6/20/2023 0 Comments Min jin lee![]() ![]() You write: “I cannot imagine a more persuasive and readable book about lost illusions, class, White Americans in the 1920s, and the perils and vanity of assimilation. It’s a social novel with a deep moral conscience, and I continue to find its lessons instructive. Like Gatsby, I’ve wanted many things beyond my reach and aspired for more. Like Nick and Tom, I went to Yale, and like Myrtle and George, I grew up in Queens. George and Myrtle Wilson - the garage owner and his wife - reside in the valley of ashes - i.e., Queens. Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, and Nick are Midwesterners. “The Great Gatsby” is a book about American migrants as much as it is a book about class. ![]() It was not an assigned book, but as a super book nerd, I was interested in the classics and all the great works of literature. I read it for the first time when I was 14 or so. What was your relationship to it then, and what is your relationship to it now?Ī. ![]() In your introduction, you mention that your copy of “Gatsby” has a notation of “2ndx 8/85,” meaning you read it for the second time in August 1985. We caught up with the former Seaport resident, who was a 2018-19 fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, to talk all things Gatsby. The Penguin Classics edition bearing Lee’s name releases on Jan. ![]()
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