{"id":176969,"date":"2025-04-08T07:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T07:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-8-2025-a-great-gatsby-centennial-three-phone-calls\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T07:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T07:44:09","slug":"americanstudies-april-8-2025-a-great-gatsby-centennial-three-phone-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=176969","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 8, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[On April 10th<\/sup>,
\n1925<\/a>, F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s novel The Great Gatsby<\/i> was published
\nby Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons<\/a>. While I have
\nmy problems with Gatsby<\/i><\/a>, it remains one of our most influential and important
\nnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I\u2019ll
\nhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow
\nGatsbyStudiers!]<\/p>\n

On three
\nphone calls that illustrate the classic novel\u2019s thoughtful portrayal of Modern
\ntechnologies.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you
\nteach a book as often as <\/span>I have F.
\nScott Fitzgerald\u2019s The Great Gatsby<\/i><\/span><\/a> (1925),
\nyou start to focus on different layers each time. Along with the dialogues with
\nother authors\/works like Nella Larsen\u2019s Passing
\n<\/i>that I talk about in that hyperlinked post, in my last couple times reading
\nand teaching the novel I\u2019ve thought a lot about just how many early 20th<\/sup>
\ncentury technologies play central roles in its story. That\u2019s especially true of
\nautomobiles, of course; not only in the book\u2019s climactic events (which I won\u2019t
\nspoil here for the few people who managed not to read Fitzgerald\u2019s novel in
\nhigh school), but in the central presence (geographically as well as
\nsymbolically) of <\/span>Wilson\u2019s
\ngas station and auto repair shop<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s true of Hollywood film, both in
\npresences at Gatsby\u2019s parties (<\/span>and
\nFitzgerald\u2019s career<\/span><\/a>) and in the novel\u2019s underlying themes of
\nsurface and depth, illusion and reality. But it\u2019s also certainly true of the
\nstill <\/span>relatively
\nnew technology<\/span><\/a>, particularly when it comes to the idea of every household having
\none, that was the telephone.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we meet
\nthe novel\u2019s main characters in the opening few chapters, Fitzgerald uses a
\ncouple key phone calls to present mysterious and ambiguous sides to them. In
\nChapter 1, as Nick Carraway visits the beautiful home of his cousin Daisy and
\nher husband Tom for a dinner party, Tom gets a mysterious phone call; Daisy
\nsuspects that it\u2019s his mistress on the other end, but of course can\u2019t know for
\ncertain to whom he\u2019s speaking. In Chapter 3, as Nick attends one of the lavish
\nparties at his neighbor Jay Gatsby\u2019s mansion, Gatsby gets a mysterious call;
\nother partygoers suggest that it\u2019s a criminal business partner of Gatsby\u2019s on
\nthe other end, but of course no one knows for certain to whom he\u2019s speaking.
\nThese calls reveal both men as defined by secrets, dynamics that precisely
\nbecause of their ambiguity are a source of intense speculation by those around
\nthem. And those secrets can only be maintained in these scenes because of the
\ntechnology of the phone, without which their conversants would have to visit in
\nperson (or write a letter, which of course would be far less immediate).<\/span><\/p>\n

[Serious
\nSPOILERS in this paragraph.] At the end of the novel, after all the
\naforementioned climactic events have unfolded, Nick has his own, quite
\ndifferent phone call. He is trying to organize a funeral for Gatsby (or maybe
\nJames Gatz, since his father who knows him by that name is one of the few who
\nattends that tragic event), and manages to speak with Gatsby\u2019s elusive <\/span>business
\npartner Meyer Wolfshiem<\/span><\/a> on the phone. In one of the novel\u2019s only
\nmoments where a character says directly what he\u2019s feeling and thinking, shares
\nwhat seems at least to be the unvarnished truth (even when Gatsby and Nick have
\ntheir heart-to-hearts, it\u2019s always an open question whether Gatsby is telling
\nthe truth), Wolfshiem confesses to Nick that he can\u2019t possibly be seen at the
\nfuneral, that it would be far too destructive for his reputation and
\nrelationships. This is the side of the telephone that allows us to be more
\nhonest, more ourselves, in its conversations than we might manage to be if had
\nto face someone and something in the flesh. Just another layer to how
\nFitzgerald\u2019s novel reflects the technologies and contexts of its rapidly
\nevolving Modernist world. <\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nGatsbyStudying tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What do
\nyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald\u2019s novel or its contexts? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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So this week I\u2019ll highlight a handful of them, leading up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,4759,2027,22661,53254,2338,1255],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-176969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-april","tag-calls","tag-centennial","tag-gatsby","tag-great","tag-phone"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: April 8, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=176969\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: April 8, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[On April 10th, 1925, F. 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