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- [00:00]
Kate
I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3.
- [00:15]
Charlie
Will that be cash or credit?
- [00:17]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Credit.
- [00:17]
Charlie
4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting. So you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps.
- [00:27]
Jim West
Requires Google Gemini account.
- [00:28]
Charlie
Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy. Happy Thursday. Welcome to the Bookcase. How are you?
- [00:40]
Jim West
It is.
- [00:41]
Charlie
I live in Minnesota. It is above 15 degrees. That means spring is in the air. So I'm feeling good.
- [00:47]
Ann Margaret Daniel
My co host, hello only Minnesotans. Kate can get excited about temperatures at 15 degrees and slightly below. I know you had a below 15 degrees below zero recently and I suffered through that with you since it's about all you talked about for two or three days and I don't blame you in the least. We do welcome you to the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie. That's the Kate part. I'm the Charlie part. And this show today is really Kate's baby. A couple of weeks ago, we did our first show on a classic. We talked to two Dickensians about A Christmas Carol and a number of people told us that's interesting, we'd like you to do more classics. And so we talked about that and Kate said, I want to do the Great Gatsby because for her, that is the classic. She loves that book almost more than any she's ever read. And before you throw me under the bus, Kate, I had never read it. I had never read it. And so I did. And we found two wonderful, wonderful F. Scott Fitzgerald scholars. And as I say, this is your show, baby. Take it away.
- [01:56]
Charlie
I don't have a great solo after that. I feel like I should tap dance or something. You know, I don't know. First of all, the way he set me up is absolutely true. My father is so smart. He's crazy smart and you know so much about so many things. So it was nice to be able to go at something that I've studied for a really long time. And he was just getting to. It's, you know, it's one of those experiences that I like. Also, I don't know. You know, many of us English lovers have a teacher that was that teacher for us. And my junior and senior year of high school, I had a woman named Dr. Jane Cole. And my junior year in AP English, she taught the Great Gatsby. And she taught it Almost word for word. And oh my gosh, it was an all girls school, it was a small class and we all swooned over Gatsby, but we swooned over Jane Cole teaching Gatsby. And so what's been amazing to me as I picked up and reread this book, which I do every few years anyway, but what was amazing to me to reread this book was hearing her voice in my head talking about, think about the use of color here, think about the use of time in this chapter. I mean, it was lovely to have her voice and those Kemp plays classes back in my head as I went through this book. But it is also just, I don't know, it's one of those books that can be pulled apart in so many different ways. And people describe it as the great American novel. It stays with me, it changes, it grows as I do, as do these characters. And so I couldn't wait to talk about it. When people were like, let's do classics, I was like, this is the first one we're gonna do. I swear all respect to you Jane Austens and all of that, we will get there. But we had to do the Great Gatsby first in honor.
- [03:37]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Well, as I read it, I read your sister's copy, who also was taught by Jane Cole, and I read your sister's copy of it with all her notes in the margin, and I could sort of vicariously read about Jane's teaching in it. And my wife Arlene, your MOT was the head of the school and she just thought Jane Cole was one of the great. Idiosyncratic, to be sure, but one of the great teachers that she had ever encountered. And I think what's really interesting to me about this novel is that you can read it just as a great story, a great yarn, it has mystery, it has so many different things, and yet you can also study it, as you say, word for word, and, and see the incredible intricacies of what F. Scott Jarroll was doing with this book. Also, the part that interests me is we discuss it with our two scholars. But it didn't sell very well at the beginning. I don't quite know why, because it is such a rich book with such rich language. And your Jane Cole was my Jim Forsyth who was a teacher at Sidwell Friends in Washington where I went to school and took him for 12th grade. And he, I remember once he gave us a page. I've forgotten who it was written by. It was just a page of literature about something I've forgotten. And he said, okay, write me a paper about all the literary allusions and what the writer is doing on this page. Don't just read it as a page. Go research all the allusions that he's making in this page. And it was incredible what was behind that page. Jim Forsythe got me reading very critically. And the same thing is true here. As I say, you can read it as a great yarn or you can go back and really research what F. Scott Fitzgerald had in his mind as he wrote it. And it is so rich in that way as well.
- [05:30]
Charlie
It is. There are so many layers. I mean, we spent, as I recall, we spent two classes just on the Eyes of God and the Glasses of TJ Eckleburg, which is to me, one of the great passages of literature. I mean, how much he was conscious of, how much he was doing. Well, we talked to them about that, too. I can't wait to get to this conversation. Just stop talking.
