael you cant help but root for him. If you have any feeling at all for his work, his writing you cant help but root for him. Fitzgerald himself was a gatsbylike character. He grew up in a family where his mothers family had money but his fathers family had breeding but no money. He grew up on partly on summit avenue in st. Paul, where his parents rented apartments. On this incredible avenue where youve got the mansion o james j. Hill, the railroad tycoon. His was the largest private home in america for a while. Its still an incredible landscape there on summit after knew of beautiful houses and mansions garrison keller lived there so that sense of being on the outside looking in was something that informed fitzgeralds psychic landscape and then he goes to print princeton on scholarship in a sense due to the timely death of one of his mothers relatives. He also has one foot in and one foot out. That sense of not quite belonging. That eninfuses gatsby. Something that fitzgerald wrote bat in letters and said he felt all his life. He told john o. Harrah in the set 30s my problem is ive got a two cylinder inferiority complex. Fitzgerald came to fame in 1920, with this side of paradise, his first novel which gave us the jazz age. He coined that term. He and zelda who he married a few days after the book came out, were the king and queen of the jazz age for a while. And the 1920s is also the age when we get all of those glossy magazines, vanity fair, the smart set the new yorker, so their faces were on the covers of all those magazines. Like andrew is saying about mark twain, they knew how to manipulate their image and they were both very beautiful. Door Dorothy Parker<\/a> said to see scott and zelda come into the room to look at two people who looked like they just stepped out of the sun. Theyre both beautiful golden people but it doesnt last long. Gatsby comes out in 1925. It doesnt sell well. Zelda has her first major breakdown and institutionalization for what we assume was schizophrenia in 1929. Their golden period together is just about ten years. And then it falls apart. And as i said, when fitzgerald dies he is basically broke in hollywood, trying to write for the movies. And he is treated like a hand in hollywood, like so many of our great writers were, work to two weeks on gone with the wind pulled to another film. Andrew mentioned artifacts. One art fact that got to me is at the university of South Carolina<\/a>. They have f. Scott fitzgeralds battered leather brief case from his hollywood years and the briefcase has his name indescribed on it in gold. F. Scott fitzgerald, and then his address. 537 fifth avenue. Its the address of the scriveners building. His publisher. In new york. That was his only permanent address really all his life, and that briefcase tells you the story of the end of his life. He died thinking he was a failure. So i think my job with this book i had to guard against being too much in fitzgeralds corner because he was a nasty drunk. And he had his other all too human flaws but he was good father concerned husband and a great friend to other writers. Dont get me started on how hemingway treated him after he introduced hemingway to max perkins, his editor. Maybe some of our audience members will get you started. As much as id thereof ask hundred more questions i will no longer stand in the way of our audience. Let me ask you wait until the microphone reaches you before you ask the question. I see you already have a hand up. In the yellow. This is a really loaded question. So, is it on . Okay. If each of you could pick one today, a novelist, who would you pick . Contemporary novelist right now . Yes. Theres some great ones. I love marry rein robinson. I love dom i lofTony Morrison<\/a>. Theres three right there. I would go with Tony Morrison<\/a> and e. L. Doctorow and i think phillip roth should get the nobel prize. Come on. We have a question in the front. If you could wait for the microphone please. As far as max perkins did f. Scoot fitzgerald ever visit him at his compound in vermont . I have three questions quickly. Joan didion and where i was from writes about how ease it was continue constitutionalize women in california. Did his wife really require that institutionalization in the blushed said she was busing table, and then when your book is wherein about in the Washington Post<\/a> you said there were several book that deserve the treatment you have given to f. Scott fitzgerald. One was mel veil, moby dick. Withoutering heights, jane eyre. I was wondering if you could i have questions about twain. I dont think fitzgerald ever visited max perkins in vermont. But i could be wrong. Please hold your letters and emails in case i am. Max perkins of course, is one of the great heros of American Literature<\/a> in the 20th 20th century, not only was he fitzgerald and hemingways editor thomas wolfes edit for the list goes on and on and on. Theres a movie coming out maybe some of you know this, about max perkins and his relationship with thomas wolfe, and max perkins will be played by collin furth. Be still my heart. So that is on the horizon there. Some of those novels that i mentioned in the interview with joel that deserved the treatment that we have given to our beloveds books theyve already been written. Nath thannal philbrick wrote a great book about the whale ship essex, the whale ship that this pequot was modeled after. Andrew and i were talking before the panel began and we do seem to be living through kind of a minigolden age of books like our books, where uber fans, who have done some scholarship and have lived with these novels for years, and have gone to the ends of the earth doing research or through digitization, done the research as well. Were writing books. Also from the heart. I think this is an age in which academic criticism wonderful as it can be, people are realizing that theres certain shortcomings to it and i am a great fan of the mid20th mid20th century american critics like yesterday