Maureen Corrigan discusses "So We Read on: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures"

This event will be held in the Weyerhaeuser Chapel, on the campus of Macalester College.

Ticketes are not required for this event.

"Maureen Corrigan has produced a minor miracle: a book about The Great Gatsby that stands up to Gatsby itself.”--Michael Cunningham

Fresh Air’s book critic Maureen Corrigan investigates the enduring power of The Great Gatsby--what she calls “The Great American Novel we all think we've read, but really haven’t.”

Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.

Offering a fresh perspective on what makes Gatsby great--and utterly unusual--So We Read On takes us into archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel's hidden depths, a journey whose revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a “classic”" and its profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender.

With rigor, wit, and infectious enthusiasm, Corrigan inspires us to re-experience the greatness of Gatsby and cuts to the heart of why we are, as a culture “borne back ceaselessly” into its thrall.

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This event is co-sponsored by Fitzgerald in St Paul. Fitzgerald in Saint Paul is a nonprofit organization devoted to celebrating author F. Scott Fitzgerald as an artist and icon, especially in his hometown, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Through events and educational programs, Fitzgerald in Saint Paul serves as an ambassador to Fitzgerald’s history--in Saint Paul, in literature, and worldwide. To learn more, please visit fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org.

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Maureen Corrigan is the book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, a lecturer at Georgetown University, and the author of the literary memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading! She lives in Washington, D.C.