“What Makes Gatsby Great?” asks the latest installment of the Glenview Mansion and Peerless Rockville Speaker Series, an illustrated presentation by Jackson R. Bryer, professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland and co-founder and president of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society.
The presentation will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12 at Glenview Mansion at Rockville Civic Center Park, 603 Edmonston Drive. It is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
When “The Great Gatsby” was published in May 1925, reviews were mixed, and sales were well below expectations. Many readers were disappointed that the author of “This Side of Paradise” and “The Beautiful and Damned” had seemingly abandoned his portraits of young denizens of the Jazz Age and written an entirely different sort of novel. In the nearly 100 years since, “The Great Gatsby” has come to be regarded as one of the greatest works of American literature, with sales well over 250,000 copies annually. This talk explores Fitzgerald’s intentions in writing his third novel and its excellence as a literary work.
Register at www.rockvillemd.gov/registration with course #32187.