Jeffrey Meyers on F. Scott Fitzgerald & The Great Gatsby’s 100th Anniversary

The Learning Curve Jeffrey Meyers

[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Well, hello everybody and welcome back to a brand new episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts this week, Albert Cheng from the University of Arkansas and co-hosting. With me this week is Helen Baxendale from Great Hearts Helen, nice to have you back on the show again. You’ve been doing quite a bit of a tour co-hosting.

[00:00:42] Helen Baxendale: Yes, it’s very nice to be with you today, Albert. Albert. I’ve had the pleasure of Alicia’s company a couple times now in your absence. So nice to step in on her behalf and you today.

[00:00:54] Albert Cheng: Great. Well, glad to co-host with you and really looking forward to this episode too. I mean, for listeners who didn’t catch the teaser last week, you know, this month marks the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, a wonderful classic by F Scott Fitzgerald.

[00:01:10] And so we’re gonna have Dr. Jeffrey Meyers come and, and talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald and this book. So, got an exciting episode here. Actually, I don’t know, I guess your students typically read this. No.

[00:01:21] Helen Baxendale: Yes, I believe it’s a ninth grade assigned text in our Humane Letters sequence. I was actually, uh, watching a class at one of our schools recently discussing this.

[00:01:31] So very excited to hear from Dr. Meyers, especially during this important anniversary year.

[00:01:37] Albert Cheng: Well, we might have to have your students listen to this interview.

[00:01:41] Helen Baxendale: Yes. Well, I see they’ve probably read The Great Gaby certainly more recently and probably more attentively than I have, so I’m sure they’ve got plenty to learn from Dr. Meyers though.

[00:01:52] Albert Cheng: That’s right. That’s right. Before we get to that though, we’ve got some news to talk about and yeah. Helen, what did you see in the press this week?

[00:02:00] Helen Baxendale: Thanks, Albert. The story I’m tracking this morning was reported in the Fresno Bee, and it’s a coverage of a, a recent poll on the question of whether states should fund religious charter schools, and it finds that by a, a slender majority Americans are opposed to the idea that states should be required to provide funding for religious charter schools.

[00:02:21] It then breaks it down by religious denomination and so on, but. What has prompted this poll is a case currently before the Supreme Court. It comes out of a story in Oklahoma where St. Isidore’s, which is a would be Catholic charter school, has been blocked by the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. They’ve now brought a challenge before the US Supreme Court, and there’s a couple of questions the court has to decide, as I understand it.

[00:02:46] The first is whether or not charters are in fact state actors, and the second question arising from that is if they are not. State actors should they then be entitled to receive public funds, to operate religious schools? And it’s a fascinating question and, and, and as a sort of migrant to the United States, it strikes me as a distinctively American question.

[00:03:07] Yeah. Um, because, you know, most other western nations have long since sort of come to an arrangement with religious operators and they, you know, Western Europe in my native Australia, New Zealand, the uk, et cetera. Religious schools receive public funds and have done for, you know, in some cases centuries, certainly for many decades.

[00:03:26] So it’s always fascinated me that in a country like the United States that is actually far more religiously observant than many of these other places, there’s always been a very strict enforcement thus far in not allowing public funds to go to religious schools. So, fascinating case, potential repercussions of it, I suppose, are that if charters are indeed ruled to be state actors.

[00:03:48] That potentially poses a lot of questions about what autonomy or what restrictions might be imposed upon their broader autonomies and, and whether, you know, if a charter school is a state actor, then what is the point of being a charter school potentially.

[00:04:00] Yeah.

[00:04:00] Helen Baxendale: And if they’re not state actors and religious charters are ruled.

[00:04:04] Constitutional. What might blue States, for example, be inclined to do if they’re implacably opposed to the idea of a publicly funded religious school? Might they just abolish the whole category of chartering? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so some pretty significant potential repercussions on this one. One final pragmatic point on this.

[00:04:23] If I was in Oklahoma, I’m not sure why I would be bothering to become a religious charter school given that they have now universal school vouchers. So interesting that this is, you know, this case has come up in the circumstances it has and could potentially be a very significant decision. For the shape of schooling to come in the United States.

[00:04:41] Albert, what, what are you making of this?

[00:04:44] Albert Cheng: Oh, I, I mean, I think so. I, I think you’re right about the magnitude of the implications of this decision. So yeah, we ought to be keeping a close watch on this and lots of paradigm shifting and, and realignment of strategies and all that. So be quite fascinating to see this unfold.

[00:04:59] I also really appreciate your reminder. You know, we Americans here that are, are, we’re actually the exception rather than the rule in terms of government funding religiously affiliated schools. And so definitely appreciate your perspective to remind all of us, many of our listeners, I, I believe about how we’re actually unique in.

