Hi Donald,
Nice to see Great Gatsby with you. It looks like there are a few 'Gatsbys' in film - http://www.imdb.com/find?q=%09+59+The+Great+Gatsby&s=all. Let's check out Coppola, Redford and Farrow's 1974 version sometime.
Here's the inspiring inscription to Gatsby, I mentioned:
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
--THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS
I found this "Great Gatsby" audio text online for free - http://esl-bits.net/ESL.English.Learning.Audiobooks/The_Great_Gatsby/index.html - but not in mp3 file format yet. The ESL audio library looks interesting, and I'll probably add it to WUaS's Library Resources' wiki, subject page - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources.
And Gatsby is possibly downloadable here - http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#fitzgerald - from the Project Gutenberg Library in Australia (which I may add to Library Resources at WUaS, as well), but also not in the mp3 file format that I can find. (While F. Scott Fitzgerald attended Princeton, two of his main characters in "Gatsby," Carraway and Buchanan, know each other at Yale).
I found it further edifying to read the plot summary here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Plot_summary - confirming the gist of what we saw, yet highlighting a few relationship details I didn't catch.
I thought the concluding dramatic 'ecology of pairbonding' scenes were well-played in the film, but the underlying tension wasn't to my style or liking.
... a cautionary tale about the American Dream? Yes, I learned a little beyond Harbin. :) And, yes, back to the warm pool ...
To good writing and envisioning, :)
Scott
I'm curious how to find English literature courses that focus on loving bliss, or even generate them vis-a-vis WUaS over the years, to inform, over time, WUaS's English Department's focus (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/English_Literature), in part. In a quick Google search about this, on page 2, I found first something about Tolkien, and then this - http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/'Bliss'_and_'The_Garden_Party' - both of which ring true. English was my favorite subject in high school, perhaps because of the richness and beauty of the thinking in literature. The absence of this 'loving bliss' subject in the field of English literature suggests to me an opportunity for a fascinating and very enjoyable intellectual / cultural quest. ... and then in Hindu literature in Hindi, in India, (Tagore's poetry comes closest for me in English) and reading 'between the lines' vis-a-vis the divine? (Yay for the invention/synthesis of ecstasy {MDMA} :).
We/I/WUaS may have to write this 'loving bliss' subject into academic discipline English literature. There's certainly a beginning of it in my poetry -
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/poetry -
and I suspect you might be able to suggest many other examples.
For example:
Yellow corolla: Monsieur Nikhil Bannerjee, master raga player, moved me along the way
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2013/01/yellow-corolla-monsieur-nikhil.html
Yosemite Traveling Poem to Lembert Dome -
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2012/10/yosemite-traveling-poem-to-lembert-dome.html
She dappled sun
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2012/09/she-dappled-sun.html
Bodymind electricity sings to me, o thee, who are pair
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2012/04/bodymind-electricity-sings-to-me-o-thee.html
I do choose to write the muse of bliss unfolding
(Friday, December 31, 2010)
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/12/dugong-and-calf-i-do-choose-to-write.html
Bonobo Loving Bliss
(Thursday, December 31, 2009)
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/12/bonobo-kiss-poetry-of-loving-bliss.html
Yellow autumn vineyards blaze below, Green winter oaks above
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/12/yellow-autumn-vineyards-blaze-below.html
Firefly: I came upon a feast of lights spread speckle 'cross hill and vale
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/03/firefly-i-came-upon-feast-of-lights.html
There are a few more of my 'bliss' poems in my blog, which I may collect together further at some point.
I'm quite interested in how to get to these loving bliss neurophysiologies, and related bodymind qualities of experience, and for 9 hours per day (e.g. over the next 40 years, not to belabor a quest of mine), for example, when and as one wants them (where is the metaphorical on-off switch / 'bliss' dial / cello bow stroke? :), and vis-a-vis WUaS, as well - e.g. this wiki, subject - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology) - to which I may add the above at some point.
Enough said, - and per "Gatsby"?
Might your father, a retired English professor, find this an interesting exploration (in, for example, Shakespeare: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Shakespeare,_William), and even in Quaker ways?
:)
Scott
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