The 1925 first edition of “The Great Gatsby” with the original dust jacket is surrounded by other editions of the novel and books from that era. At the bottom right is the Armed Services Edition copy. (Provided by the University of South Carolina’s University Libraries department)
COLUMBIA — The University of South Carolina is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of “The Great Gatsby” by inviting the public to experience the “world of the novel.”
A library exhibit opening Jan. 23 with a swing dancing demonstration aims to mentally transport visitors back to the age of flappers, flashy cars and bootleggers with its extensive F. Scott Fitzgerald collection.
On display will be items to make any bibliophile ooh and aah, such as the first edition of “Great Gatsby” with the original dust jacket and a pre-publication proof with the original title — “Trimalchio” — scratched out by Fitzgerald.
But Michael Weisenburg, director of USC libraries’ rare books and special collections, wanted to go beyond the novel itself to “build the world Fitzgerald is talking about, so when people come back here, they have an understanding of what it was like to be in the 1920s,” he told the SC Daily Gazette.
Setting the scene will be some of Fitzgerald’s personal belongings, like the flask given to him by Zelda Sayre two years before they married and Zelda’s golf scorecard from 1922, the year the novel takes place. (Jordan Baker, a character in the novel, is a professional golfer.)
Other items reconstructing The Jazz Age — a term credited to Fitzgerald himself — will include auto magazines of the period, which look nothing like today’s gearhead publications.
“Gatsby’s car is iconic in the world of the novel itself, and it’s an important plot point,” Weisenburg said, referencing the yellow Rolls-Royce that displayed Gatsby’s wealth. “Automobiles are a status symbol. It’s like fashion in this period, because less people have access to them.”
Why USC?
Though Fitzgerald fell in love in the South, meeting Zelda while stationed in Alabama, Fitzgerald personally had no connection to South Carolina.
Yet, thanks to the late English professor Matthew Bruccoli, who was widely recognized as the preeminent Fitzgerald scholar, USC is home to one of the world’s best Fitzgerald collections. It’s arguably second only to the collection at Princeton University, Fitzgerald’s alma mater, Weisenburg said.
Some of the collection came through the Fitzgeralds’ only child — Frances Scott, who went by “Scottie” — who Bruccoli met in the early 1960s while bidding on a copy of “The Great Gatsby” at an auction, said Patrick Scott, a retired director of USC’s rare books collection and an English professor emeritus.
Bruccoli, who taught at USC for nearly 40 years, donated his collection to USC. And since his death in 2008, the university has continued to expand on it.
Keeping it current involves looking for pop culture references and adaptations that continue to evolve after the 2021 expiration of the book’s copyright.
When a comic book pitting Godzilla against Gatsby went on sale last October, with a cover parodying the 1925 first edition dust jacket, Weisenburg’s department bought it.
The “Monsterpiece Theatre” comic book added to a collection that’s grown to roughly 5,000 volumes, along with manuscripts, magazines and memorabilia, such as letters Fitzgerald wrote to friends while writing “The Great Gatsby.”
Perhaps the most difficult part about the exhibit was deciding what not to include.
What’s it worth?
“We have more stuff than we could ever possibly display,” Weisenburg said.
The collection is essentially priceless. Weisenburg’s best guess of its worth is “millions and millions.”
Some items aren’t worth much on their own. But each of roughly 1,000 editions of “The Great Gatsby” contributes to a complete collection that spans the globe, including bootleg copies in Russian and Chinese not officially allowed by their governments, he said.
Other volumes are valuable because of who owned and wrote in them. For example, there’s a 1947 edition annotated throughout by Sylvia Plath.
“This is one great American author reading a previous great American author,” Weisenburg said.
And gifts to Fitzgerald in the collection include a first edition of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” inscribed by Ernest Hemingway, who Fitzgerald connected to his publisher.
A small, green rectangular edition of “The Great Gatsby” helps explain why it became an American classic that’s still required reading in high schools nationwide.
Though not immediately popular after its release on April 10, 1925, “The Great Gatsby” was among more than 1,300 titles distributed two decades later to military servicemen during World War II.
The paperback Armed Services Editions were small enough to fit in a uniform pocket, intended to boost morale by providing a connection to home and distraction from the horrors of war.
They also created modern American literature, as soldiers came back from war and went to college under the GI Bill, then began teaching the books themselves, Scott said.
“So, when students wonder, ‘Why do I have to read this book?’ it’s because people in the post-war period picked this as one of the titles that’s going to be indicative of the idea of American culture,” he said. “This represents fundamentally what is means to be an American.”
Enduring admiration for a crook?
That certainly doesn’t mean Jay Gatsby is supposed to be a role model or archetypal American.
But the tale touches on societal questions still relevant today.
“It’s a deeply ironic novel. You’re not necessarily supposed to like these people,” Weisenburg said, adding that the ambivalence of the character narrating the scenes allows readers to simultaneously dislike and root for the main characters.
“Gatsby’s a crook. He’s a bootlegger. … He may be a murderer. He’s friends with people who rigged the World Series,” he said. “Most are somehow unsavory, greedy.”
The romantic twist to Gatsby’s ambitions — his unsuccessful attempt to win a woman’s love by becoming super wealthy — also makes him a more sympathetic character than most crooks. And it helps make the novel appealing a century later.
“There’s tension between old money and new money and what does wealth represent,” Weisenburg said. “It’s very similar to what we think of as celebrity culture today. … It’s very much about spectacle and self-creation and reinvention.”
The novel can be interpreted as a metaphor or an allegory, “but it’s not meant to be taken purely at face value,” he said. “It’s meant to be appreciated and associated with all these contradictory feelings you have when you read this book.”
While there won’t be a specific course at USC aligned with the exhibit this semester, Weisenburg said the novel is part of a Maymester class he’s teaching with an English professor. And in March, probably after spring break, faculty from across campus will participate in “lightning talks” open to the public on how “The Great Gatsby” relates to their fields.
Fashion, art, architecture and business are among core elements in the novel.
“We’re using the anniversary of this cultural, iconic novel to talk about how their area of expertise is reflected in this book,” Weisenburg said.
The exhibit itself will run through July. People can browse the display cases on their own during normal operating hours of the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library, which is inside the Thomas Cooper Library on the main Columbia campus. Curated tours will also be available.
Visitors “can look back at this novel they read in high school and see it differently and see real tangible things of Fitzgerald and the period 100 years ago,” said Abby Cole, a spokeswoman for University Libraries.
But the exhibit’s not just for book worms, Weisenburg said.
“Even if it’s someone who’s just seen the movie. If you saw the (2013 Leonardo) DiCaprio movie and want to see the stuff that inspired it, this is the stuff,” he said.
