Category: Jazz Age

Constellation of Genius: 1922 by Kevin Jackson

1922 was a special year for modernist literature. On February 2, James Joyce was the shy guest of honor at a small publication party for Ulysses in Paris. Sylvia Beach showed Joyce the book for the first time that day, thus establishing 2/2/22 as its Joycily pleasing official publication date.… Read the rest

Read More »

Once More to West Egg, Through the Valley of Ashes

This is Willets Point, a sprawling center for automobile salvage located just west of Flushing Meadows Park in New York City, a place of amazing squalid beauty. CitiField, where the Mets play baseball, is visible just beyond the scrap yards. Willets Point, one of the last remaining vestiges of the … Read the rest

Read More »

Fitzgerald’s Lost Souls, or the Infernal Gatsby

If you’re trying to analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age novel The Great Gatsby and you’re not thinking about Dante’s Inferno, you’re missing an obvious connection.

The connection is easy to spot and hard to dispute, though it rarely comes up in discussion of the book. I haven’t heard … Read the rest

Read More »