It’s 11.30am on Friday, June 23 2023. I’ve been rifling the archives and punching in keywords for the past few hours. Suddenly I’m excited. I’ve found a report in a copy of Variety Magazine dated July 27, 1927. It’s unlikely to have been seen by another pair of eyes for close to a 100 years….
Category: The Jazz Age
The Usual ‘Unusual’ Suspects. The Lindbergh Kidnapping, Arms Deals and a New York Prohibition Scandal.
“I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans.” The Great Gatsby I’d like to go back to another Max Gerlach conundrum. On Max’s 1942 World War II Draft Registration Card, Gerlach…
“God damn the continent of Europe”. F. Scott Fitzgerald letter to Edmund Wilson, Hotel Cecil, July 1921.
A ‘violent’ xenophobic letter written by the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, to his friend Edmund Wilson from the Hotel Cecil in London in July 1921 has been a constant source of embarrassment to his biographers. “The negroid streak creeps northward to defile the Nordic Race,” he writes. How much does the letter tells us about…
The Shining Ending, July 4 1921. The Shining, Isolationism and the American Dream
The ending of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has chilled and intrigued movie-goers for years. In the closing scene of the film the camera moves from Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance sitting upright, dead in the snow, to a gallery of pictures in the ballroom of the Overlook Hotel. On one of the pictures is Jack in…
Designs on Gatsby: Max Gerlach, Francis Cugat and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Max von Gerlach, an associate of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, made regular trips to Havana. At one time, Havana was also the home of Francis Cugat, the Spanish-Cuban artist who designed the famous dust-jacket for Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. Here we explore the remarkable life of Cugat and the very faintest possibility that…
Repeating the Past with Genius: Understanding the role played by Americanism & the Catholic Church in the creation of The Great Gatsby
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “You can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously.“Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. The Great Gatbsy With…
I am the Resurrection. The Death of Max Gerlach and the Birth of an American Hero
How Max Gerlach became associated with Arnold Rothstein isn’t clear. There is an eight-year period in Max’s life, starting 1912, when his exact location and activities are the subject of much speculation. This becomes clear in the report put together by Agent Harry W. Grunewald in the summer of 1917. After serving with the Atlantic…
A New Race of Man — How Trotsky’s Dream of a Soviet Superman Helped Perfect the American Dream
This essay explores the interplay between F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision in The Great Gatsby and the revolutionary ideals of Leon Trotsky, tracing influences from Shelley and Nietzsche through Soviet and American eugenics, cosmism, and utopianism. It examines the concept of a ‘New Race of Man’—a blend of idealism, social reform, and scientific aspiration—shaping both the…
Vegetable Eugenics — Genius Lost and Genius Regained.
16-minute podcast discussion If F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby exposed the tragic reality of Eugenics and the cruel, pyrrhic triumph of the American Dream, then it was only because previous attempts to drive a nail through its genetically superior heart with comedy had failed to prevent its moronic spread. The cheeky, irreverent view the…
Eugenically Speaking — How F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Love or Eugenics?’ prepared the way for Gatsby
Listen the 11-minute podcast The Great Gatsby wasn’t the first time that F. Scott Fitzgerald had confronted the rising tide of bigotry that had been surging around Eugenics. As an 18 year-old student at Princeton University, Scott had written what even his contemporaries — and more extraordinarily still, his fellow students — had regarded as…