The Great American Read--The Book of Books

by PBS

  Great Expectations came out serially in the magazine All the Year Round beginning in 1860 and was published as a complete text the following year. There were cliffhangers galore to keep readers interested as they waited for the next installment, and the novel’s cast had memorable verbal and physical characteristics so that readers could keep everyone straight. The serial format made the book’s intricate structure all the more remarkable: nearly every major character and plot point has a double.

  Great Expectations ends twice, as well. In the first ending Dickens wrote, Pip and Estella meet again later in life but don’t marry. Dickens’s friend and fellow novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton found that too depressing a conclusion. So Dickens rewrote the final paragraphs before it went to press, giving readers the ending that many of them want. Nevertheless, the book’s famously indirect last line leaves open multiple interpretations. Like the psychological and social problems probed by the novel as a whole, the final words allow no easy resolution.

  The first edition cover of The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald photographed in 1928. Fitzgerald published his first story at the age of 13, and continued writing throughout his life.

  Pages from Fitzgerald’s handwritten original manuscript of The Great Gatsby.

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  THE GREAT GATSBY

  F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925

  Long considered to be one of the best American novels of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby (1925) may very well be the best. This short novel offers the definitive portrait of the Roaring Twenties while exploring the dangers of the American dream.

  Named for his famous cousin, who penned “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald published his first story at age 13. Despite a lackluster academic career, he entered Princeton in 1913 but left to enroll in the army. While stationed in Alabama, he met the wild, fiery Zelda Sayre. She refused to marry him until he could support the lavish lifestyle she craved, a feat he was able to accomplish with the success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), a semiautobiographical account of a freshman at Princeton, published when its author was just 23.

  Fitzgerald would continue mining his circumstances for material. He based aspects of The Great Gatsby, his third novel, on the nouveau riche with whom he and Zelda hobnobbed in New York City, on Long Island, and abroad. Bouncing from yacht to nightclub to hotel, they danced, drank bootleg liquor, and epitomized the excesses of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald based the character of Daisy Buchanan on his wife, a young, fashionable flapper later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

  The homage wasn’t wholly favorable. In the summer of 1922, Jay Gatsby arrives in the fictional West Egg, a village on Long Island. Wealthy and enigmatic, he throws magnificent parties to which he invites his neighbor, Nick Carraway, the book’s everyman narrator. Nick discovers that Gatsby is possessed by an obsessive reverence for the two-dimensional Daisy, Nick’s cousin and Gatsby’s first love back when he was known as James Gatz. For the remainder of the summer, Nick helps as Gatsby tries to win back Daisy.

  In The Great Gatsby, wealth corrupts absolutely. Daisy is married to the well-heeled, boorish Tom Buchanan, who detests Gatsby and his “new money.” Gatsby’s parties are meant to impress Daisy, but they draw vacuous upper-crusters who care only about having fun. Ideals gone, disgusted with the shallowness of everyone around him, Nick ultimately moves back to his midwestern hometown.

  Fitzgerald’s own excesses caught up to him, and he died of alcohol-related diseases at age 44 in 1940, believing himself to be a failure. In his obituary, the New York Times called The Great Gatsby an “ironic tale of life on Long Island [published] at a time when gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession.” But the novel is no mere slice of a bygone age. Fitzgerald’s pointed criticism of a society with too much money and too little soul speaks across the decades and looks set to continue doing so, as surveys place The Great Gatsby as one of the 10 most frequently taught books in American high schools. For many people, its key images—the green light on Daisy’s dock, the billboard eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg—are the quintessential examples of literary symbolism, and the book’s oft-quoted ending has been described as “the best closing lines in American fiction.”

  The novel’s elasticity and deep resonance have led to it being adapted into several movies, including one starring Robert Redford in 1974 and another featuring Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013, as well as plays, television shows, and at least one ballet. Its plot has also been refashioned in novels like Great (2014), a YA book featuring a same-sex love story, and No One Is Coming to Save Us (2017), about failure and heartache in a contemporary African American community. Few novels have had such rich afterlives, or have spoken so powerfully to so many readers about the elusive promises of America.

  Libraries to Long For

  FIRST EDITIONS AND OUTSTANDING COLLECTIONS

  BOOKS ARE PRECIOUS OBJECTS, filled as they are with someone else’s thoughts, hopes, and fears. Some particularly valuable books sell for the price of a small car, while others could purchase the entire dealership. If you don’t have the cash, however, there’s always the library, which costs nothing—assuming you return checked-out titles by the due date, that is.

  The next time you go poking around an elderly relative’s attic or garage, keep an eye out for books—you just might find a fortune. Only 250 copies of the first edition of Wuthering Heights (1847) were printed; people lucky enough to have one can expect to sell it for more than $200,000. A first edition of Atlas Shrugged (1957) went for $8,500 in 2016, while Great Expectations (1861) fetched $25,000 that same year.

