Life in 1920s America

About the lecture

In this lecture we explore four key features of 1920s America, focusing in particular on: (i) the telephone: what kind of people had them, how they worked, and its constant use in The Great Gatsby, especially by Jay Gatsby himself; (ii) the automobile: what kind of people had them, which kinds of car are owned by which character, the presence of horse-drawn vehicles on the road, even in major cities, and the importance of the freedom of movement provided by cars; (iii) Prohibition: what it was, when it started and finished, the constant presence of alcoholic drinks in the novel; and (iv) domestic servants: what kind of people had them, the presence of domestic servants in the novel, and the difference between the Buchanans’ servants and those employed by Gatsby.

About the lecturer

James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University. He is a biographer, book historian, and scholarly editor. West is the author of American Authors and the Literary Marketplace (1988), William Styron: A Life (1998) and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005). He has published two collections of essays: Making the Archives Talk (2011) and Business is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Author (2023). West has held fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has had Fulbright appointments in England (at Cambridge University) and in Belgium (at the Université de Liège) and has been a visiting fellow at the American Academy in Rome. From 1994 to 2019, West was the General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, recently completed in eighteen volumes, sixteen under his editorship. West’s variorum edition of The Great Gatsby was the final volume in the series.