And ready to go, so let me ask you to start things off. All right, thank you michael. Do we have five hours . [laughter] i want to take this paragraph or two and pull it apart. One of the wonderful things about writing a book about the great gatsby is that i can purchase assume pretty much assume, as i think andrew can that were speaking to an audience who has read the novel at least at some point in their lives. So im going to read from the first chapter where nick decides to go visit his cousin Daisy Buchanan who he hasnt seen in a while. Hes invited for dinner, and he walks into the buchanan mansion. With tom buy canna who has to be one of the greatest characters in literature. We walked through a high hallway into a bright, rosycolored space, fragilely bound into the house by french windows at eitherrened. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh glass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling and then rippled over the wipecolored rug making a shadow on it as the wind does upon the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. Their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had justin been blown back in just been blown back in. I must stood for a few minutes listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the grope of a picture on the the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as tom buchanan shut the rear win does and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor. Yes, thats writing. Those of you who love gatsby, go on the Princeton University library web site, and you will see the first draft of the great gatsby in fitzgeralds hand because he didnt type, and you will see how much he labored over that passage over the sound of it. Usually when i read this passage in class, i really emphasize those b sounds to annoy my students and to wake them up. [laughter] fitzgerald is writing like a poet. He loved john keats, he loved shakespeare. So hes going after the musicality of the scene. But hes also trying to convey the fact that the women in the room because city and jordan daisy and jordan baker are not really paying that much attention to nick as he walks in. And i say in my book that this is one of these scenes as you study it where you realize the great gatsby is our Great American novel about class and about where people are on the class hierarchy. We know right away that daisy and jordan are upper class because they dont exert themselves at all. [laughter] and after all, daisy hasnt seen her cousin nick in years. They wait until he comes to them. And so thats going on in that scene as bell, the awareness as well, the awareness of where people are in the pecking order the musicality and also a lot of water imagery which i talk about as being so central to gatsby, because this is a novel thats very aware of how farah nobody how far a nobody like gatsby can swim before he inevitably goes under. And when hes dead im not giving anything away, its on page 2 of the book [laughter] hes dead in his swimming pool. So end of quick lesson. Thanks. That was great, power reap. Really you can just listen to people read from the great the great gatsby like that anytime. Im going to start with the first five words of he canning beforely friendship as my sample, and they are you dont know about me. Its not even the whole sentence, its not even a fifth of the opening sentence. And im starting with such a short piece for several reasons. First, because mark twain took eight years to write Huckleberry Finn, and during those eight years he rewrote that sentence several times putting in the contraction, taking out the contraction, drafting and redrafting. So people often think Huckleberry Finn is just this kind of lazy, sloppy infusion. In many ways it is, but when it came down to getting the tuning fork right for the huckleberry friendships voice friendships voice, mark twain was unrelenting. The second reason ive only picked five words is because if any of us were awe live in 1884 and im reckoning one of us was and we took the opportunity to go see mark twain on stage which was a popular thing to do at the time, youd know he was recognized obviously, as one of the funniest men anywhere as a true performer, but he was also recognized for having an extremely distinctive speaking style with enormous, long pauses between every word. There was even a joke from people who knew him that by the end of the evening as he got a little drunk those pauses could last 30 seconds. [laughter] but the newspaper reviewers said thatyou heard him do it that when you heard him do it alive, it brought something out that you couldnt get on the page, that he made every word into something that means something. And he loved pauses. He just adored them. He said that he played with pauses the way other boys played with toys as a child. So you have to read those five words slow almost as if your sense of the sentence changes with every word as it drops into your brain slowly. First of all five words themselves you dont know about me, thats the first thing mark twain is telling you in huck finn which is you have never met a 12yearold boy narrating a book. You have never met a child in his real voice narrating a book. You dont know about me. But even go word by word, you. How many novels start with you . Not with a many, not with i but with you a second potential in audience a second person an audience. You dont. A brief accusation that theres something you dont do. You dont know a brief sudden accusation theres something you dont know, and then you dont know about me, you have never met a child for real before. Five words that set the agenda for the entire book. Huck finn and gatsby are mesmerizing novels and i can assure you that so we read on in huck finns america are mesmerizing studies of mesmerizing novels. Theyre not the first studies of huck friendship and gatsby. There are huck friendship and gatsby. There are, in fact, thousands of academic articles and hundreds of books devoted to the subject of these two novels. So writing