[00:05:19] In that aspect, despite being more religious and you know, supposedly a model of a liberal society, I guess, but anyway. Mm-hmm. That’s fascinating. To go through the history, we could spend a whole episode going through the political history of different countries and schools and religion and why they’re the way they are.

[00:05:34] I. Well, anyway, let me just kind of briefly share my story. I really hope I’m not coming across as a curmudgeon that’s angry that there are cuts to the, at least the research arm of the US Department of Education. You know, I actually think I talked about news story about how we’re not gonna be able to get access to quite one of the best data sets about.

[00:05:55] Homeschooling and homeschoolers that has been collected by the US Department of Ed because of recent changes there. But maybe I’ll promise now officially on the show, this is the last time I’ll talk about this anyway, I just wanna flag an an opinion piece written by, actually two friends of mine, a colleague Robert Morrano, who’s at the University of Arkansas, but also a friend of mine, David Marshall.

[00:06:13] They actually make an argument. Why the government should fund education research? I guess I’ll just lay it there for consideration. Look, I think the authors and myself, we have some skepticism over how efficient and, well, you know, governments can do certain things, but in terms of data collection and supporting knowledge generation for the general public, they actually have some arguments that I think are worth considering.

[00:06:37] Actually point out an argument, for instance, about how that has not. It’s been well done in the private sector, so something to think through. But they also point out, I think underline rightly, the case of a world in which folks don’t pay attention to any research and any kind of empirical facts. And it’s a world that kind of devolves into, uh, really power, right?

[00:07:00] Who, whose narrative wins out in the end. And even as an empirical researcher, I’ll be the first to say that empiricism doesn’t have the final word on everything. But certainly does have a word on things and certainly there is that nightmarish situation where there’s no appeal to anything but power, which, you know, we’re not exactly there yet, but there are pockets which make me worry that we have come to that place in, in some circles.

[00:07:27] So anyway, I just wanna lay that article for everyone else to consider as well as we kind of move forward and, uh, kinda a a, a sort of a new world here in education research.

[00:07:37] Helen Baxendale: Yes, very, very important issue, Albert, and I am not surprised that it’s one that you’re tracking closely given your line of work, but notwithstanding whatever professional and personal interest you might have.

[00:07:47] And I think it, it is incredibly important and certainly some slightly alarming developments in terms of, you know, flagged or signaled abolition of certain agencies or particular data sets and so on that might be abandoned. That I think are, are really very, very important for. Anchoring discussion in at least a shared set of facts.

[00:08:07] Yeah. Notwithstanding your, your very sound point around, you know, the limits of empiricism. I think we are otherwise totally adrift if we can’t at least be arguing from a shared, a shared data set. Um, yeah. And that’s something that, that only government can do in a lot of cases or only government can do, you know, efficiently, oddly enough, so.

[00:08:26] Albert Cheng: Right.

[00:08:26] Helen Baxendale: Totally agree with you on that one. And its importance.

[00:08:30] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. Well anyway, we’ll see how it unfolds and we will keep at it to pursue the truth here, stick with us ’cause coming up after the break we are going to talk about The Great Gatsby.

[00:08:44] Jeffrey Meyers is one of 12 Americans in the British Royal Society of Literature. And the author of 54 books and 980 articles on art, film, and modern American English and European literature. His many award-winning literary biographies include Edgar Allen Poe, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, F Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, Somerset mom, DH Lawrence and Samuel Johnson, among others.

[00:09:11] His work has been translated into 14 languages and published on six continents. He has received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and an award and literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters honoring Exceptional Achievement. Meyers earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and his doctorate at the University of California Berkeley. Professor Meyers. It’s a real treat and a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

[00:09:38] Jeffrey Meyers: Glad to be here.

[00:09:40] Albert Cheng: You’ve covered lots of different authors, but we’re gonna focus on the Great Gatsby and f Scott Fitzgerald today because this April marks the hundredth anniversary of his 1925 Classic, the Great Gatsby.

[00:09:53] So could you start by sketching briefly, Fitzgerald’s biography, and then explain the main themes of the Great Gatsby and why it’s such a timeless and important American novel.

[00:10:08] Jeffrey Meyers: There’s two questions here in question one. I just wanna start by saying I had an article celebrating the great Gatsby’s hundredth anniversary in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday, ah, a few days ago, April 5th, so I’m glad to continue the discussion with you and I’m glad to see that since Gerald the book is getting its recognition and its due so briefly.

