Speaking of the Spanish soccer kiss: Why have you read 'The Great Gatsby' but not Ursula Parrott's '

[cbabe]

https://www.alternet.org/why-have-you-read-the-great-gatsby-but-not-ursula-parrotts-ex-wife/

Why have you read ‘The Great Gatsby’ but not Ursula Parrott’s ‘Ex-Wife’?

The ConversationAugust 27, 2023

In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published “The Great Gatsby.” Four years later, Ursula Parrott published her first novel, “Ex-Wife.”

I probably read “The Great Gatsby” a dozen times between junior high school and my late 20s. But I had never even heard of Ursula Parrott or her 1929 bestseller until I stumbled across a screenplay adaption of one of Parrott’s short stories.

Fitzgerald, in fact, had been hired to write that screenplay. Even though “Infidelity” was never produced because it was deemed too risqué by Hollywood’s Production Code Administration, its very existence piqued my curiosity.

…

The Great Gatsby” owes its resuscitation from obscurity in the 1940s to the efforts of prominent male critics and scholars – and even to the American military.

…

Consider just one instance of differential legacy-tending: during World War II, the American military provided over 150,000 free copies of “The Great Gatsby” to American soldiers – ensuring a readership that well exceeded the number of people who had, to date, actually bought the book.

But when the Victory Book Campaign started its drive to collect novels for overseas servicemen, it explicitly warned potential donors to desist from handing over any “women’s love stories,” specifically naming Ursula Parrott among the authors whose books they would not be putting in soldiers’ hands.

…

After McNally Editions republished “Ex-Wife” in May 2023, reviewers remarked on the “freshness of its prose” and the “remarkable erotic freedom” it depicted, as The New York Times review put it; The Baffler described Parrott’s writing as “deftly crafted, wryly observed, and thoroughly unsettling.”

“The Great Gatsby” is a fantastic period piece. But “Ex-Wife” manages to be both that and to remain timely. Women’s lives and bodies continue to be subject to all manner of scrutiny, critique and legislation, which means that many of the things that Parrott wrote about in “Ex-Wife” – the double standard, women in the workplace, work-life balance, rape and even abortion – remain astonishingly relevant today.

In “Ex-Wife” – and in many of her 19 other books and over 100 stories – Parrott wrote from what amounts to Daisy Buchanan’s point of view rather than Nick Carraway’s, to use “The Great Gatsby” again as a reference point.

…more…

[BlueGreenLady]

1. Thanks for highlighting this writer

I will definitely check "Ex-Wife" out.

[txwhitedove]

2. Great, informative article. Thanks. Will check on that author.

[hermetic]

3. Interesting

Not at my library but I put it on my list to keep an eye out for it. Thanks for posting.

[LisaM]

4. I am interested and will give this a read.

I don't think it's fair to "The Great Gatsby" to say it's from Nick Carroway's point of view - I think it shows Daisy's point of view very well - and I also don't think it endures solely because Edmund Wilson resuscitated it after Fitzgerald died. It endures because of its timeless themes and luminous prose.

That aside, I will definitely try to get this book. It sounds good.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

5. I read The Great Gatsby

Because it was the book available to me. I had lousy access to books until I escaped my nutso mum. We always seemed to live in dingy small towns or out in the wilds where bookstores and libraries aren't all that common. Even when a town was big enough for one or both, the selection was always bloody awful. The school libraries were invariably abysmal. I knew every book in every small town bookstore and library I encountered. Never saw anything by this person.

So I read what was there, and had to be glad of what I could get. Gatsby was one of those books. I first read it when I was 12.

I'll look into this Parrott author now, so thanks for the rec.

PS: I also don't think Edmund Wilson had all that much to do with Gatsby becoming the Great American Novel (which it is). Everyone in my family who were around when it came out loved it. My grandparents--both sides, my stepfather's mum, my other stepfather's mum, their siblings and friends--All of them had loved it. It was *that* book for their generation, and it's not difficult to understand why. Unlike what Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner or other "serious" writers were up to at the time, Gatsby was fun and exciting and daring and much more representative of the lives of young adults in the 20s than those other books were. It spoke to that generation's experiences and culture in a way that other literary books of the period didn't.

And I stand by calling it the ultimate Great American Novel, because it nails everything American about America--its greed and lust and excesses and selfishness and shadiness and shallowness and dinginess and chutzpah and smallness and opportunism and hopes and dreams and, yes, even its startling naivete despite it all.

It's America, wrapped up in more or less 110 neat little pages.