Patterson Library Partners with SUNY Fredonia for 'Great Gatsby' Event

Patterson Library is pleased to partner with the SUNY Fredonia English Department for a special program on this year’s Big Read book The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This year’s program, Gender and the Great Gatsby: Women of the Roaring 20s, is being presented in collaboration with two SUNY Fredonia Senior English majors on Thursday, April 16th at 6:00 PM.  The event will be free and open to the public with light food and drink provided.

Attendees are encouraged to read or re-read this poignant American classic before the event. Copies of the book are available for check out at the library, along with other adaptations including the recently released movie by Baz Luhrmann.

The book tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a young and mysterious millionaire of the Roaring Twenties and his passionate obsession over his first love, Daisy Buchanan. Narrated by Gatsby’s neighbor and perhaps one true friend, Nick Carraway, the reader explores themes of idealism, excess, and perhaps wariness of the American Dream.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. Patterson Library has partnered with Daniel A. Reed Library at the State University of New York at Fredonia, in cooperation with the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System to make this program possible.

For more information about this event or other Big Read events in the area contact Erin Hauenstein at 326-2154 or by email at [email protected].