[00:10:29] He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896. He went to Princeton, he served in America during World War I. He regretted that he was never sent overseas, fell in love with and married the beautiful and wild zealous there from Alabama, known even from her teenage years and throughout her life, her sort of wild, unconventional behavior, even verging into madness later on.

[00:10:56] He had tremendous success with his first two fashionable novels in the early twenties, the side of Paradise, and the beautiful and the damned. And while still in his twenties, he published his masterpiece. Great Gatsby, which is, as you know, very widely read in high school and college, re-read by grownups and I suppose no educated person in America has not read the Great Gatsby.

[00:11:21] It has superb characters, it has a great plot, has a glamorous setting. It has very important themes which resonate throughout American literature before Fitzgerald and following him as far as the themes. I’ll get to that when I read a passage from my book at the end, so we’ll reserve the answer to that question.

[00:11:41] Helen Baxendale: Thanks Dr. Meyers. I wonder if I could ask you about the opening of Gatsby, which starts, I quote, whenever you feel like criticizing anyone. My father told me. Just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. Could you tell us how narrator Nick Caraway and protagonist Jay Gatsby’s experiences as Midwestern World War I veterans have shaped the novel?

[00:12:06] Jeffrey Meyers: Well, the, the two main male characters both come from the same background, but they have different trajectories. Gatsby has made a fortune in bootlegging during prohibition. It’s not absolutely spelled out, but that seems to be where the money comes from, and that’s what I. He’s accused of by Tom Buchanan.

[00:12:25] Nick has a rather lowly front of the mill job in Wall Street. He’s not very happy with it, but he’s a bachelor. He is just kind of struggling along and he’s Gatsby’s tenant. He has a cottage on Gatsby’s Vast grounds, so he’s Gatsby’s neighbor and they’re about the same age and Gatsby confides in Nick asked Nick, for example, to arrange the first.

[00:12:50] Meeting with Daisy and Nick is the moral center of the novel. He observes what’s going on. He, he observes Gatsby’s craziness in a way and how he’s kind of doomed. He sees Gatsby’s rise. He sees his quest for Daisy Buchanan, and he sees the death by murder, where tragically the murder victim is the wrong person.

[00:13:16] He did not commit the crime for which he was murdered. So that’s the relation of Nick and Kasby. And that, of course is, is very important. And then later on I think we’ll quote that Nick says, you’re worth all of ’em. Meaning the, the people that Kasby is trying to seduce are worthless. And that’s really the biggest irony in the whole book.

[00:13:38] He devotes his life to trying to win Daisy. And Is Daisy really worth it? That’s what we have to get to later on.

[00:13:47] Albert Cheng: Let’s make our progress to all that. And so let me read another passage. This is how Gatsby is introduced, and then I want to ask you something about it. So quote, 50 feet away, a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets.

[00:14:03] Something in his leisurely movements and secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gasby himself come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens. He was contend to be alone. He stretched out his arms towards the dark water. In a curious way, I glanced seaward and distinguished nothing except a single green light minute and far away.

[00:14:26] That might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby, he had vanished. That’s the introduction. And so you’ve been starting to hit on some of these themes. Let’s talk about some of these a little bit more Gatsby’s yearning, you know, the symbolism of the green lights, and then, you know, and we later find out that’s gonna be Daisy’s stock.

[00:14:43] And you know, how does this all kind of then tie into the way Gatsby reinvents his image to impress Daisy?

[00:14:51] Jeffrey Meyers: The passage you just read shows one of the reasons why the novel is so great. The style is absolutely terrific, but the suggestion of it. Is even better. He’s ghostlike. He emerges from the shadows.

[00:15:04] He’s unreal, but he’s impressive too. And he’s leisurely insecure. He’s extending his arms somewhere. What’s he, what’s he reaching for? He is reaching for the stars. He is reaching for something that he can’t get and the fact that it’s green obviously is leading him on. He can proceed with the green light toward that green light toward the hope that he has.

[00:15:27] And the whole novel is Gatsby’s quest for Daisy and the length to which he’s going his whole life is dedicated to it. Every once in a while he. It has to do a little bit of business to keep the money flowing in to pay for these, again, impressive but insane parties that he has where he doesn’t even know anybody.

[00:15:46] He is at his own party and there’s about a hundred people there. I think that Robert Redford, Mia Farrow Gatsby film, which is I think the second or third film of Gatsby, really captures it very well. The glamor of it and the waste, the pointless of everybody drunk and breaking things up and acting foolish and, and again, there’s Gaby remote.

[00:16:09] He’s standing somewhere above it all looking down and maybe in a reflective moment, wondering why he’s doing all this. And is this the sort of thing that’s really going to impress Daisy? And yet it does because that’s her world. And that’s the world that this poor boy from the Midwest is nobody. Is trying to enter.

