Preface
I. Gatsby Lives
1. Why Gatsby Matters
II. The Faustian Bargain: Creating The Great Gatsby
2. A Literary Star Roaring through the Twenties
3. Breaking Bad: Fitzgerald’s Demise, 1925-1940
III. Gatsby in the American Century
4. Gatsby Reborn, 1941-1963
5. A Grand Illusion, 1964-1980
6. All That Glitters, 1981-2000
7. Gatsby Today, 2001-present
IV. Gatsby and the Shifting America Dream
8. The American Dream
9. Wealth and Power
10. Celebrity…An Obsession
V. The Enduring Legacy of the Great American Novel
11. Is Romance Timeless?
12. A Hope for Reading and the Quest for the Great American
Novel
13. Boom, Bust, Repeat: Power, Greed, and Recklessness in
Contemporary America
14. The Great Gatsby (2013): The Film
Conclusion: Gatsby is America
Bob Batchelor is James Pedas Endowed Chair in Communication and executive director of the James Pedas Communication Center at Thiel College. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including: The 1900s; The 1980s; The 2000s; and American Pop: Popular Culture Decade by Decade (4 volumes), Cult Pop Culture (3 volumes) and John Updike: A Critical Biography (2013). He is founding editor of the Popular Culture Studies Journal and editor of the Contemporary American Literature series published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Few are bold enough to use the term "great American novel" anymore.
Fewer still are those who can make a compelling case for its
application. . . .Batchelor claims this status for The Great
Gatsby, and his arguments are captivating, readable, and
convincing. His embrace of didactic purpose for literature is
daring. . . .Putting the genie of postmodernism back in the bottle
is impossible--even if one wanted to--but a return to appreciation
of the worth of "deep" reading in the development of critical
thinking skills would have salutary results in the general reading
population as well as the critical realm. To that end, Batchelor
asserts early on that Fitzgerald's "inherent ambiguity enables
readers to use the novel as a barometer for measuring their own
lives and the culture they inhabit." He demonstrates how Gatsby
accomplishes this feat by carrying enough intellectual freight to
defy categorization and to remain relevant to American society.
Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates;
general readers.
*CHOICE*
Batchelor seeks to capitalize on the success of Baz Luhrmann's
recent Gatsby film adaption with this exploration of the ways in
which F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby has been
employed in American culture. The book works best when it sticks to
examining concrete uses of the book throughout the years. For
example, it features a brief but intriguing discussion of how David
Lynch included a passage from the novel in a late 1980s television
ad for Calvin Klein. Batchelor does a good job of neatly
summarizing the details surrounding the novel's composition and
initial reception.
*Library Journal*
Great Gatsby fans [should] check out author and Munroe Falls
resident Bob Batchelor's Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great
American Novel. Batchelor explores the novel's birth, life, and
enduring influence, from the novel's appearance in the heady year
of 1925 through today's headlines filled with celebrity intrigue,
corporate greed, and a roller-coaster economy. Batchelor shows why
and how Gatsby has become part of the fiber of the American ethos
and an important tool in helping readers to better comprehend their
lives and the broader world around them.
*Tallmadge Express*
The Great Gatsby’s enduring legacy can be attributed, at least in
part, to the shared experience Americans have with the book.
However, the work’s staying power in the national consciousness is
due to far more than mere exposure. Beyond being included on many
high school syllabi and reading lists, Batchelor argues that its
enduring popularity is also due to its accessibility to readers and
its inherent ambiguity [that] enables readers to use the novel as a
barometer for measuring their own lives and the culture they
inhabit. These seemingly conflicting characteristics create the
foundation for Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American
Novel as it sets out to chronicle not just the book’s reception
through the decades but also its connections to some of its main
concepts such as the meaning of the American dream. Most
significantly, Batchelor seeks to explain and validate The Great
Gatsby’s continued significance in many facets of American, and
even international culture. . . .Gatsby achieves these aims while
also balancing the sometimes incompatible demands of being
enlightening for scholars and being approachable for a broad
audience. . . .[I]t is obvious that Batchelor not only has great
affection for his subject but also a wealth of knowledge of the
text, its history, and its use over the years. The sense of warmth
and the depth and breadth of knowledge regarding the novel and
American culture provide Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great
American Novel with its readability. . . . .Gatsby: The Cultural
History of the Great American Novel is an important and worthwhile
resource for those well-versed in The Great Gatsby as well as for
those who want to know more about the book and its impact on
American culture.
*The Journal of Popular Culture*
In what seems to be the first in the Contemporary American
Literature series, Bob Batchelor, James Pedas Professor of
Communication and executive director of the James Pedas
Communication Center at Thiel College, author or editor of more
than 20 books, founding editor of the Popular Culture Studies
Journal, and editor of the Contemporary American Literature series,
gives a narrative history of the critical and cultural fortunes of
F. Scott Fitzgerald and the novel The Great Gatsby from its
publication in 1925 until 2013, when a new movie version starring
Leonardo DiCaprio was released. The author includes extensive
notes, a bibliography, and an index. . . .Batchelor covers the
ground well, pointing up the similarities between the 1920s and the
2010s in America—the culture of fame, the gap between rich and
poor, and the conspicuous consumption of the rich. . . .There have
been numerous book-length studies about the novel, including those
by Fitzgerald experts such as Matthew J. Bruccoli, but this is the
most up-to-date source on its reputation and relevance for our
times. This work . . . could be assigned to the reserve rooms or
reserve shelves in high school or college libraries where The Great
Gatsby is taught.
*American Reference Books Annual*
Batchelor's Gatsby [is] impressively researched and smartly
organized.
*The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review*
[T]his is a really good examination of how Fitzgerald's novel has
remained relevant as a cultural icon.
*Tallahassee Democrat*
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