- [05:50]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Well, we talked to James west, who is a professor emeritus at Penn State University and is a F. Scott Fitzgerald Scholar, and also Ann Margaret Daniel, who teaches literature at the New School in New York. So, as I say, it wasn't hard to find F. Scott Fitzgerald scholars. And Katie enjoyed the conversation. So did I, and I think so will you, as you hear it.
- [06:19]
Charlie
Ann Margaret, Jim, it is such a pleasure to have you in the bookcase. I love this book. I feel like I've studied this book word for word. So my first question for you, I think, is, what is it about the Great Gatsby that invites such endless study? Jim, I'll start with you.
- [06:36]
Jim West
When I was a junior in high school, we read the Scarlet Letter. And it was grim and cold and it was all about sin and guilt and retribution. And I was 16 years old. I didn't want to read about that sort of thing. It's a very teachable novel. It has a first person narrator who is perhaps not always entirely reliable. And it has wonderful characters and a fast moving plot and champagne and parties and a green light. So what else could you possibly need?
- [07:11]
Kate
If you add to all of what Jim said, some of the most beautifully crafted prose I will ever read by any writer, Some of the most lyrical, passionate, untouchably, well put together sentences, paragraphs, even full paragraphs, you can just be reading along and sort of bouncing with the story for a page or two and then there's just a phrase that will knock you down. You read the phrase where a woman is described as being an angry diamond, and forever after you see that description, you read the phrase where an unknown man is standing on the shore in the next door lawn surveying the silver pepper of the stars. And every time I look at a night sky that's starry, I think of the silver pepper of the stars. It gets inside you and stays and.
- [08:09]
Charlie
Margaret, I hear when people describe this book so often, the word American comes up. It's the great American novel. So I wanted to ask, what is it about this book that makes it so distinctly American?
- [08:25]
Kate
Well, the simplistic to say everything, but it's the cast of characters coming from a recently settled Middle West. Everything's still so fresh and new and already looping back to the east coast because now that's the old part of the country. You know, it's been a country for just over 100 years at this point. Everything in it is. There's something so brash and new about all of it, about the New York City where so much of the novel is set. I mean, it's a great New York City novel, let alone a great American novel. And the concerns, like Nick Carraway having gone into the Bond business after returning from a war that is called the delayed Teutonic Migration, he's trying to be cynical and contemporary and hip and make light of things that are not light, but in a particularly, I think, American idiom. Fitzgerald's ear for slang, for new phrases, for new words and phrases is unmatched, I think, among American writers. And he really taps into that with a lot of the characters in Gatsby. Also, the subtext which is increasingly in the novel, the text of the first, the great war it was at the time, becomes something that matters very much when another world war comes along and kind of contextualizes America as a pivotal country being involved in both world wars. And I think that has led to a lot of Gatsby's being regarded as a particularly and peculiarly American novel.
- [10:13]
Jim West
I'll jump in here and say that I spent a year in England at Cambridge, and many of the people I met there had read the Great Gatsby. What they understood in the novel was status, social status, the social hierarchy of that particular slice of American life. But what Americans understand is money. And we understand money better than the British do. We let them have a class system, but we understand the authority of money, the authority of money, the way it influences human behavior. And that's a major theme in the novel. So that's just my little addendum.
- [11:10]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Ann. Margaret, As I read Gatsby, I think that this is a novel where to fully appreciate it, you have to know a lot about F. Scott Fitzgerald himself and his life and the parallels. True?
- [11:23]
Kate
No, I don't think so.
- [11:27]
Ann Margaret Daniel
I consider my wrist slapped. You go ahead.
- [11:30]
Kate
I do try to get students away from making any parallels between Fitzgerald and Carraway and, God help us, Fitzgerald and Tom Buchanan Fitzgerald and Gatsby himself. I mean, years later he referred to Gatsby as one of his brothers. Sometimes I wish I could just read the Great Gatsby without knowing a thing about Scott Fitzgerald and just read it as a novel written by some person from 1922 to 1925. I mean, he was working on it right up until it was published and take it in that way. Quite often when I'm rereading it now, I actually don't think about him writing it. I get so into the language that I'm able to detach from that. So I think it's actually a fun experiment. See if you can suspend your disbelief and forget that Fitzgerald wrote it.
