Literature Discussion Group

03 April 2015

A NEW APPROACH

I'm going to try something a little different this month. Instead of giving you some background and then segueing into the assignments, I'm going to give you the background IN the assignments. Exciting, eh? (Try to contain yourselves.)

As you read each assignment, you'll be given a little information and something to think about with regard to this month's selection, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Then, after reading all of your assignment choices and considering them carefully (gleaning brilliant bits of insight all the while), you'll choose one assignment to prep for our meeting on April 9th.

Ready? Go!

THE ASSIGNMENTS

#1 - Cover Art

What's up with that ghostly disembodied face floating over the city on the novel's cover? Believe it or not (your choice), this cover art has been praised for its artistic and symbolic qualities. Created for the original publication by Spanish artist Francis Cugat, those eyes—and that glowing city—have graced the majority of The Great Gatsby covers printed over the last 90 years. But... why? You tell us. Why is this cover so perfect for the novel? What are its artistic merits? In what ways it symbolic? Give us everything you've got: color theory, thematic analysis, a biography of Cugat—anything that explains why this cover is one of the most enduring and iconic book covers ever. Ev-er.

#2 - Living Will

Here's the situation. You're in the hospital. You have to undergo a procedure that may leave you unable to make your own medical decisions for a period of time, and you need to appoint someone else to make those decisions for you. For some inexplicable reason, your only choices to fill this role are the characters of The Great Gatsby:

Nick Carraway
Jay Gatsby
Daisy Buchanan
Tom Buchanan
Jordan Baker
Myrtle Wilson
George Wilson
Owl Eyes
Klipsringer

For this one, you have to answer two questions: Who's your first choice, and who's your last choice? Back up each of your choices with specific evidence from the book. For instance, if you choose Nick because he's the most conscientious, find some evidence from the book that proves you're not just making things up. Not that you would. But still. Textual evidence, please.

#3 - The Great American Novel

Of course Gatsby is great, it's right there in the title. But what is it that makes Fitzgerald's book a contender for the title Great American Novel. Try to come up with more than reason to support your answer to this one. In fact, let's say three. And if you don't think it's particularly great or particularly American, you can come up with three reasons why Gatsby doesn't deserve the GAN title.

Ooh! Here's a crazy thought—a third option for #3: Come up with another book that deserves the Great American Novel title more than Gatsby and explain your choice. (Wow. We're up to like, nine assignment choices now. Crazy.)

#4 - Autobiographical Nature of Book

You've probably heard the advice often offered to writers: write what you know. Whether it's good advice or not, it's pretty clear that Fitzgerald took it. There are several elements of The Great Gatsby that appear directly related to Fitzgerald's life experience. Do a little digging into F. Scott's biography and see what you can find in terms of characters, experiences, or events that may have gone directly from Fitzgerald's life to the page.

#5 - Poetry

One of the things I really enjoyed about reading Gatsby this time around was the language. Possibly because I already knew the story, I found myself highly focused on his writing style, his word choice, and—in particular—his very poetic descriptions. Scan through the text of The Great Gatsby and pick out words and phrases that you find particularly poetic. Once you have a good list going, start rearranging these words and phrases to create a Gatsby-inspired poem constructed from Fitzgerald's language. (You can insert a few word and phrases of your own if you like.) Give it a title and bring it to group to share.

#6 - Something Clever of Your Own Invention

You're all brilliant and you know it, so feel free to create your own Gatsby inspired something-or-other and show it off when we meet on the 9th.

Happy reading, everyone! I can't wait to see what you all come up with.

No comments:

Looking For Hamlet Scholar Talk

This is another event at the PPL in March in honor of the First Folio Exhibit, and it's on Wednesday, March 9th from 12-1:30pm in the Rines Auditorium.

"Focusing on Hamlet, University of Southern Maine Professor Ben Bertram will examine the way editors, directors, actors, teachers, and scholars choose among folio, quarto, or conflated versions of the plays. He will also be accompanied by actors who will perform Hamlet’s soliloquies and join in a discussion of how Shakespeare’s words make it from the page to the stage."

Get the full description here.

Definitions and Clarifications

pneumatic, adj. - literally, full of air. This term is often used to describe women in BNW, and seems to suggest that a woman like Lenina, who's "wonderfully pneumatic," is buxom, curvy, shapely, and yes, even bouncy. But pneumatic could also have a second meaning here, and that is to indicate that someone is a bit of an air-head, light on the intellectual matter, or not bogged down by weighty matters or considerations.

viviparous, adj. - a creature that is viviparous gives birth to live young that develop inside the body, as in the way mammals reproduce. Humans are viviparous (at least, they were until A.F. 632).

Malthusian, adj. - based on the beliefs of Robert Thomas Malthus, a British economist who argued that "population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease." - The Free Dictionary

Pavlovian Conditioning, n. - also called Classic Conditioning, it's a way of getting a subject to make certain associations between two previously unrelated things; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the psychologist who discovered that if he always rang a bell right before feeding his dogs, they came to associate the sound of the bell with getting fed, and therefore would start to drool upon hearing the bell. Here's a great comic related to that experiment.