a new book about huck finn and about gatsby is something of an audacious act. And im glad you made that leap, each of you because you provide important interventions into the discussion of these two important novels. Could you say a few words about what first led you to the to that audacious leap and what intervention youd really like our audience to know about morning . This morning . Youre right, of course, michael. I refer to the growing gatsby scholarship which multiplies exponentially year by year as the blob. It is so daunting. If you start to write a book about gatsby or huck finn, you really have to say to yourself how much of this do i really need to know before i can stick my toes in the water so to speak . Ive read gatsby at least 60 times and counting. I hope to go on reading gatsby every year of my life until i draw my last breath. I love it. I didnt love it when i first read it in high school. I thought it was a boring novel about rich people and i didnt understand its magic. But as i had to reread it in college and then inevitably teach it in grad school, i really fell in love with nick cowerways carraways voice and that yearning and regret for his lost friend gatsby, really drew me in. I wanted to write this book in a conversational style but informed by psychological hardship. I wanted to by scholarship. I wanted to tell stories which is what we do on radio we tell stories. And i really wanted to try to figure out why fitzgerald wrote this book. Its so very different from the two novels that precede it. Its different from tender is the night. Its got some similarities with his last novel in progress, the loves of the last tycoon, but it really stands apart. I wanted to see what fitzgerald thought he was doing. I wanted to figure out how it came back from the dead because when fitzgerald died in 1940 in hollywood at the age of 44, his last royalty check was for 13. 13. He couldnt even get a copy of the great gatsby on on the book schells of bookstores in hollywood book shelves of bookstores in hollywood. Thats not that unusual a story in American Literature that, you know, a great book dies or isnt recognized during its own time. But what is unusual is how quickly gatsby comes back. By the end of the 40s weve got the second great gatsby movie. 1949 starring alan ladd, you know . Very film noireish type gas by. I wanted to figure out how it came back so quickly, and i wanted to delve deeper into its mysteries. I feel like i could write another book about the great gatsby at this point, you know . Theres so much left to up cover. Uncover. But i did things like go out onto Long Island Sound to look at the point great neck, in the novel. I went down to the university of South Carolina i say down because i live in washington, d. C to look at their gatsby archive, went to princetop, and scariest trip of all, i went back to my Old High School, something i hadnt done in almost 40 years. I wanted to sit in on classes that were reading gatsby for the first time. Because when i get my students, theyve read it already. I wanted to see what their reaction was and i wanted to be in the classrooms i was in when i first read gatsby. And most startling fact of all, my english teacher is still at the high school [laughter] so and it was an incredible two days. The kids were very excited because the awful movie was about to come out so they had a lot to say. I took 20 years to write this book and i know, i was shaking my head like that too. [laughter] and one reason is because everything keeps changing with huck finn and changing and changing and changing. Theres always this kind of feeling in the pit of my stomach that just when i thought i was on top of things, out would come something major new or Something Else profound would happen with this book. And eventually the fact that things kept happening with the book is what kept me going. That and the fact that twain b is incredibly funny, and he concern and you really can just read more mark twain and he rewards that. He keeps he keeps gives you something interesting, something that contrasts with the last thing, something tricky and unknowable. His was the kind of sense of humor that was designed not to confirm your judgments but to challenge your judgments. And i like having my judgments challenged. I really wanted to figure out in this book, but i wanted to figure out this book hopefully the some extent for other people to. Its caught in a lot of ways right now. The debate is really settled and its not going away. Theres a pro side and an anti side. And what was the breakthrough for me was going back to 1884, to 1885. I usually do books by going to places but in this case i brought a microfilm machine from, i think the Texas Library system, actually on ebay. [laughter] and while i raised my child i stayed at home in my study, and i just shipped in newspaper after newspaper from 1884 and i Read Everything there was about how people talked about children and how people talked about race and how people talked about mark twain. And no matter how many people have covered a subject, you know, its america and sometimes theres an open space out there that surprises you. And while a lot of what i wrote was a synthesis of what people had written before me and theres 120 pages of footnotes in my book to prove it there were still a few open spaces this that those old newspapers that those old newspapers yielded. I think our audience has a fair sense already of the depth of Historical Research that went into each of these two books. And having written Literary History myself i can feel the time and effort that went into every single page and sentence often. They are very his to have cyst approaches to each novel but not in an offputting, antiquarian way. Theyre also books that are very much in touch with contemporary concerns. Now, if an historian 50 years from now were to write about these two studies, what would he or she want to say about contemporary American Society and culture based on an understanding of what you did