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If you’re following the sort-of-schedule for our Riot Read of The Great Gatsby, then you’re probably somewhere around the end of Chapter Two. For those of you who like RESOURCES and HELP when reading these Very Important Old(ish) Books, I’ve gathered a few videos that may be helpful (WARNING! Some of these contain spoilers!):
Ok, so this one isn’t exactly helpful, but it DOES have Steve Martin, Frances McDormand, and other Famous Types reciting the opening of Chapter One in support of Elevator Repair Services’s production Gatz.
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For those of us who have no idea what’s going on/are behind and want to do a bit of catch up but are ALSO too busy to read SparkNotes, I give you VIDEO SPARKNOTES.
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YA author John Green has All The Interesting Things to say about the first chapter- including bits about the American Dream (and whether it’s really “American”).
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“It’s survived because the book speaks to men, who are assumed to be the universal subject, about how unfair both life and women are.” While I disagree with essentially everything said in this video about the book’s theme and staying power, it’s an interesting outlook on what being a “Daisy” really means in life and literature.
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Not for the faint of heart, this is an Open Yale Course lecture on Gatsby’s “experimental counter-realism,” with a short discussion on race in the novel (which might give some insight on Tom’s WE CAN HAZ NORDICS rant).