- [12:21]
Jim West
I would like to agree entirely with Ann Margaret. When I first began to read FITZGERALD More than 50 years ago, I read a few of the novels and stories and then I read one or two biographies. And I said, well, this is easy. Here's the life and here the writings. And there's a one to one correspondence. And then I read some more, and then I read some more and it became more and more complicated. You really can't read that way. So I'm with Ann Margaret. If you can suspend your knowledge of Fitzgerald's life and just read his writings as if you were coming to them for the first time, it's a better experience.
- [13:07]
Charlie
One of the reasons I think it's such a teachable book is because Nick is an unreliable narrator. So it's a great way to start teaching students to read critically and to maybe not trust the perspective being given to you. So I want to ask a couple of questions about that. First, is he lying to himself or is he lying to us? Second, is he more honest by the novel's clothes? Because he starts out by saying everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine. I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. So is there an evolution there from dishonest to honest? And is he conscious of his dishonesty? I'll start with Ann Margret.
- [13:47]
Kate
I think he's completely conscious of his dishonesty. And I always laugh when I read that line. So do my students. Whenever anyone tells you that they're honest, you know, could be a lie, right? He's not honest and he suppresses a great deal. You posed an interesting two parter there. I think he is honest with us, the readers, in a way that he doesn't begin to be in the world of the novel. Because he's telling us, either through his stream of consciousness or through the dialogue clips that come out and that he recounts or you know, his retelling, let's say, of Jordan Baker's story at tea time at the Plaza. All that's coming filtered through him. But he does not open his mouth to say who's driving the car. He does not open his mouth to say Tom Buchanan is the lover of Myrtle Wilson, not Jay Gatsby. He doesn't say anything. We know all that because we've been along for the ride with him and we've witnessed it. But. But I view that as. As a really paralyzing dishonesty and something that is pretty much unforgivable or would be in real life, perhaps not in a work of fiction. And that always. That increasingly bothers me about Nick as I get older. There are just things that you want to know, even if they're bad for you. And you know, you get the feeling that Tom Buchanan already knows. I have no sympathy at all for him in any way, shape or form. He's one of the most reprehensible characters created in American literature, I think. But I increasingly have less sympathy with Nick.
- [15:29]
Charlie
Do you agree that. Do you have sympathy with Nick? And is Nick a more honest narrator by the end? Cause he has that conversation with Jordan where she says, no, you're not honest. And he says, no, I'm not.
- [15:40]
Jim West
I think Nick learns a great deal about himself in the course of the narrative. And if we can enter into the world of the novel in the course of telling the story to us, so that he is more self aware by the end of the novel. That statement that he's one of the most honest people he's ever known is rather fatuous. Thank goodness, though it comes at the beginning of the novel and he learns as he goes along. We also have to remember that if Nick had revealed that Daisy was behind the wheel or that Gatsby was not Myrtle's lover, we wouldn't have a novel.
- [16:26]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Am I correct that F. Scott Fitzgerald died thinking that his novel was a failure?
- [16:32]
Jim West
No, he knew it was good and he knew he was a good writer. He died trying to figure out how to get back into the literary spotlight, but in a different guise, a different Persona. I think he did feel that his early stories about young Women, after the war, about flappers, about the whole post war scene, had marked him as a particular kind of writer. It's difficult for writers to change the public perception as they go along. I can think of many, many writers for whom that's true. William Faulkner is a good example. Edith Wharton is a good example in American literature. So that was his problem at the end. But no, he was still writing exceptionally well at the end.
- [17:37]
Kate
Fitzgerald made these large size scrapbooks, black paper, you know, old fashioned scrapbooks for all of his novels. He subscribed to a couple of wire clip service, you know, newspaper clipping services, and he saved reviews, cartoons about the Great Gatsby, mentions of it, some of them admiring, some of them mocking. But he clipped it all out and he pasted these into the scrapbooks along with letters that he received from friends and from critics and from perfect strangers about the novel. And he knew how good it was at the time. He was thrilled that sharp critics like H.L. mencken understood how good it was and. And he was constantly trying to see it back in print. Yes, it's harder to find a second, a second printing of Gatsby today than it is a first printing.
