Lit Talk*

The party is coming to a close. Soon the music will end, the lights will be shut off, the groundkeepers will start cleaning up, and all we’ll have left is the memory...but maybe this story was already a memory. In the final episode of season 2, Nesha and Bobby sit down with Kait Kerrigan of The Great Gatsby Musical, currently on Broadway, to discuss bringing the novel to the stage, Nick’s fracture...

If Chapter 7 was about the true James Gatz, the man hidden beneath the veneer of Gatsby, Chapter 8 is about the true world, the one hidden beneath the shiny exterior of the dreams we adorn it with. What Fitzgerald creates is a world without meaning, a world of raw matter, and while it isn’t a pretty sight, it's an important one.  In our penultimate episode of season 2, Bobby and Nesha sit down...

There is a distinct quality to Fitzgerald’s writing that made it so unique in 1925. It was not just that it was beautiful, but that it was cinematic . Today, we are used to reading books and imagining their scenes playing out on the big screen, but before the rise of Hollywood, this mode of reading and writing stories within the cinematic imagination didn’t exist. And while Scott could write cinem...

Nick and Gatsby’s relationship is intimate, to say the least. Of all the attendees at Gatsby’s party, it’s Nick who receives a formal invitation. It’s Nick to whom Gatsby confesses his true origins, and it’s Nick who arranges Gatsby’s funeral, meets with his father, and stays with him until the very end. Therefore, it’s little wonder that Queer readings of the novel have emerged; the book positive...

F. Scott Fitzgerald identified a fatal flaw in The Great Gatsby— the novel's women. In this episode, we’ll be talking about the girls of Gatsby alongside another 1920s classic that, in many ways, is Gatsby if it were written for and by women. That novel is Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott Joining Bobby and Nesha is Dr. Marsha Gordon. Together, we’ll discuss the New Women of the 1920s, if Daisy is a v...

In the 1920s, the United States was changing. By boat and by train, European immigrants and Black migrants arrived in New York trying to achieve the American Dream. And while Jay Gatsby isn’t secretly an immigrant or a migrant, he is metaphorically an immigrant and a migrant.  Join Bobby and Nesha for a conversation with Dr. Caroline Brown about the changing racial and ethnic landscape of America...

Jay Gatsby’s parties are described as a neon-bright spectacle, a gilded carnival. The music is playing, the liquor is flowing, and is that the latest film star dipping her toes into the pool? But there is also a dark, tragic mystery that lurks beneath the surface. Because what is a spectacle without a hint of foreboding? A perfect summer day with storm clouds on the horizon... Join Bobby and Nesha...

The Great Gatsby is, at its core, a novel about class. You fundamentally cannot read the book without engaging with it. This, perhaps, is why its status as The Great American novel is so fascinating, because we Americans, as much as we like to pretend otherwise, are deeply uncomfortable discussing class.  This episode, Bobby and Nesha sit down with Dr. Michael Nowlin to talk about the laboring und...

The Great Gatsby is a deceptively simple text. It comes in at roughly 200 pages, and most of us read it before we turn 18. But as any novel that is so much about lies and facades should be, there are many hidden messages to be uncovered in its lush, radiant prose... On episode 1 of the new season of Lit Talk* Bobby and Nesha sit down with Hillary Copsey from the Mercantile Library to discuss unrel...

Hello Old Sports. This season on Lit Talk we are diving headfirst into the glittering, gleaming world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, The Great Gatsby ; a novel that has shaped the literary canon and our very national identity for the last century.  The first of nine episodes airs June 11th and will drop weekly on Wednesdays. So get gussied up, down a shot of liquid courage, and get ready fo...

There is one question the novel really, really doesn't want to answer. What does the Creature look like?  While Mary Shelley describes the Creature, we still never really get a good look at him. Considering the plot of the entire novel rests on his hideousness, he’s remarkably difficult to pin down. In this episode, we are going to be getting into why. Why is a novel that is so focused on beau...

We read Frankenstein as a novel about science, which it undoubtedly is, but it's also a novel about nature. The natural world is fundamental to the novel, in many ways, the landscapes serve as an additional character. They impact the plot, trigger emotional insights, and reveal fascinating messages to those who are wise enough to listen.   This episode we will delve into how Mary Shelley’s rom...

Before there was Mary Shelley, there was her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. She was an early founder of romanticism, a pioneering feminist writer, or as the press called her, "a hyena in petticoats". Her story is wild, wicked, and wonderful and had an enormous influence on the scary stories her daughter would one day write. You've heard of feminine rage, prepare to encounter the femini...

When we say the words scientific revolution, what comes to mind? Perhaps it is the clean white lines of lab coats and test tubes, electric vehicles and virtual reality , the eccentrics and tech bros of silicon valley.  Needless to say, none of these things are to be found in Mary Shelley’s scientific revolution. Hers is grimmer, grimier, full of long shadows and dark hallways. It is grotesque and...

In 1818, Frankenstein broke ground by creating space for its readers to interrogate the morals of the day’s emerging sciences. Within its safe and wholly hypothetical pages, it was a place where readers could engage with their fears of new technology, anxieties about religion, and the questions of what we owe each other. Frankenstein was forged in the crucible of revolution–scientific revolution,...

Over 200 years ago, in an old villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, a group of travelers decided to have a ghost story competition. The poet, the playboy, the doctor, the jealous step-sister, and the 18-year-old girl who would change literature forever. We speak of Mary Shelley, and her unholy creation, Frankenstein. In the first season of our new podcast Lit Talk* , we will explore her story as you...