What makes us most distinctively human, our reason or our emotions? How do we know when relationships with others are authentic, and when they’re just a matter of utility? Does civilization corrupt or improve us? Is honesty all it’s cracked up to be, or is lying a social inevitability? Which is more important to our happiness, love or work?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23:24 — 98.4MB)
We all know this story, in part because it captures a period that will always have a special place in the American imagination. Prosperous and boozy, the Jazz Age seemed like one great party, held to celebrate the end of a terrible world war; the liberating promise of newly ubiquitous technologies, including electricity, the telephone, and the automobile; and a certain image of success as carefree, inexhaustibly gratifying, and available to all who try. And yet perhaps this fantasy is rooted in disillusionment, and a denial of inescapable social realities, including the impossibility of genuine social mobility. What do we mean when we talk about the American Dream? Is it realistic? Wes & Erin discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
Listen on (sub)Text: https://subtextpodcast.com/fitzgerald-the-great-gatsby/
Subscribe: (sub)Text won’t always be in the PEL feed, so please subscribe to us directly: Apple | Spotify | Android | RSS
Bonus content: The conversation continues on our after-show (post)script. Get this and other bonus content at by subscribing at Patreon.
Follow (sub)Text: Twitter | Facebook | Website
Thanks to Tyler Hislop for the audio editing on this episode.
Leave a Reply