Learning from THE GREAT GATSBY [Michael Shilling]

It’s less than 50,000 words. It’s about petty rich white people being mean to each other. It was published almost ninety years ago. So what makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby resonate so deeply with all kinds of folks in 2013? This one-day course looks at Gatsby through the dual lens of reading and writing. We’ll examine how Fitzgerald elegantly uses the elements of fiction – such as scene, character, and tone – and then generate, share, and compare work to provide practice in those narrative particulars, sometimes using the characters from Gatsby and playing with the story, and sometimes not. It’s a four-hour Gatsby immersathon that’ll sharpen your storytelling skills, whether in fiction or memoir. Read the book in advance and bring a copy to class.