- [18:35]
Jim West
We have to remember also that the Great Gatsby made its way to Americans in two other forms, as a stage play and as a movie. And Ann, Margaret and I, matter of fact, have recently published the Broadway script of the Great Gatsby, 1926, the first time the novel was produced in dramatic form. It was a great success. And then the silent movie came along and was an even bigger success. So while Fitzgerald did not sell as many copies of the printed book, he made a great deal more money from the novel in 1925 and 1926 than he ever had before. In fact, translated into today's dollars, he made over $300,000 just in those two years. It was big money. Of course, he spent it all. Who could imagine that that kind of money would ever dry up?
- [19:49]
Charlie
I'm excited to talk to two Fitzgerald scholars because when I learned this book in my junior year, God, there was so much to talk about. The eyes of God, TJ Eckleburg, the grays versus the colors, the theme, you know, the number of words about time that are used in the chapter where Daisy and Gatsby finally re meet. And so I want to ask, and I'll start with you, Jim, how much of the craft of writing was Fitzgerald conscious of when he was writing the Great Gatsby?
- [20:21]
Jim West
Fitzgerald liked to pretend that he simply dashed off his stories and his novels that he wrote like the birds sing. He simply sat down and the words flowed onto the paper. And it was quite easy. As a matter of fact, he labored through numerous drafts on all of his writings. In the Great Gatsby, we have a handwritten manuscript draft that's really rather pedestrian. And then we have a version of the novel in proofs. That's better. It's a good little novel about some unpleasant people who live out on Long Island. And then Fitzgerald rewrote the novel, virtually rewrote it in proofs to give us the first edition. And in that rewriting and recasting, he gave the novel the sense of myth and wonder that we recognize today. So it's a useful lesson for students to know this. Fitzgerald was very conscious of how he got his best effects and as a matter of fact, from his short stories, commercial short stories that he published in the popular magazines, he would strip out the most beautiful language and put it in his notebook in case he ever wanted to use it again in a novel. He was thrifty that way.
- [22:02]
Kate
And he would write across the top of those stories. It always sounds so noir to me. He would write across the top of those stories, stripped and permanently buried, by which he meant he didn't want the short story republished. And of course, they were republished.
- [22:18]
Ann Margaret Daniel
One of the things that Kate has talked to me about as I read it is Kate kept saying to me, dad, it's so sad. There's a sadness that just pervades everything, particularly at the end. And what has always struck me as I read it is that you don't expect a sad novel as a literary piece so successful and that it's so widely read. You go into this thinking or knowing that it's going to be sad, and still you read it, he overcomes that. How?
- [22:48]
Kate
Well, I think he kind of overcomes it the same way that, let's say William Shakespeare overcomes it in Romeo and Juliet. Think of the beginning of Romeo and Juliet. Think of the chorus walking on stage. Two families, two star crossed lovers. In fair Verona we do set our scene. Both die for love. Why do we sit and watch the play Romeo and Juliet? We know what's going to happen. We keep hoping right until the last scene that something different will come to pass. And indeed, right up until the time Romeo drinks that vial of poison, it could have reconstituted itself, if not as a comedy, certainly as a romance, but from then on, it is a tragedy and it's a horrible tragedy. And I think Fitzgerald, when he talks about Gatsby and that celebrated capacity for hope, that infinite capacity for hoping, he's tapping into something of the same thing where we feel the sadness from the beginning. I absolutely agree with you, Kate. But we keep hoping that something else is going to come to pass.
- [24:00]
Jim West
Yeah, I think Kate needs to cheer up. This is not a bummer of a novel. We have hope at the end. We have. So we beat on and we have the green light. What more do you need?
- [24:19]
Charlie
But also at the end, you're reaching for something you never get. Are arms stretching ever further. I don't know. For me, I mean, don't get me wrong, I love this book, but every time I read it, it's always sadder than I remember it. And I remember it being sad. And I always sort of forget the desperation and the sadness of the scene where Nick is desperately trying to get one mourner, one mourner, one. And I sort of forget that. That adds a whole layer of sadness on top of the unrequited love. And it always ends up being sadder than I think it's gonna be.