[00:16:27] Daisy goes there by, right by birth, by marriage, by money. And Gatsby is the interloper. And that’s what Tom despises, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, despises and rejects and looks down on him. There’s a sort of horrible, ironic comedy to the whole thing. And what is this madman doing? He’s made all the money.

[00:16:51] It’s like the billionaires we have now. What do they do when you have a billion and then you get another billion on top of that? What do you do with it all? You just have to sit around wondering how you spend the money.

[00:17:00] Helen Baxendale: Professor Meyer, you added the phrase, impressive but insane a moment ago to describe the parties that Gatsby threw and I, I wonder if that descriptor might equally be applied if that’s not uncharitable to his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, who was a wealthy southern boy and socialite and became famous for her beauty, wild antics, alcoholism, and psychiatric problems, and.

[00:17:25] The popular success of his novels, of course then catapulted the young couple into the public eye and she became known in the national press as sort of the original American flapper. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the nature of f Scott Fitzgerald’s relationship with Zelda, their lifestyle and, and how she really became this very iconic but troubled muse of the jazz age.

[00:17:48] Jeffrey Meyers: All men were attracted to the dazzling uninhibited Zelda. Of course envy Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, of course, he was very handsome and very charming and very successful, and not a notable background, and they envied him. How did this guy ever get such an incredible wife? On the other hand, nice as it was to be married to Zelda.

[00:18:10] She was really very difficult woman to handle, and on one hand she inspired him, inspired his heroines. On the other hand, he encouraged his drinking when he wanted to work and helped destroy him. And then he said, some people think I made Zelda crazy, and other people think Zelda made me an alcoholic.

[00:18:33] That’s both true. I. But when he wanted to work, she would say, you’re boring and you know, let’s go out and have a party and all our friends are waiting for us. And Hemingway, who was a very shrewd observer, and of course he was attracted to Zelda too, and he probably thought, boy, if I was married to Zelda, I’d really put that woman under control and make her behave properly and you know, let me get on with my work.

[00:18:55] And we’d have parties on the weekend or whatever. And he said, you know, you, you’re just the sort of person that shouldn’t be married to Zelda. He needed her. And at the same time, he couldn’t bear living with her, a lot of their pranks. And here they are setting up this very contemporary publicity, I mean, as if they were their own publicity agents.

[00:19:17] So people who haven’t read their works, what they know is that when Zelda was changing her clothes on the top floor of a hotel, she just changed the elevator. In those days it was a cage, you know, not, not an open door thing, you just changed the elevator for half an hour. So it would be there when she was ready and everybody else in the hotel had to just wait.

[00:19:37] And if they didn’t like it too bad. And this whole business of the revolving door in the Plaza Hotel, I. They just went round and round and round for half an hour and everybody’s standing in the street or in the lobby waiting to get in and out. And if you don’t like it, too bad. I’m Zelda and I do what I like and look at me and you’ll see why it’s jumping fully clothed into the plaza fountain.

[00:19:57] I mean, it’s stupid. And yet it’s a wild prank. People thought, oh God, look at this. How uninhibited. I’m not sure anybody said, I’d like to jump into the Plaza pop fountain with all my clothes on. What about my new pair of shoes? And get all soggy. But when they did it, it was just, it got into the newspapers, got onto the radio.

[00:20:14] You can imagine now what they say would go viral. You know, people in Mongolia were seeing Zelda jump into the Plaza Fountain and think, what did she look like when all the soggy clothes were slapped to her body? And you could see her figure better than ever. So. They were foolish but famous and they were the classic couple of their time and people admire them the way they, the thing is they did stupid things, but he wrote these great novels.

[00:20:43] Today people are admired just simply for doing stupid things without, without doing anything really notable, intelligent, successful, or important. And that’s the difference. They had this kind of bifurcated life and you know, it’s amazing in a way that Fitzgerald managed to survive course. He loved it. He liked going to parties, he liked getting drunk.

[00:21:06] They’re at a dinner party at, on the French Riviera. And Fitzgerald’s talking to Isadore Duncan, this very, very famous dancer of the twenties. And of course, Zelda had aspirations, which failed to be a ballerina. So at one point, Zelda gets up, she stands on the chair that she was sitting on, and she just leaps across the table and over a stone parapet.

[00:21:28] I mean, everybody thought she had committed suicide. Well, she, she managed to land safely. She crawled back up with blood on her knees and on her dress, and this was her idea of dancing her performance in front of Isador Duncan. I mean, it’s crazy. It really was a crazy thing to do. She could have badly, badly hurt herself and several times she did try to kill herself even before she was institutionalized.