  Unsatisfied with the quality of the first printing of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), illustrator John Tenniel asked that the title be reprinted, making those first copies extremely rare—and pricey (into the seven figures). Copies of a 1932 edition signed by Alice Liddell, on whom Lewis Carroll likely based his fictional protagonist, range from a somewhat more accessible $3,500 to $7,000.

  Not surprisingly, the most expensive editions tend to have some historic or cultural significance in addition to literary merit. In 2007, J. K. Rowling auctioned off a handwritten, bejeweled edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the book bestowed to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore and which helps Harry Potter vanquish Lord Voldemort in the final book of the Harry Potter series (1997–2007). Amazon.com purchased the book for almost $4 million, with proceeds going to Rowling’s charity for institutionalized children.

  If your checks don’t have room for that many zeros, try heading to a library—such as the Library of Congress. Founded in 1800, it’s considered to be the national library of the United States and contains almost 840 miles of bookshelves, many of them stocked with rare and valuable editions. Among the artifacts held—and made available either online or in its Washington, DC, location—are a Gutenberg Bible (~1455) and The Bay Psalm Book (1640), the first book printed in North America, along with first editions of numerous classics, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Little Women (1868–1869). The New York Public Library, meanwhile, holds approximately 53 million titles, encompassing the first edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the first four folios of Shakespeare, and curiosities like Charlotte Brontë’s writing desk, a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair, and a letter opener that Charles Dickens had made from the paw of his favorite cat. Its main branch in Midtown boasts a gorgeous reading room open to anyone and everyone.

  Universities also house astonishing collections. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, for example, offers curious readers access to such holdings as an early manuscript of The Canterbury Tales (1387), true-crime reference books used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when writing his Sherlock Holmes stories, a journal kept by John Steinbeck in preparation for writing The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and several versions of Another Country (1962) by James Baldwin.

  As one of the wealthiest people on the planet, Bill Gates doesn’t need to go to a lib
rary to see treasures; an avid reader and book collector, he brings the treasures to himself. He paid more than $30 million for The Codex Leicester, a 16th-century notebook full of sketches and ideas kept by Leonardo da Vinci. He and his wife also love The Great Gatsby (1925), especially this line, which is painted on the ceiling of his home library: “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

  Bill Gates is a dedicated reader and book collector. Among his treasures is The Codex of Leicester, the notebook that Leonardo da Vinci kept of his sketches and ideas, valued at $30 million.

  The New York Public Library has a vast collection that includes quirky artifacts, like this letter opener, which Charles Dickens had made from the paw of his cat.

  Another celebrity bibliophile, Oprah Winfrey, has the singular power to transform a book into a bestseller. Her eponymous book club selected 70 titles throughout the 15-year run of her talk show, from One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) in 2004 to The Pillars of the Earth (1989) in 2007 to Great Expectations (1861) in 2010. Oprah’s personal collection contains a range of fiction and nonfiction: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) signed by Harper Lee, as well as everything written by Zora Neale Hurston. “I’m not a book snob,” she said in an interview about her love of books. “First editions are great, but so are all books. If you’re starting your own library, all that matters is that you start with what you love.”

  Volumes from one of the first printings of Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726.

  An 1875 portrait of author Jonathan Swift, entitled “Dear Swift from Garvis.” Swift was a poet, pamphleteer, and cleric, who combined his political activism with his writing.

  An engraved illustration accompanied each of the four volumes of Swift, Voyages de Gulliver, printed in Paris in 1795.

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  GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

  Jonathan Swift · 1726

  The true title of the novel we know as Gulliver’s Travels is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships, a tip-off about the world we’re about to enter. Its author, Jonathan Swift, was an acknowledged master of satire by the time the book came out in 1726.

  A poet, a pamphleteer, and a cleric, Swift was also a founding member of the Scriblerus Club, kind of like an Algonquin Round Table for 18th-century British writers; his friend Alexander Pope also belonged. Born in Dublin in 1667, Swift left Ireland for England as a result of political troubles, but political troubles would, in time, send him back to his homeland. He earned a master’s from Oxford, as well as a doctor of divinity from Trinity College, and was ordained in the Church of Ireland.

  In the early 1700s, Swift began publishing in earnest while becoming increasingly politically active. He used his writing to lambast the English and further Irish causes during a time of great economic disparity and a rising sense of patriotism. A Modest Proposal (1729), for example, lays out a careful argument for one way the poor might solve their problems of overcrowding and famine: Swift facetiously suggests they sell their babies as food to the rich.

  Gulliver’s Travels is a unique mix of absurdity and criticism, revealed through the journeys of the main character, Lemuel Gulliver, a married surgeon who seeks fortune abroad. In Part I, after a storm in the South Seas, he awakes to find himself held captive by a race of people just six inches tall. He meets the emperor of Lilliput, who asks his gigantic new friend to help the Lilliputians defeat the people of Blefuscu. The two kingdoms are fighting over the ridiculous question of whether eggs should be broken on their small or big ends. He eventually goes back to England, then lands on an island of giants in Part II. Everything is bigger in Brobdingnag, including the insects who sometimes perch on his food, so he’s not unhappy when an eagle plucks him up and takes him away.

