GREAT GATSBY Thursday Lecture/Book Signing: Careless People - Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell

On Thursday, February 6th at 2pm in the Rosenthal Lecture Room at the Foundation’s offices, Sarah Churchwell will speak on and sign copies of her new book Careless People - Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby.

Careless People is the biography of a book.  It’s the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a mix of biography, social history and literary essay. The autumn of 1922 found Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, a spokesman for America’s carefree younger generation. Careless People reconstructs those crucial months - the parties, the drunken weekends at Great Neck, the drives back into the city to the jazz clubs and speakeasies, the intersection of high society and organized crime and the growth of celebrity culture – that explain the relation of Gatsby to the chaotic world of 1922. Find out what speakeasies were really like and how to get into one, recipes for prohibition cocktails, how wild the parties really were, what they really were wearing (not what you might think) and what they really were dancing, and where the ideas for Gatsby come from. Ultimately about the relationship between art and life, Careless People is the story of the carelessness and the chaos of those four months and how Fitzgerald’s imagination shaped that chaos and gave it an order and a meaning. It also offers the chance to examine and enter into the lifestyle and society of the 1920s boom era and the East Coast socialites that so shaped the world of Palm Beach.

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia. Her journalism has been published widely. An American currently living in London, she is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the BBC.

“Sarah Churchwell has come closer than many to the heart of this mystery. Careless People (whose title alludes to Fitzgerald’s description of Tom and Daisy Buchanan) is a literary spree, bursting with recherché detail, high spirits, and the desperate frisson of the jazz age.” - The Observer

“An excellent book . . . prodigious research and fierce affection illuminate every remarkable page.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred)

The lecture is free to members and students and $20 for non-members.  Seating is limited.  To make reservations, or for more information, please call 561.832.0731. 

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