LIT AF

In this episode our narrator Viktor Frankenstein walks us through the moments in which he left home and began school. People dying of disease at home, being uncomfortable with leaving familiarity and making new friends - it sounds sort of like life after Covid lockdowns. Check out the undercurrent of impending doom that accompanies Viktor's pursuit of knowledge... will curiosity kill someone's cat?

Mary Shelley opens Frankenstein with a series of letters from Captain Walton to his sister, telling of his expedition to the north pole and the stranger he encounters who tells a story... Why frame the book this way? For the same reason a handwritten letter in your mailbox - if that ever happens - strikes you differently than an email or a text. The letter is REAL. 

There's a lot of weird going around. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." That's what Mary Shelley did in 1816, the Year Without A Summer. Check out how a volcano, a frog, and a poet inspired an 18-year-old dreamer to create the first science fiction.

Independence Day? Nope. Nation of freedom, equality, righteousness, and Christianity? Nope. I've read this speech every year for 30 years, and its logic, perspective on international politics, and moral philosophy ring truer than ever. Enjoy - and then get out there and help us do better.

Gatsby is dead and no one is coming to his last party. All that's left for us is to figure out where we belong, and whether we are living in the past, present, or imagined future. 

Most of THE GREAT GATSBY is timeless. Love and the nutty things we do for love happens in/to every generation. It has for centuries, and it will until we cook ourselves off the planet. Fitzgerald focuses on the characters, the immediate settings, and the dialogue without much connection to real people or events that would locate the book in time. Apart from scattered, vague references to the war, the world series scandal, and prohibition, there isn't much to suggest this story couldn't happen in any era. Like, now. But Fitzgerald does pay close attention to one element of time: the seasons of the year. The plot begins in spring (season of re/birth and renewal), hits its peak in the summer (heat can be passionate or fatiguing), and now, in the penultimate chapter, we find ourselves at the beginning of fall. Fall is when things die.

Daisy said she never loved Tom. But then she said she did. Tom says he loves Daisy. But he was diddling Mrs. Wilson. Gatsby does seem to really love Daisy.  He shouldn't have let her drive. By the end of this chapter, Mrs. Wilson is dead, Tom is grieving, and Gatsby is keeping watch over Daisy's house. But accidentally homicidal Daisy is now depending on Tom, and it's starting to feel like Gatsby's love affair is losing the light faster than a hot summer afternoon at the Plaza.

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" 

We all think back on moments that are lost to history: decisions we made, things we did or didn't do, all our private to be or not to be's that gave us the stories we tell about ourselves today. And, if we're not careful, instead of learning from those experiences and designing our todays and tomorrows, we will be destined to replay the past over and over again. 

We are now over the halfway point of the book. It's worth remembering how most people encounter Gatsby the first time. However amazing they may be, most high school students simply don't have the life experience to understand what some of these characters - and definitely the author - are experiencing in their lives and marriages. And, not for nothing, school is the most toxic brand in history, so selling this as a reading experience is an even taller order. Fortunately, we don't have those problems. And everyone of every age can understand what a nervous fuck-up Gatsby becomes when he finally has his secret meeting with Daisy.

Chapter 4 begins with young ladies making wild guesses about Gatsby. He's a killer. He's second cousin to the devil. When we don't have information, we make assumptions. When we have a little information, we go way positive or way negative. If you don't believe me, have a look at online reviews. At one level, these schema (categories of thinking) can help us when we encounter new situations. However, when our inner ideas about people get loud enough to drown out the information right in front of us, they become ISMS (racism, sexism, ageism, etc.). Just look at how Fitzgerald describes Black and Jewish characters later in the chapter.