  In Part III, Gulliver’s ship is attacked by pirates. He’s saved by the Laputans, who inhabit floating islands. These people worship music, technology, and mathematics above all else, but never seem to use their knowledge in any sort of practical way. In Part IV, Gulliver arrives on an island populated by the Yahoos, a humanlike race who serve the Houyhnhnms, horses who value reason and thought. Gulliver enjoys his time here, having interesting conversations and soaking up the culture, until the Houyhnhnms glimpse his torso and discover his similarities to the Yahoos.

  Throughout his adventures, Gulliver bears witness to different modes of oppression. Some groups dominate using their sheer size and brute force, while others rely on their more powerful intellect. The common thread, of course, is oppression itself. The power held by one race or group comes at the expense of another. Neither Gulliver nor his readers witness people working together or even using their knowledge and intellectual pursuits in the service of civilization.

  For all its comedy, much of which relies on bodily functions, the work as a whole paints a fairly grim picture of human nature. Gulliver’s misadventures grow increasingly worse, until his crew mutinies against him in Part IV. By the end of the novel, Gulliver can’t stand to be near humans, preferring instead the company of his horses.

  The book may be interpreted as sci-fi, philosophy, satire, and travelogue. In addition to these multiple interpretations, Gulliver’s Travels lends itself to multiple adaptations. To date, it’s been transformed into a short silent film by pioneer Georges Méliès, a Disney cartoon, an Indian live-action children’s movie, and a surrealist feature-length film that critiques communist Czechoslovakia. All in all, it has earned its place in literary history as an inspired, imaginative combination of entertainment and social analysis.

  The cover of the first US edition of The Handmaid’s Tale, printed in 1986.

  A photo of Margaret Atwood as she reads one of the poems she wrote during a political rally in 1981.

  Handwritten pages from Atwood’s draft of The Handmaid’s Tale, showing notes and edits.

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  THE HANDMAID’S TALE

  Margaret Atwood · 1985

  Every year, betting bookmakers take odds on possibilities for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and every year, Margaret Atwood seems to rank among the favorites. While she hasn’t yet won that prize, it seems to be the only one she hasn’t won; her long list of accolades includes the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Man Booker Prize, and Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, as well as honorary degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Over the arc of an incredibly prolific career, which began with her first book of poetry, Double Persephone (1961), she has written some of the most defining books of our time—from the ecological crisis portrayed in the MaddAddam trilogy (2003–2013) to the feminist classic The Edible Woman (1969) to the frightening dystopia explored in The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).

  Offred narrates the novel; we never learn her real name, but we very quickly come to understand the repressive society in which she now lives. Through flashbacks she describes her life with her partner, Luke, and their daughter, in the time before a patriarchal, theocratic dictatorship took over and transformed part of the United States into the Republic of Gilead. Repressive edicts based on the Bible mean women can’t read or work, raise their own children, or develop friendships. If they are fertile, they are forced into sexual servitude as Handmaids for the barren upper class. They no longer have names (“Offred” means “of Fred,” the name of the Commander with whom the narrator lives and must copulate, in the hopes that she will bear him a child).

  One of Atwood’s many achievements in the book is resisting the urge to paint only in blacks and whites. Instead, she gives readers plausible, fully realized characters. Offred is not fully a saint, the Commander not fully a sinner. No great victory of good over evil occurs at the climax, and the fates of the characters can only be speculated upon, as the novel itself does in the head-spinning “Historical Notes” that follow Offred’s story as a kind of epilogue. The Handmaid’s Tale thus eludes simplistic interpretations—Atwood does not reassure us with easy le
ssons but instead compels us to look upon our own messy society in a cracked mirror.

  The Handmaid’s Tale was Atwood’s first book of speculative fiction; since then she’s become a dominant figure of the genre. The scope of her work also encompasses children’s stories, poetry, essays, and nonfiction. Regardless of the format, her writing touches on themes such as the perils of ideology, the need for environmental conservation, and the complex effects of sexual politics. She often explores intersectional feminism, a philosophy that holds that a woman’s multiple identities—her class, race, religion, and beyond—overlap and influence her experience of the world and the world’s treatment of her. Canada’s most famous writer, Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and lives in Toronto with her husband, writer Graeme Gibson.

  In 2017, a television series based on The Handmaid’s Tale was the first streaming series to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. The immensely popular show differed from the book in a few key ways—namely in updating the action to today (characters use smartphones, for example), portraying the fate of Luke, and having Offred get pregnant. Previously, the book had been turned into a movie (1990) from a screenplay written by Harold Pinter, starring Natasha Richardson and Faye Dunaway. With an enormous fan base on social media, and through her novels and nonfiction, Atwood continues to command our attention as she ruminates on—and, some might say, predicts—our future.