[00:21:53] I mean, she’s driving on the Riviera with Fitzgerald, right where Grace Kelly was killed in a car accident. And she said, I think I’ll turn off here. Well, I’ve been on that road many, many times. It’s a very high, dangerous, curvy narrow Riviera road over the Mediterranean. She said, I think I’ll turn off here.

[00:22:11] You know, she was gonna drive right off the road, off the mountainside, and then to the sea and kill them both. Geral just manages to grab the wheel. He knew she was serious. Well, that was Zelda. Terribly exciting, but it’s also very crazy and very destructive. He used it when he could and he tried to survive when he couldn’t.

[00:22:29] Albert Cheng: That is a, a fascinating peek into their life and marriage, which I, I think, kind of segues into this next question, this idea of being a fool. Let me read the passage just to remind listeners. This is Daisy recounting the birth of her daughter, right? So she says, well, my daughter was less than an hour old, and Tom was, God knows where I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or girl.

[00:22:55] And Daisy continues. The nurse told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. All right. I said, I’m glad it’s a girl and I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world. A beautiful little fool. So talk about the connection between how, how women are portrayed in the Great Gatsby and the world in which Fitzgerald inhabited and, you know, update a little bit just to remind the listeners, what does Daisy mean to Gatsby at, at this point?

[00:23:23] Jeffrey Meyers: A question about that. Quote is, why is being a beautiful little fool? The best thing a girl could be in the in this world is that what parents want their girl to be a beautiful little fool. Why does a beautiful little fool fit into that world? And is daisy still a beautiful little fool? You have to be foolish in a way to put up with that look.

[00:23:48] Here’s DA’s character. She’s wealthy, she’s glamorous, she’s beautiful, and she’s bored. And she asked in a very important passage, echoing a passage straight out of ts Elliot’s wasteland. What do we do with ourselves this afternoon and the day after that and the next 30 years? What do we do? We’re just sitting here with everything.

[00:24:12] Servants, mansions, swimming pool money. Beautiful cars, and what do they do? They’re bored and great neck in the summer. So they drive into Manhattan. Well, Manhattan’s a lot hotter than Great Neck, I can tell you, especially if you have a house on the water in Great Neck, as they did. So this whole question is overcoming boredom, and that’s why they’re willing to go to these parties.

[00:24:35] Admittedly, you get free champagne and good hors d’oeuvres and it’s classy to be there and you can tell your friends you’ve been there. So Daisy is unreal. There’s the real daisy who says. What do we do with ourselves for the next 30 years? And then there’s Gatsby’s idealized version of Daisy, which is not the same as a real woman.

[00:24:57] He dedicates his whole adult life to impressing her and winning her, and he never realizes that we do as careful readers that he’s just not worth it. Yes, she’s glamorous and beautiful and it’s exciting to court her, and it would certainly be thrilling to take her to bed. But then what do you do for the next 30 years?

[00:25:21] That’s the question. We don’t know if she would’ve stayed with Tom or elope with Gatsby if he hadn’t been murdered after trying to protect her. When she killed Myrtle Wilson in a car accident, would she be grateful that he tried to help her or would she be loyal to Tom? And she said, I love Tom, but I loved you too.

[00:25:42] And Gatsby said, I don’t want you to love anybody but me. So it’s a hopeless quest in two senses. One, because he is killed. He doesn’t get her if he hadn’t been killed. We don’t know if he’d get her. If he did get her. We don’t know what kind of a life they’d have. Presumably they’d be like Tom and Daisy without Tom’s Polo.

[00:26:04] Tom is based on Tommy Hitchcock and the number one world class polo player in the twenties, and Fitzgerald adored him as he adored anybody who was rich and handsome and a great athlete. It’s glamor, but you see, this is what Tom has that Gaby doesn’t have. I mean, Tom is manly, Vero, powerful, ruthless, and very opposite of this very delicate.

[00:26:30] Almost butterfly like quality of daisy or the fact that she’s called Daisy. You know, this kind of ordinary flower, but still flower like. So that’s Daisy’s a great character, but it’s the am ambiguity of her and the beautiful little fool if that’s all she is, and that’s all she inspires to be. Why do you wanna spend your life with her?

[00:26:52] How long will it take you to realize she’s a beautiful little fool? And what do we talk about for the next 30 years?

[00:26:58] Helen Baxendale: You’ve brought us neatly to the topic of my next question, Dr. Mayas, which alludes to your earlier comment about Daisy, essentially just being very bored and asking the question, you know, what do, what do we do with ourselves?

