By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Lost Decade’ is one of the shortest works by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), the American author best-known for The Great Gatsby. Published in Esquire magazine in December 1939, just one year before Fitzgerald died, ‘The Lost Decade’ is one of his most powerful short stories to deal with the effects of drink and the way it leads people to forget their surroundings and to lose touch with their everyday life.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Great Gatsby is the quintessential Jazz Age novel, capturing a mood and a moment in American history in the 1920s, after the end of the First World War. Rather surprisingly, The Great Gatsby sold no more than 25,000 copies in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lifetime. It has now sold over 25 million copies.
If Fitzgerald had stuck with one of the numerous working titles he considered for the novel, it might have been published as Trimalchio in West Egg (a nod to a comic novel from ancient Rome about a wealthy man who throws lavish parties), Under the Red, White and Blue, or even The High-Bouncing Lover (yes, really).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
In January 2021, the 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman achieved a record: she became the youngest person ever to recite a poem at a US President’s inauguration, when Gorman read her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
The poem is hopeful while being realistic about the struggles the United States faces – together – during a period of political and medical turmoil, not least because of the various events of 2020.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Day’s Wait’ is one of Ernest Hemingway’s shortest short stories, running to just a few pages. It was published in 1927 in his collection The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. In just a few pages, ‘A Day’s Wait’ covers a number of key features of Hemingway’s work as a whole, and so despite not being one of his best-known stories, it’s oddly representative of his oeuvre as a whole.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Washington Irving (1783-1859) is often known as ‘the father of American literature’. Named in honour of the (future) first US President, Irving has had a huge influence on American writers for two centuries, and has also been responsible (indirectly) for the name of the knickerbocker glory dessert and, even, the word ‘knickers’ (both words come from Irving’s fictional creator, Diedrich Knickerbocker).