FrizzLit book exploder club "The Great Gatsby"
100th anniversary reread

It's the 100th anniversary of the Great American Novel of the 20th century, according to the Modern Library.

Time to reread it, old sport! Or — if you've only ever seen the movies — it's time to read it for the first time.

There was a FrizzLit book for The Great Gatsby in 2021, and some say it's their favorite FrizzLit club so far. We're doing it again, but faster — just two meetings. 

Christopher Frizzelle will open up its creation backstory, its publication history, its references to Greek mythology and T.S. Eliot, its unique texture and symbols and light, and its central meaning — something that the movies completely miss.

There's something about the novel that exists between the lines, something that people focused on the love story usually overlook, something that makes the novel newly relevant and alive in 2025. 

As we read it together, we'll also dive into the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life — from getting kicked out of Princeton because he was doing too much theater, to dating and marrying the first flapper (Zelda Sayre), to going to those weekend parties with Dorothy Parker that became the party scenes in Gatsby, to his Hollywood days and his tragic early death.

Did you know Fitzgerald died thinking this novel was a flop?

Do you know the story of how The Great Gatsby was rescued from obscurity?

Do you know the identity of the real-life inspiration for Daisy? Hint: it wasn't Zelda.

We have so much to talk about.

Quick club 💥

Read the first five chapters before our first meeting on April 12. 

Read the last four chapters before our second meeting on April 19.

Recommended edition

Any edition will do, but this one has the iconic cover, and if you buy it using that link, a portion of the proceeds will go to FrizzLit. (Thank you!) Or pick it up from a local bookstore or library near you.

What to read before the first meeting

Chapters 1-5. Our stopping place is the last sentence of chapter five: "Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together."

All meetings are recorded

If you can't come to the live meetings — no problem! You won't miss anything. Recordings of each meeting will be sent to the email address you use to sign up within 48 hours of each meeting.

Who is leading this club?

Christopher Frizzelle is the former editor-in-chief of The Stranger, the inventor and host of the Silent Reading Party, and the founder of FrizzLit.

Art

F. Scott Fitzgerald with martini in hand, splendidly illustrated by Kathryn Rathke