Gatsby@100 Chapter 3 featuring Ann Beattie

Ann Beattie is the author of nine novels, twelve collections of short stories, a children’s book, and two non-fiction books. Her most recent publications are the 2023 short story collection Onlookers and More to Say: Essays and Appreciations, also published in 2023. 

Her short stories have appeared in five O. Henry Prize collections, in The Best American Short Stories and in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She has received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story and the Rea Award for the Short Story. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A graduate of American University and the University of Connecticut, she has taught at Harvard, the University of Connecticut, and for many years at the University of Virginia.

Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby is a tour-de-force depiction of one of Jay Gatsby's frenetic parties. Here Nick Carraway finally meets his next-door neighbor and discovers a surprising connection with him involving the Great War. As Nick embarks on a relationship with Jordan Baker we are introduced to one of  the novel's central metaphors of the "careless driver."