[00:27:10] And I think one of the answers to that is throwing lavish parties. And let me quote briefly from the book. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. Nick Caraway says, of the lavish Long Island parties that Gatsby threw, he goes on and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks.

[00:27:36] So I wonder if you could speak briefly on how Fitzgerald uses these set pieces with the parties to symbolize and, and comment on the superficiality, the, the sort of moral decadence, the avert displays of wealth and indulgence that characterize the roaring twenties of New York City.

[00:27:57] Jeffrey Meyers: Looking at this passage again for the millionth time, I think I see two, two things in this.

[00:28:02] Blue gardens, men and girls came and went, you know, that’s from the Proof Rock too. In the in the room, the women come and go. Speaking of Michelangelo, he took that right out of the run, out of Proof Rock. As far as the behavior associated with amusement parks, what we’re talking about is extreme vulgarity.

[00:28:19] Lower class people are associated with amusement parks. They ride on, they bang each other with these toy cars. They eat hotdogs and popcorn and cotton candy. They ride the Ferris wheel and scream and maybe even throw up when they get dizzy on the Ferris wheel. Kids love it, of course. But the point is people are drunk.

[00:28:40] I mean, I’m sure you don’t actually see this in the book, but you know that they’re crawling off men and women coupling going off into dark places somewhere in the bushes, in the mansion, and you know, the women are drunk and everybody is crazy, and they’re, they’re taking off their clothes and they’re jumping into the swimming pool or being pushed into the swimming pool.

[00:28:59] And the point of the lavish parties and that you can imagine how much it costs. And of course, if you have that kind of money, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, if a, a billionaire buys an airplane, it’s like you and I buying a hundred dollars coat, you don’t really notice the difference that much. So it’s, he sits there looking at these parties and they’re only in Matt to press one person.

[00:29:23] And the thing is, she is attracted to his wealth and glamor. He knows that. And the parties work, they come, but she’s even more impressed. And this is a great ironic scene by his lavish display of custom made English shirts. He has these shirts made in German Street in London, and they cost a fortune, but that doesn’t matter.

[00:29:47] And he opens his closet and he has dozens of shirts. It would take a month for him to wear them all, and he throws one after another on the bed. Instead of throwing Daisy on the bed, which I think is kind of interesting, he throws the shirts on the bed and Daisy, he’s delighted. She lets out these little squeals of pleasure, and he’s the sort of woman who’s impressed by Gaby shirts.

[00:30:14] In some ways, it’s tremendously impressive. In another ways. They’re both idiots. He’s impressed by his shirts. He thinks he’ll be impressed by his shirts and they are. But how many people are actually impressed? Suppose you went to a friend’s house and he started throwing his shirts all over the place.

[00:30:30] Are you gonna be impressed by that or would you think he’s an idiot? It’s really a great scene because it cuts both ways and it really shows a lot about both of them, the extremes that he’s willing to go to, and the fact that these mad displays, the party and the shirts being a kind of a metaphor for the whole party.

[00:30:50] They’re a little syn. They’re a little part of the whole. It’s really a great scene.

[00:30:56] Albert Cheng: So let me actually begin by reading a passage from your biography. This time you described Fitzgerald as a romantic and tragic figure. A writer who took his material almost entirely from his life, who battled against failure and disappointment.

[00:31:10] And so, I mean, you’ve been describing a lot of how, I mean, art imitates life, I guess, you know, with this book. But tell us a bit about Fitzgerald, specifically his, his inner life, his alcoholism, his love affairs, his friendships with polo stars, you know, Hollywood executives. What is he taking from his life and, and actually I, I guess, what does the Great Gaby reveal about him in particular?

[00:31:31] Jeffrey Meyers: His love affairs were surprisingly few considering how famous he was and how handsome he was. And they only took place after Zelda had been confined in mental institutions. He did not have affairs when they were married, though she did. And that almost ruined their marriage did ruin it, really. So he was faithful in a way that she was not.

[00:31:53] He admired the Polo star, Tommy Hitchcock, as I said, and you could say more about Polo certainly, but he had a very rough time in failure in Hollywood.

[00:32:05] Helen Baxendale: Thank you for that. I want to read another quote to you as Amiah this time from the end of the book, and then ask you to ruminate a little bit on it. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

[00:32:28] Could you briefly discuss for us the end of the novel, including what Fitzgerald shows us or is indeed trying to tell us about how Tom and Daisy affect the lives of Myrtle and George Wilson and in turn, Gatsby.

[00:32:42] Jeffrey Meyers: That’s a great passage, really, and it shows Fitzgerald at the top of his writing ability, and Tom and Daisy just walk away at the end because they’re protected by their money and because they don’t really have any moral concern for the damage that they’ve done.