- [24:58]
Jim West
Even though it is finally a tragedy. These are wonderful characters. They're all different from each other. They don't resemble any characters that I'm familiar with in any literature I've ever read. In fact, I think even the minor characters are excellent. Everyone always wants to talk about Daisy and Gatsby and Tom and all of those characters. But Ann. Margaret's mentioning Shakespeare a moment ago made me think of the Wilsons, Myrtle and George Wilson, who are very much like the minor characters in Shakespeare. That is to say, they are at a lower plane. But what they pursue, what they say, their aspirations, are reflections of the characters on the higher plane. If you look in the comedies, that's often the case. You will have the aristocrats floating around the woods and falling in and out of love with each other and putting on disguises. And then alternately, you have, in Midsummer Night's Dream, for instance, Bottom and his friends doing a kind of satirical reflection of what the aristocrats are doing in the rest of the play. So I think the Wilsons, not to mention Wolfshine, are also wonderful characters.
- [26:37]
Ann Margaret Daniel
But I come back to his life and you do tell me, don't get too caught up in his life in order to enjoy the Great Gatsby eras novels. However, his first love was Ginevra King, and her parents wouldn't allow her to marry him because he didn't have money. And they did. She then married somebody else. Then along comes Zelda Sayre and fell in love with her, but that marriage got delayed until he got very successful. So I would think there would be something of a frustration on his part that the value of money was really so important that it was more than just its monetary value, but it had everything to do with standing.
- [27:16]
Jim West
Well, he recognized all of that, of course, but I don't blame either one of those young women. They should not have married F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was fun to be with and entertaining, but rather unreliable, and he did not have good prospects. And if I had had a pretty young daughter, as in fact I did some years ago, and she brought home her intended and I met him and I liked him, and I asked her in a private moment, what is his specialty, Dreading that she would say, oh, he wants to be a writer. Fortunately. Fortunately, she said, oh, he's the computer scientist. And I said, oh, thank the Lord.
- [28:21]
Kate
I love that. I love that anecdote. And I agree with Jim about Fitzpatrick Gerald's dim prospects as a young man when he was planning on going into an advertising agency. And then his class notes at Princeton said he was going to graduate school in English at Harvard, which he never did. But he honestly, he. I think his relationship with money was he loved having it because he immediately spent. Spent it on other people when he had it. He was a big tipper. He really liked the. Not the standing it gave him, but just the good feeling he got from giving a hand to other people, I think. And he was as generous as a writer, you know, helping Hemingway get the Sun Also Rises published, going through and editing the whole thing, making major, major changes in the manuscript to help make the novel better. That was just a big part of his personality. It was. Yes, it was irresponsible in a way, but it was also small d, democratic and quite generous in a lot of ways.
- [29:28]
Ann Margaret Daniel
As I read Gatsby, I kept thinking, what would he think of today's world where money is. The disparity between the working man and the super rich is even greater than it was in his age. I just wonder what he'd be writing about Now. I know that's very speculative, Jim, but what do you think?
- [29:47]
Jim West
I think he would be writing about the world situation and the status of the United States on the world stage. He was very much conscious of that sort of thing. Remember, Fitzgerald lived through the Great War, the First World War, and saw this country emerge as a world power in a way that none of us today understand. In many ways, Fitzgerald should have lived through the Second World War. To see the culmination of all that happened in his youth. But of course, it's gone on, it's gone forward, it's developed in ever more troubling ways. If we could bring Scott Fitzgerald back, I think he would understand these things as well as any of our prognosticators and journalists today.
- [30:46]
Kate
I agree. And at one point, he sketched out a plan for a novel that covered the 10 years from 1929 to 1939. It was to be set around a couple of lovers who had parted company. And he chose one watershed event from every year. That would be a chapter of the novel. He was intensely conscious of American history and its discontents and its problems and would be writing about it now. Absolutely.
- [31:15]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Thank you both.
- [31:16]
Charlie
Thank you, guys.
- [31:17]
Kate
Thank you so much. This is delightful.
- [31:24]
Ann Margaret Daniel
James L. West, professor emeritus at Penn State University, and Ann Margaret Daniel from the New School. Katie, this is going to presume upon the knowledge of people who've read the book, but what's the green light? It's an illusion in the book that I've struggled with. Tell me what you think it is.
- [31:42]
Charlie
Oh, gosh, I'm going to give you a slippery answer. I think so many answers about Gatsby are slippery. I think it's many things. I think it represents hope. I think this novel, on many levels, is about manifest destiny. It's about, as the last page says, constantly reaching for the ungraspable. I don't mean to sound too man of La Mancha, but I think that green light at the end of the dock also symbolizes Dr. Cole. Also wove in, as I recall, the Statue of Liberty and the immigrant's first glimpse of the shores of the United States. That all of these things are wrapped up in this green light at the end of Daisy's dock. And the first time you see Gatsby, he's slightly trembling and reaching for it. He's so close to her. And at the end, you know, Nick realizes that in some ways he was never farther away. The green light symbolizes many, many, many things. And again, that's what I love about this book, is there's so many. It's a taco within a burrito within a. I mean, there's just so many different things you can pull apart with this.
