It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC

Centennial series, 100 years of 100 things. Today it's thing number 58, 100 years of F.

Scott's Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. This year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most

iconic novels in American literature. That's why we're doing it as part of this series.

And though it didn't receive much attention when it was first published in 1925, it has

since become a cultural touchstone taught in schools and endlessly reinterpreted in art and film

and even fashion.

We're going to play a couple of clips from movie adaptations.

But why does Gatsby continue to resonate a century later? Well, joining us to

explore the novel's lasting cultural and literary impact and what it might still have to say

about America's political, social, and economic predicament is Maureen Corrigan. You may know her

as book critic for Fresh Air. She's also a Georgetown professor

and author of the book, So We Read on How the Great Gatsby came to be and Why It Endures.

Maureen, thanks so much for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you so much, Brian.

So Fitzgerald apparently called the 1920s the most expensive orgy in history.

And we see that extravagance all over the Great Gatsby.

And that's one of the things that has people comparing those times to these times

with the concentration of wealth and extravagance in today's billionaire class.

So what was the economic and cultural context in which Fitzgerald wrote his masterpiece?

Yeah. Well, we have to remember Fitzgerald and his generation were coming out of World War I.

They were also coming out of the flu pandemic.

And there was that urge to, you know, forget everything, party, feel alive again, drink

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