minute Wilson Alfred<\/a> caison. You mentioned joan didion. People who knew what they were talking and werent afraid to put emotion and point of view in their writing and make it lively and have a voice in your own writing. And that is what i was aiming for myself. That was my greenlight with this book. I like books of criticism in which the authors presence is the critics presence is felt. There is a i dont think so. My idea. We have a question up here in the blue. Im fascinated with the relationson between hemingway and fitzgerald. So i wonder if you speak to that. Well, hemingway and fitzgerald met in 1925 in the summer of 1925. By the way gatsby we just celebrated the anniversary yesterday. April 10th 1925. The 90th anniversary of the publication of the great gatsby. So that was the spring. In the summer of 25 fitzgerald kind of engineers the meeting with hemingway who he has been hearing about and who he has read some of hemingways short stories and its kind after scouting mission for max perkins. Fitzgerald kind of appointed himself as a scout for scriveners to see whether hemingway might be interested in signing on. They met in paris hit it off and gradually the relationship soured. Hempingways star begins torise gets testier with fitzgerald, and fitzgeralds star is deviling. Venally hemingway breaks awful breaks off the friendship. Hemiway was very nasty and could i go on and on. When he heard that fitzgerald was depressed in the 20s, he wrote fitzgerald these kind of chiding, funny letters but not so funny like, snap out of it. Come on. And then he suggested that he would have fitzgerald murdered so that scottie and zelda could collect the insurance. If youre so depresses white no arrange for a hit job so they can collect the when you think ol hemingway and realize how ironic this is, this impatience with depression, in the 1930s hemingway was raising funds for the spanish civil war in support he spanish civil war aclutivists, and activists and fitzgerald was invited to a dinner and decided he couldnt meet hemingway again. I think its 36 or so. And he writes to someone else, ernest speaks with the authority of success i speak with the authority of failure. We could never meet across the same table again. So its not a pretty story. Its not a but hemingway did that with a lot of writers a lot of his colleagues. I think his writing is unearthly, and i especially the nick adams stories some of the novels but i would never have wanted to have a beer with hemingway. [inaudible question] thats what got fitzgerald into trouble. I cant believe im blank only hemingways the sun also rises. Fitzgerald gave a lot of hemingwayesque, would you read the draft give me have at it. Take out your red pencil, and fitzgerald stupidly did and hemingway could never forgive fitzgerald for all of the places in which he suggested hemingway should revise the sun also rises and writes an obscenity next to the draft he got back from fitzgerald. So you didnt criticize hemingway. Well, Gertrude Stein<\/a> is a selfdedescribed generous who deserved the label and preferred fitzgeralds writing. That also hurt the relationship because she said in both mens presence that fitzgerald burned with the brighter flame. I saw a hand up in the very back. I have heard some critics complain about the ending of Huckleberry Finn<\/a>. Do you agree or think the enwag as appropriate for the character . Thats a great question. And im going to say that a lot of what i write in my book goes to try to explain why the ending is the way it is, and hemingway said a famous thing about mark twains Huckleberry Finn<\/a>, which was unfortunate which was that all he wrote very complimentary famously that all American Literature<\/a> comes from one book, huckleberry fbi by mark twain but the said you have to stop 2 3 . The rest is cheating. The first say huck finn is a Great American<\/a> novel but the first to say the last third stinks. The reason it stinkses for many people is bus the first towards twothirds of the book looks like a very positive metaphor for american Race Relations<\/a> where a White American<\/a> and africanamerican come to know each other in this ice plated place, the raft away from society, and then at a certain Crucial Point<\/a> the White American<\/a> Huckleberry Finn<\/a>, decide he will go to hell for jims freedom and thats the story you want to tell of american civil rights. That but what happens after the moment that Huckleberry Finn<\/a> says hell go to hell for jim that he doesnt. The last third is this burlesque where tom sawyer plays with jim like a toy even though jim is free the whole time. Tom sauer er knows that. He has seen the will that jim is free its more fun for tom to take all that time freeing jim than for jim to be free, and at the end of the book huck finn is complete lid salted by this. He thinks tom this biggest idiots alive and say im out of here. So twain is frustrated, too. If you want that positive parable you cant have that ending because the ending reverses everything that came before. The think about huck finn it was written at a time where american Race Relations<\/a> were taking a backwardses step. Where the promise of reconstruction from 1865 to 1877 was towards biracial governments, towards enfranchising more and more people and that from 1877 to 1884 you had this retrenchment, where there was a prison boom, a tremendous number of africanamericans were put behind bars. There were disenfranchisement efforts, the first wave of jim crow laws. Mark twain starts writing Huckleberry Finn<\/a> in 18 when hope is high and finished when hope is low and the last thirds of the book reflects and sat rises the retrenchment and failure of the promise of early rae construction, and if you look at it that way the ending is exactly what it should be. But with that case, its a challenge to all of us to realize that Race Relations<\/a> is not easy, you have to do something more than swear in private youll help im human being. You have to do something