You ever have like somebody over the crib and like they're looking at your bookshelves and you're like, oh no, whatever? Oh, brother. Oh, no. I've been on those dates. I was like, wait, decision points. And that's the only book here. I have to get out. I think for me back in the day, it was Tucker Max. If I saw any type of Tucker Max book, it was like, I'm lacing up. I'm sprinting.

Hello, hello. I'm Brittany loose and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.

A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

Okay. and why it doesn't happen by accident. On October 31st, as 40 million Americans waited to hear about the status of their

SNAP benefits, President Trump threw a great Gatsby-themed Halloween party.

According to the White House, the party was labeled,

A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.

And while some may see the irony in invoking the Great Gatsby,

it made me wonder, how have modern interpretations a literary fiction

shaped the way we dissect real-life issues,

and how can the fictional accounts of these characters teach us about the world around us? We're getting into it with

Andrew Limbaugh, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast. Hey, what's up? And Princess Weeks,

writer and cultural critic. Thank you for having me. Oh my God. Happy to have you all. Okay, so I wonder,

what did you think when you saw President Trump's Great Gatsby themed party? And why do you think people had such strong reactions to the theme of the party? You know, it's one thing to celebrate like one of the great American novels. It's one thing to celebrate like Robert Barron excess while people are wondering about their snap

benefits. Good point. Fair point. If I'm being honest, my first reaction was like to defend

the idea of a Gatsby party. We all know what the great Gatsby is about in case listeners

don't know. It's not a glorification of excess, but it's about how these rich people are all fake and frauds.

And yet, it is very popular for people who love the book to celebrate by throwing a Gatsby party.

I did a piece in the summer about celebrating anniversary of the Great Gatsby.

And I was trying to ask a couple of people to be like, isn't that weird? Isn't that like not hypocritical, but just like kind of missing the point? What they were telling me was like, I don't know. It's fun to get dressed up and drink beers. You know what? And I was like, you know what? It is. It is fun to get dressed up and drink champagne. And so the

politics and the optics of it is one thing. But yeah, that was my first action was to be like, I mean, it's okay for people to have Gatsby parties. I would argue that President Donald Trump, he does have a slightly different stature in society. But I mean, I'm not going to knock a great Gatsby theme party

for myself and the other

...