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Transcription: [00:09:56]
{SPEAKER name="Warren Perry"}
This is a moment in the Great Gatsby I want to illustrate to you which is terribly interesting— this is how good a writer Scott Fitzgerald is.

[00:10:03]
We're at the end of chapter 2 in The Great Gatsby.

[00:10:07]
Tom Buchanan and his mistress, Myrtle, have a house in Manhattan.

[00:10:15]
They have a party there and they invite Nick Carraway, who's the one who is telling us the story of Gatsby.

[00:10:21]
At this party everybody gets drunk. It's an absolutely awful gathering. The people begin drinking in the afternoon -- the whole thing turns into a blur. And there is this couple who live downstairs from where Tom and Myrtle had rented this apartment. They're the McKees. Mr. McKee is a photographer. Mr. McKee and Nick Carraway get very drunk.

[00:10:44]
Please look toward the end of the pa--I'm sorry, about half way down the page.

[00:10:49]
This takes place right as Tom Buchanan has hit Myrtle in the nose and he's busted her nose up because she won't shouting the na--she won't stop shouting the name of Tom's wife, Daisy.

[00:11:02]
She says over and over again, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy -- and then he hits her in the face and there's a horrible scene, it's very, very violent. And you as the reader are caught up in this scene. It's a significant and inhumane moment and it belongs entirely to Tom Buchanan.

[00:11:19]
Scott Fitzgerald, inside that moment weaves something into Nick Carraway's character that unless you read closely, you completely overlook. Again, we are at the end of chapter 2.

[00:11:31]
So, Mr. McKee the photographer says, come to lunch someday. As we groan down in the elevator.

[00:11:37]
Where? -- and this is Nick Carraway doing the question and answer with him, right. -- Anywhere. --

[00:11:42]
Keep your hands off the lever, snapped the elevator boy. -- A little Freudian thing at work there. --

[00:11:47]
I beg your pardon, said Mr. McKee with dignity, I didn't know I was touching it. --

[00:11:51]
Alright, I agreed, I'll be glad to... -- You see those three ellipsis before the next sentence? And then you see the next sentence? --

[00:11:58]
I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets clad in his underwear with a great portfolio in his hands --