A name that's unlikely to be trending anytime soon. I have just written a book on F. Scott Fitzgerald & The Great Gatsby called Odyssey of an American Dreamer.
Joined July 2017
- Tweets 7,045
- Following 44
- Followers 380
- Likes 4,506
Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
2 Apr 2024
Had a hand in researching and fact-checking this podcast series from Blanchard House. Now available on Audible. Joe Nocera narrates. Builds on the research of Fitzgerald grandees, Horst Kruse and Matthew J. Bruccoli. I may even feature myself ...
audible.co.uk/pd/American-Dr…
6
3
40
10,689
Max Gerlach was using the same address as David Daca, a Spanish-speaking baritone and voice coach who went on to sing cowboy songs. Interesting that Gerlach knew several singers, and in the original Gatsby manuscript Jay Gatsby, sings a song he has written.
1
52
Daca would take over Frank Shay's famously Bohemian (and Socialist) bookshop in Washington Square in Greenwich Village. On Shay's door are William Ely Hill who provided the cover art for Scott Fitzgerald's first two novels & illustrator, Oscar E. Cesare who knew Gerlach.
1
100
Thanks to folklorist Stephen Winick for the work he has done on Daca. Daca took over Frank Shay's bookshop in the 1924-1925 period. Real name Harry Payne Reeves from Illinois. Studied in Europe under opera singer Emma Calvé. Bookshop ad in Mencken/Nathan's American Mercury, 1926
16
Professor Horst Kruse may be better known for his groundbreaking work on Max Gerlach — the real life inspiration for Jay Gatsby — but his ‘View from Kant's Window’ reveals philosophical dimensions of Gatsby overlooked by many scholars. amazon.co.uk/F-Scott-Fitzger…
55
Graduated in Sheffield with Irfan in the 90s. Restored contact with him in the early noughties after my move to Scotland when he was able to contribute some wonderful pieces to an ezine I ran. He's doing some great work now on the early days of film. louisleprince.net/
1
83
July 1992, Don Valley Bowl Sheffield. Free festival. Like the warning about Jools Holland's ‘tepid jokes’. I took heed, don't you worry. Saw Steve Harley twice that year. Inspirational artist for me. Poor man's Bowie to others. I beg to differ tho.
62
Proving that the stories about the stories are often so much better. Another great investigation. This one is the Granddaddy of Conspiracy Theories. This where all that wackiness started.
Jun 12
Episode 4 of The Lindbergh Conspiracies just dropped. Poppy and I examine the trial of the man accused of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby—and why it was a travesty. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
1
67
Just been reading through the corrections and annotations that Edmund Wilson added to the draft copy of The Far Side of Paradise by Arthur Mizener and it sheds light on one mystery about Gatsby and Max Gerlach.
1
96
William Dudley Pelley of the Christian Fascist organisation, The Silver Legion of America. In the 1930s he and the group were based in Asheville, just a few 100 yards from where Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald had set up base. Full story here monocledmutineer.co.uk/ameri…
1
1
138
In the 1940s, F. Scott Fitzgerald's biographer Arthur Mizener remarked that the author “habitually worked close to actual people as models for his characters.” So was there a real Jay Gatsby? This Joe Nocera podcast investigates audible.co.uk/pd/American-Dr…
1
80
Was watching BBC News 24 and saw this. Fifa World Cup 2026 with Third Reich-esque ‘Fraktur’ typeface. Found a similar image from the Beeb online. What's this all about? Thought it was a joke at first.
1
102
Eager to find my old copy of this book too: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. I was going through a big Calvino, Eco and Borges phase in the early 90s. Stories about stories, books about books, history about history. What made things real? What made things unreal? Hell knows.
1
144
Listened this the other night. In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg discussing Italo Calvino with Beatrice Sica and Guido Bonsaver.
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00255…
112
Had forgotten that I had a copy of this. Plato: Early Socratic Dialogues. Penguin Classics. Thought I was the bees knees when I picked it up at a local bookshop in the 80s. I'd gone highbrow. Do I remember anything abt it? Not much. But I do remember swaggering around with it.
91
Special Forces founder David Stirling's GB75 Movement. Stirling recruited ex-soldiers, intelligence officers & right-wing figures in plot to overthrow Wilson & seize control of government. Alleged to have ftd early Reformer, James Goldsmith. What would a modern version look like?
2
135
Alan Sargeant retweeted
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
— Italo Calvino
8
146
645
28,530
Scott's friend Bennett Cerf of The Modern Library republished this seminal work on 'conspicuous consumption' by Thorstein Veblen alongside his new edition of The Great Gatsby in 1934. Gatsby was undergoing something of a Marxist refit (even retrofit) by the 1930s.
1
1
171
Civilisation’s biggest threat, according to Lothrop Stoddard, was America’s ‘underman’ who, if left untended, was going to lead a ‘neo-aristocracy’ of the eugenically unfit, those poor imitations who turned the pursuit of wealth & greatness into little more than a scavenger hunt
128
F. Scott Fitzgerald jots down real life inspiration for scenes in The Great Gatsby. I have positively identified the man 'Goddard' and the scenes in the book match descriptions of his parties in the press. Goddard also had links to organised crime, incl. Rothstein & drug stores.
1
158
If you're a political journalist in Britain and you are not covering this story, then you're not serious abt your work. It's really that simple. If investigation is what you do, then get investigating.
cumhuriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/m…
1
143