Love in the Time of Hollywood

Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald 1921. Photo: Smithsonian Institution via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

Magnetism by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories is #12 of Penguin's "Great Loves" series. It includes three I have not read before: The Sensible Thing, The Bridal Party, and Magnetism, along with the classic early flapper story, Bernice Bobs Her Hair. Published in 1928, these were the very early days of Hollywood, yet Magnetism captures the celebrity spirit in a way that is all too familiar today. One can imagine, however, the low-tech environment where famous actors still roamed the suburbs, startling elevator boys with their good looks and charm. Although Hemingway chastised Fitzgerald for writing short stories for money, instead of focusing on masterpieces like Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald's short stories are far from commercial ephemera that have lost their meaning in the present. It strikes me that the only difference is, back then, only the wealthy could experience such dramas as being considered dull and trying to project oneself as desirable, witty, and fun, whereas now almost any average consumer strives for the same thing. This is a very quick read, but Fitzgerald's work doesn't disappoint. It is only a shame that his short stories are scattered far and wide - as he would have delivered them to individual magazines in an effort to earn money - that a devoted Fitzgerald fan must constantly search for ever-more Fitzgerald stories to read. Nonetheless, part of the fun is discovering, from time to time, what seems to be an bottomless well of Fitzgerald ephemera still waiting to be discovered.

View all my reviews

On Social Media Living Up to its Promises with Raechel Johns

Associate Professor Raechel Johns

Associate Professor Raechel Johns is a marketing specialist and Head of the School of Management at the University of Canberra. Raechel and I have been colleagues for many years. We even starred in a marketing video about ten years ago. So I asked Raechel about social media and marketing and how I was disappointed that social media had not lived up to its early promises.

Is social media any good? Or has it been over-run by commercial interests?

Raechel talks about the Gartner Hype Cycle and the "trough of disillusionment", but also says that social media provides opportunities for building social capital, learning new ideas, and creating social value.

The podcast (and our video from many years ago) are below.

Forgetting to Remember Old Lessons Hard-Won, or: Read Emerson Now

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Study, circa 1888.
Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Nature and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finding the time to focus on this book has eluded me until recently. I find Emerson difficult to read at times as most of his essays read like transcripts of speeches (indeed, some of them are). He exudes "positive thinking" in the Norman Peale sense of the phrase, but with a transcendental bent that keeps on giving its spiritual encouragement. In each of Emerson's essays there is a gem of absolute truth, just waiting for us to confirm in our own experience (as he would probably say). But these gems tend to be packed away in wads and wads of cotton wool. It is not until the final essay (or, more correctly, speech), "The American Scholar", where the reader reaches the summit and can look back on a trail of wisdom marked by that same cotton wool. Emerson's ideas of self-reliance and the worthiness of the American ideal (in opposition to Continental ideas in particular) I suspect provide lessons for Australians that are just waiting to be learnt. America's cultural cringe has long disappeared from living memory and it may well be time for Australia to reach the same heady level. There is too much in such a short book to cover in detail, and each essay's gem must be mined laboriously (and as Emerson might say, there is nothing wrong with scholars doing a bit of physical labour). But two authors mentioned by Emerson stick in my mind. First, Thomas Carlyle (his work, too, I am stuck on due to a lack of focus and will get back to it now), mentioned in the cover blurb as someone Emerson met during his travels to Europe, and Swedenborg, and his ground-breaking "Heaven and Hell". Emerson comes close to enunciating how one might find one's "nature" (in the Stoic sense of the word) as a starting point for action. For this alone it is worth knowing. But also, his statement about the role of colleges (p. 154) has given me a way to re-align my teaching strategy. The travails of the present really were no different to the past; we seem rather to have forgotten to remember old lessons hard-won.

View all my reviews