Gatsby@100 Chapter 9 featuring Gish Jen and Alice McDermott

Gish Jen is the author of five novels, two collections of short stories, and two non-fiction books. Her most recent works include the 2020 novel The Resisters and the 2022 short story collection Thank You, Mr. Nixon. Her new novel Bad Bad Girl will be published in October 2025. Five of her stories have been selected for volumes of the Best American Short Stories and her story “Birthmates” was selected by John Updike for The Best American Short Stories of the Century. This spring she will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels and a book of non-fiction. Her most recent books are her 2024 novel Absolution and What About the Baby?, her 2021 collection of essays. Her 1998 novel Charming Billy won the National Book Award and the American Book Award; her 2017 novel The Ninth Hour won the Prix Femina étranger; and Absolution won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. In 2010 she received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in American Literature.

Chapter 9 finds Nick Carraway meditating on the tragedy of Jay Gatsby's fabulist career and all-too-real death. Fearing scandal, the partygoers who once flooded West Egg are nowhere to be found when Gatsby is buried. Not even Meyer Wolfshiem makes an appearance, and Daisy never calls. As Nick considers these betrayals, he offers some of the novel's most famous lines, including the beautiful passage on the Midwest; Nick's indictment of Tom and Daisy as careless people; and, of course, the novel's rapturously melancholy ending, which captures the conundrum of American optimism and guileless faith in promise in the beautiful image of boats riding against the currents of time.