publicly took but societies bends in another direction and its going to take a long time. So the book ends pessimistic include, and if you look at it that way thats the ending it should be. About hemingway. I did read somewhere he did say about fitzgerald that he was the greatest talent of his generation. So but my question is about turn yao mentioned fitzgerald as a fan of shakespeare. Do you see nick as hoe ratio and gatsby as hamlet, telling the story of his best friend . Nice spin. This is what i love about talking about gatsby and im sure andrew i know you have had the same experience can talking about huck finn. The conversation continues and we both teach our beloved books as well as andrew teaches gatsby. I dont teach huck finn as much as you teach gatsby. But every time i read gatsby with a class pretty much every time theres something new that comes out of the discussion with the studented. Sure why not. The only thing that would trouble me about that equation is i dont see gatsby as tortured as hamlet is. Gatsby even at the end of the novel, right before his death as nick is retelling the story when he is seen, after myrtles death, gals by is walks out the buchanan mansion at night keeping vigil. He wants to make sure that tom isnt going to hurt daisy. In retribution for myrtles death, and he and nick look through the window and theres daisy and tom sharing a dinner of cold chicken and drinking beer and looking like theyre conspiring. Theres no need to keep a vigil under daisy. She and tom understand each other, theyre both, as the book says careless people who hurt people other people, and things and leave a mess and expect other people to clean up the mess for them. After gatsby sees that, he gets busy trying to rationalize what he sees. She was just playing along with him. Oh she doesnt really love him. That is not the way she loves me. He keeps rationalizing. So i dont see gatsby as being as tortured by thought as hamlet is. Gatsby wants to be singleminded with that idealization of daisy until the very end. Otherwise it works. Both of you allude to the role these novels play in the curriculum and in kind of formative stage of students. I ask as the father of a 12yearold son with a fondness for post apocalyptic novels, is he ready for gatsby or hucktip . Is 12 too young . Yeah. I have a 12yearold son too with the exact sentiment talking about the exact same novels and if you want to da video game comparison, you would do well, too. I wouldnt recommend huck finn at that age just yet. Russell baker famously said that huck finn is best appreciated by people who are 25 or older and then 35 or older even better. And even then someone who has a foreknowledge of American Culture<\/a> and from. That point of view it then becomes an absolute road map to the country and its history and culture. I think and David Bradley<\/a> is famously described it as a power tool in terms of teaching, which is to say very powerful and very dangerous. I think that kids got to be older and you have to work really hard and really selfconsciously have huck finn land properly. 12 i would say is too young. We encounter gatsby as we do huck finn often times in high school and that was one reason i wanted to go back to my Old High School<\/a>, which is in astoria, the landscape of the novel. To find out what students think about it the first time they read it. I did learn something from that visit. Ive been for years saying, we read gatsby too young. You cant identified with nicks voice of regret and longing when youre 15, 16 years old. But the kids in the classrooms of my Old High School<\/a> showed me, of course, theres a got by for when youre younger and a gatsby for when youre older. They really identified with gatsby. Rather than nick. They didnt like nick. They thought nick was a sellout. They thought the fact that nick shakes Tom Buchanans<\/a> hand at the end of the novel was unforgivable but they identified with gatsby can the over the topness, ill do anything to reach this goal, whether its a green light or being rich or something you cant even name, which is what daisy stands in for, were told, at the end of the novel. Ill do anything to get there. They also very much identified with justice failed when hi told them daisy was modeled on fitzgeralds first love, whose father was very wealthy lived in chicago and her mansion in chicago looked like a Small Department<\/a> store. When fitzgerald went to visit her, when he was about 18 years old, as the story goes, jenevras father said in fitzgeralds hearing, poor boys shouldnt think of marrying rich girls, and he was wounded to the quick. The kids in high school you could hear the audible gasp because theyre still at that age where they have to please somebodys parents or perform for somebodys parents. So they identified with parts of the novel that at least for me have receded a bit in the background and i love that they were on gatsbys side and that all or nothingness. The one thing i wanted to say while i still have andrew here. I feel like you have the Great American<\/a> novel of the rural america, and i ive got the Great American<\/a> novel of 1925. In 1920 census is when we see for the first time that most americans live in cities. And i have that album of james taylor and carol king in due wet, and i kind of feel like im carol king singing the city part and youre james taylor with the country part. I should be so lucky. But. Im a little bit country. We are unfortunately out of time so we have to let the pop music reference take us out. You can purchase copies and have them signed upstairs. Please joi","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia600200.us.archive.org\/20\/items\/CSPAN2_20150502_183200_Panel_Discussion_on_American_Novels\/CSPAN2_20150502_183200_Panel_Discussion_on_American_Novels.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20150502_183200_Panel_Discussion_on_American_Novels_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240621T12:35:10+00:00"}