[00:32:59] I mean, look what’s happened. Three people are killed. Myrtle is killed in the car accident. Wilson shoots himself, he kills by mistake. If he wanted to kill the real killer of Myrtle in the car, that would be Daisy and Gatsby dies because he is trying to protect Daisy and take the blame for what she’s done.

[00:33:19] And of course, Myrtle is Tom Buchanan’s mistress, and the very name Myrtle. And the fact that she’s married to a garage, man, I mean, she’s a very low class woman. She hates her life with. Wilson Wilson is trying to sell the car to Buchanan to get money to move to where Alaska, somewhere where they’ll have a better life and hold onto Myrtle who he loves.

[00:33:42] So the impact of Tom and Daisy is disastrous, but the point is they continue their luxurious but life. As if they had never been involved in the tragedies, as if nothing happened. So fitzgerald’s onto something really, really crucial in American life. The moral divide between the rich and the poor, and then you can be responsible for three people’s death and walk aways.

[00:34:07] If nothing happened. It’s, it’s amazing. I think I’m just, it’s tremendous. That passage. I absolutely love it. Retreated back into the advanced carelessness or whatever it was. You see, he doesn’t even define it. What, what is it that’s keeping Don. Tom and Daisy together, he’s not enough for him. He has to have Myle on the side who’s the absolute antithesis of Daisy in every possible way.

[00:34:32] So, you know, their life isn’t perfect either. And Tom is, does what he likes and he knows he’ll until Gatsby comes along. He knows that he has. He’ll keep Daisy, she won’t leave him. You can’t find that life with anybody else.

[00:34:47] Albert Cheng: Well, speaking of, you know, imperfect lives, I, I, you know, I think we need to spend a little bit of time talking about just the last phase of Fitzgerald’s life.

[00:34:55] And you alluded to some of the things that happened then, right? The mental health issues of Zelda, but there were financial troubles. I mean, just could you just throw our listeners in on this last chapter of his

[00:35:06] Jeffrey Meyers: life? The sad final phase is Fitzgerald’s Late Life. He died of a heart attack when he was 44.

[00:35:14] That’s very, very young. He’s redeemed by three things when his life is collapsing after Gatsby. He’s redeemed by the care he had for Zelda and for their daughter Scotty. She had terrible problems, mental problems, mental illness, mental crack up, and she was in and out of institutions. It’s cost a fortune and he, he cared for her, right, right till the end.

[00:35:41] Of course, she, she died after he did. He was redeemed by a final love affair that, that he had in Hollywood with the English journalist, Sheila Graham, who wrote about four or five books about it. He was good for him. She rescued him in some ways, and most of all, he was redeemed by a second great novel, tender as the Knight, 1934, which is more ambitious than Gatsby, but not quite as, as fine.

[00:36:08] Helen Baxendale: I have another quote for you, professor again, towards the end of the novel from Nick Caraway. He says, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s Dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.

[00:36:27] He did not know that it was already behind him somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city. Where the dark fields of the Republic rolled on under the night. Can you discuss for us how Gatsby’s yearning for a Life with Daisy was always connected to his past as much as his present?

[00:36:45] Jeffrey Meyers: I just noticed as you read that, there’s the green light and there’s the blue lawn.

[00:36:49] There’s the dark fields. This color comes into it. It’s like, I don’t know if anybody ever noticed, but almost every single novel title by Stephen Crane. And short story has that the red Badge of Courage and the Blue Hotel and on and on and on. There’s about 10 examples. So when he was a young man, he fell madly in love with the unattainable daisy, but he couldn’t marry her because she had no money.

[00:37:14] Rich girls don’t marry poor boys as you rich girls know. So he set out to require the welfare that would win her, and he might have achieved his lifelong goal if he hadn’t been murdered. But as I said, we don’t know what would’ve happened. The great irony is that even if he had won Daisy, he would’ve would’ve had to lead Same kind of glamorous but boring life that she’d led with Tom.

[00:37:39] That’s the only life they know. And with more meaningless parties, they’d be sitting around saying, what are we gonna do for the next 30 years? And Daisy would say, let’s have a party. And he said, oh, that’s a good idea. We’ll have a party. Call up everybody you know. And then when Word got around in the right circles in Manhattan that there was gonna be a big party in Great Neck, and it was all gonna be free food and drink.

[00:38:00] Half the people at the party, maybe more than half the people were not invited, but they were welcome because it seemed like the party was a great success if lots and lots of people were there. Let me ask the last

[00:38:12] Albert Cheng: question about the closing line that many of us know. I certainly still remember the essay question based off this passage that I had to write for an exam after I read The Great Gatsby in high School.