in your books . Well, one of the things that i wanted to talk about with gatsby was how gatsby, of course, is a novel of its time as well as this vex phrase, this universal classic in American Literature. One thing that i think makes gatsby eternally relevant to us in this country is the way it expresses anxiety about the economy, about where we stand, as i said, in terms of our class situation. I mean, gatsby always seems to come back when weve got an economy thats in the tank because its a novel that really does talk about how real is the American Dream and how secure is your footing even if you may be wealthy today but is that wealth going to continue . Another very contemporary topic that gatsby engages is concern over immigration, concern over race. Of course, were talking im sitting here talking about race next to andrew whos written a book about huck finn which has to be one of the well maybe the greatest american novel about race. Gatsbys about race too. Yeah, it is. And if you remember, theres a scene again early on in the novel where nick and gas by are gatsby are driving across the queensboro bridge into new york. Theyre going in to have lunch with the gangster whos modeled on Arnold Rothstein who actually was a gangster in new york at the time. And its a passage thats often quoted on literary calendars because its so beautiful. Nick says Something Like the city seen from the genes borrow bridge queensboro bridge is always the city seep for the fist time city seen for the first time. And he gives you this beautiful description of the new york skyline. But as theyre driving over the bridge in gatsbys amazing car theyre passed on the bridge. The two white guys are passed first of all by a car in which two finish well three africanamericans are sitting being driven by a white chauffer and then also by a funeral cortege with immigrants from southeastern europe. Its a this is a novel thats very anxious about the direction in which americas going. Its written right after we get the waves of immigrants coming into this country, that second great wave of immigration from southeastern europe, from russia from greece. A lot of the immigrants in that second wave before darker skinned, they didnt speak english. Americas nervous about this. How are these folks going to be, you know integrated into the society . Gatsbys also written during the period of the great migration. And the harlem renaissance in new york. New york has seen an incredible in population in terms of the africanamerican population. Again, its anxious, its nervous. Its a novel thats also anxious about the role of women. Women have just gotten the vote. And dont forget the femme fatale in this novel daisy, well shes behind the drivers seat at a Crucial Point in the novel. Novels very anxious about women in power. So i love to talk about sections like that scene in the novel. Not only are the white guys being passed, but theyre on the queensboro bridge, and for those of you who know any new york history, theyre going over blackwells island which is now Roosevelt Island the site of you know, luxury condos and wonderful restaurants etc. Back then blackwells island was an island for people with incurable diseases, typhoid mary was isolated on blackwells island. It had a womens lunatic asylum. And, you know, a prison. So its not a good site for these, again white guys nick and gatsby, to be driving over as theyre being passed by new immigrants and by people of color. Um, i love that scene on the bridge. Yeah. I really do. I took your question slightly different, michael, ill take it in a slightly different direction. I couldnt have done this book without the digital revolution, and i think that 60 years from now theyre going to say wow this is these were the first years where someone could go online and see the manuscript of the great gatsby or the original manuscript of huck finn and just sit at home and see all of mark twains or f. Scott fitzgeralds changes. That is amazing and allows People Like Us to dig deep into history confidently and easily in a way people ten years ago couldnt. And i think they will talk about that. I also often thought about my book i enjoyed writing my book like i enjoy watching antique road show. [laughter] there remains an obsession with our past, to touch the objects understand the objects and to feel that warmth that can only emanate from surgeon objects almost as though they contain more magic than other ones do. But twain felt that way too. We have to remember he was writing in the 1870s and 1880s about his childhood, the 1830s and the 1840s. You think about those 40 or 50 years difference, and now think about the number of Television Shows or movies that go back 40 or 50 years and bring it back to us with a kind of searching but almost satirical quality. Mad men, for instance. Downton abbeys a good example but not quite us. Were always going about three or four decades back for our fashion, for our music, for our politics to reexamine them and thats exactly what twain was doing. I feel like in that book he almost touched upon this ongoing impulse to just understand that group. And to some extent thats because people in their 40s or 50s, they get a lot of control of the culture, and they think pack to their childhoods back to their childhoods. Twain was doing that too. Andrew, huck finn is one of the most unique and memorable narrators in American Literature. A young boy whose irony is not at all selfaware. Its built into the character. I think you importantly remind us that huck finn is less a novel about race than it is about boyhood written at a time when questions of youth and youth identity were entering the popular and even professional discourses in ways that hadnt been the case before. Could you say a bit more about how a child narrator gives us access to these really interesting questions about childhood itself . Sure. Sure. Thanks michael, for the question. Yeah the major idea of my book is that for the last 50 or 60 years when we talk about race and Huckleberr