Hard to believe that Subtext has been around for five years, and Gatsby for 100. To celebrate these anniversaries (and our hiatus in recordings for a long summer vacation), here’s a re-release of one of our early episodes (from November 2020).

We all know this story, in part because it captures a period that will always have a special place in the American imagination. Prosperous and boozy, the Jazz Age seemed like one great party, held to celebrate the end of a terrible world war; the liberating promise of newly ubiquitous technologies, including electricity, the telephone, and the automobile; and a certain image of success as carefree, inexhaustibly gratifying, and available to all who try. And yet perhaps this fantasy is rooted in disillusionment, and a denial of inescapable social realities, including the impossibility of genuine social mobility. What do we mean when we talk about the American Dream? Is it realistic? Wes & Erin give an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” 

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Thanks to Tyler Hislop for the audio editing on this episode.