[00:38:25] So let me read the quote. I. Gaby believed in the green light, the astic future that year by year recedes before us. It had eluded us then, but that’s no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine morning. So we beat on. Votes against the current born back ceaselessly into the past.

[00:38:47] So just your quick take, what does Fitzgerald mean by these lines, and how should we understand Gatsby’s vision of the American dream and its larger legacy?

[00:38:58] Jeffrey Meyers: Well, the green light is the great future. Its beckoning him. It’s urging him. It’s allowing him to proceed. But the green light are also illusions that we cannot achieve, but continue to strive for, and you have to admire somebody for that.

[00:39:15] I mean, at least he’s tried for something big, at least something that he thinks is big in his life, worthy of this novel, rather than being satisfied with what you have, ambition, which can corrupt and make you do evil things in order to get ahead anywhere from sex to bribery. But the striving, even without the achievement, is still worthwhile.

[00:39:39] And there’s a famous line in the Robert Browning, the Victorian poet, who says, A man’s reach should exceed his grasp. In other words, you should try for something beyond what you already have, and then look back at your life at the end of your life and say, what have you achieved? Has your life been worthwhile?

[00:39:57] Shall I read you this paragraph?

[00:39:59] Albert Cheng: Yes, please. Yeah. Give us the last word on Fitzgerald.

[00:40:02] Jeffrey Meyers: This is really the answer to the thematic question that you asked in the beginning. The Great Gatsby transcends Fitzgerald’s personal life and brilliantly expresses some of the dominant themes in American literature, the idealism and morality of the Midwest, where most of the characters originate, and where Nick returns at the end of the novel.

[00:40:23] And contrast to the complicity and corruption of the East where the novel takes place. The frontier myth of the self-made man. Attempt to escape the materialistic present, and recapture the innocent past, the predatory power of rich and beautiful women. The limited possibility of love in the modern world, the heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, the doomed attempt to sustain illusions and recapture the American dream.

[00:40:51] That’s what I think the novel’s about.

[00:40:54] Albert Cheng: We’ve been with Dr. Jeffrey Morris talking about the Great Gatsby and f Scott Fitzgerald’s life Professor, thanks so much for your time and sharing with us your knowledge about this classic novel and, and the author. Thank you.

[00:41:19] You know, Helen, I always appreciate literature and its ways of transporting us to another time period and just kind of being immersed in that. So I really enjoyed that interview and just kind of revisiting that text again.

[00:41:32] Helen Baxendale: Yes, absolutely I would. I think The Great Gatsby is one of those remarkable works that is both.

[00:41:38] Incredibly distinctive and sort of a time capsule of its period, but also like any great book has timeless themes and ideas that you know, readers of any period can relate to. So it was very enjoyable to hear a real expert expound on all of that. Yeah.

[00:41:55] Albert Cheng: Well, that’s gonna bring us to the end of our show before we close out.

[00:41:58] Tweet of the Week comes from Education. Next, these organizations, like any bureaucracy over time, develop these different stacks of policies and procedures that at some point were based on a law or regulation or a good faith idea. I. Then just become the way they do things. Well, if you are wondering what that was talking about, it’s actually an article entitled The Enlarged Heart of Boston Public Schools is actually an article written by a student at Harvard University right now studying political science, tracking the administrative bloat, if you will, the growth of the Central office of Boston Public Schools.

[00:42:32] I think the fun fact that he highlighted in his article was. The central office administrator to student ratio was like 78 to one in that district, one of the highest in the country. But take a look. It’s, it’s an interesting political analysis kind of in bureaucracies, in public administration, Boston Public Schools in in this case.

[00:42:53] So I’ll commend that article. I don’t know, Helen, if you had anything to add to that. Only

[00:42:58] Helen Baxendale: that the article is remarkable because it’s not exceptional, and I suspect if a similar exercise were conducted for other large public school districts nationally, they would find similar things. But I do commend the author Thomas Husker, for putting the numbers together and doing an analysis.

[00:43:14] I think it’s an important issue and will continue to be as enrollments decline, but bureaucratic budgets do not.

[00:43:21] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Well, Helen, pleasure to co-host the show with you. Lovely to be with you, Albert. Next week we’re gonna have another fasting interview to celebrate another anniversary. Uh, we’re gonna have Gordon Wood, a University professor of History emeritus from Brown, who’s gonna talk to us about the battles of Lexington and Concord.

[00:43:40] We’re gonna celebrate the 200th 50th anniversary of those battles. So hope to see you then. Until then, be well. Hey, it’s Albert Cheng here, and I just wanna thank you for listening to the Learning Curve podcast. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we’d invite you to donate to the Pioneer Institute at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.