Following the publication of ‘The Great Gatsby’ a hundred years ago, F Scott Fitzgerald bemoaned the fact that not one of the reviewers, “had the slightest idea what the book was about”. They had focused their attention on the book’s critique of what would become known as the American Dream, and ever since then the conversation about this most venerated of books has largely remained centred around that same theme. Professor Sarah Churchwell, who has been teaching, thinking and writing about the novel for decades, breaks away from that conversation to explore poetic, aesthetic and philosophical perspectives stemming from Fitzgerald’s own ambition to write a serious piece of art rather than merely a one-dimensional slice of social commentary. Sarah also features new cinematic and theatrical discoveries that reveal how most people first came to know the novel through adaptations that differed considerably from the source material. She speaks with academics Anne-Margaret Daniel, Anil Gomes, Nick Gaskill, Martina Mastandrea, Philip McGowan and James West.
“..a genuinely thoughtful and constantly self-critical episode of Archive on 4 which took on a much-discussed and much-misunderstood work and carefully held it up to the light, bringing new insights into its potential meanings…. I was genuinely surprised by how much I learned – especially about the Kantian influences…and the deconstruction of American Dream interpretations was elegantly done. The archive was terrific..” Hugh Levinson