- [32:47]
Ann Margaret Daniel
A taco within a burrito within a. I have heard the allusion to a watermelon that's a black seed inside a red coat inside a green.
- [32:55]
Charlie
Or an onion. Like an onion probably would have been more obvious, too, right?
- [33:00]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Taco inside a burrito. That's not what I took away from the book. But it's okay if that's what you did. But what you're pointing to, the show.
- [33:07]
Charlie
Was this close to talking about.
- [33:08]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Yes. What you're pointing to, I think, is exactly right. You can read this book on so many different layers and you can come to different conclusions about so many different parts of it. Indeed, you can put it down and think to yourself, what's this book about? And you can come to 10 different answers. Is it about money? Is it about class? Is it about just the characters? It's all different things.
- [33:29]
Charlie
Is it about love? Is it about unrequited love? Is it about, I mean, it teaches incredible lessons, as you say, about critical reading. Because as we talked about in our conversation, Nick is not exactly a reliable narrator. So it's my first experience thinking, okay, just because somebody says, I saw this and I witnessed this, it doesn't mean that it's true. When you're reading literature, there's lots of different. I love this book. Thank you, doctor.
- [33:56]
Ann Margaret Daniel
As you get a sense, Katie can go on about the Great Gatsby forever and ever and ever. And she has with me. And now that I've read it, I can understand what she's talking about. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we have a bookstore. It is booked in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. We will talk about that bookstore when we come back.
- [34:23]
Jim West
You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns.
- [34:30]
Ann Margaret Daniel
McDonald's breakfast comes first.
- [34:36]
Charlie
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- [35:06]
Ann Margaret Daniel
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- [35:12]
Charlie
I could get money back from last year.
- [35:14]
Ann Margaret Daniel
You could. We'll find Any mistakes.
- [35:16]
Charlie
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- [35:41]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Our bookstore this week is a bookstore called Booked. B, O, O, K E, D. Small B, small B. Just to sort of catch your attention. It's in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, owned by Deborah Gress Jensen. Debbie, as she likes to be known. Our conversation.
- [35:59]
Charlie
Debbie Gress Jensen of Booked. It is so nice to have you here. I have to confess, this comes from a friend of mine, my friend Donna. Saul Millen is a resident of Philly. So I'm really excited to have you here. Extra excited because of my friend Donna. So tell me how you were crazy enough to end up or smart enough to end up in the book business.
- [36:18]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Both of those things for sure. Well, I was a lifelong career teacher. That was an odd combination of words. But always loved books. That was my main thing. I taught language arts. Books, books. Books were always a part of it. Grew up loving the notion of Shop around the Corner. Always wanted to have that little bookshop. Wouldn't it be lovely? And so it was always the dream. And then Covid happened. And so at that time, everyone would kind of, I think, went in, went within and contemplated that if not now, when? And so I had to do it. And I was fortunate enough to have a partner in my life, my husband of now five years, and he fully supported the idea and thought it was great. And it was kismet because I got this beautiful location in Chestnut Hill that is just idyllic. It is in the center of the town and there's lots of foot traffic. And it just, you know when you walk in somewhere and you say, this is it. This is the place. And so I feel very fortunate all the way around to have been granted this dream.
- [37:23]
Ann Margaret Daniel
But it's one thing to love books. It's another thing to all of a sudden go into business and start selling them. So what's the biggest hurdle that you had to overcome that you hadn't anticipated when you opened Booked?
- [37:39]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Wow. How to answer that question? I would say that, and I probably shouldn't say it, but business acumen was not really, really my thing. So that would be the biggest hurdle. But I think just talking to so many wonderful people who own bookshops and were able to share their experiences definitely allowed for that hurdle to be jumped. And thank goodness, because here I am going into my fourth year. I'm still here, knock on wood. And we have new people coming in every day.
- [38:09]
Ann Margaret Daniel
You say you're four years old, so you go back and you subtract. And that means you were just opening in the beginning of 2020. 1.
- [38:18]
Kate
Yes.
- [38:18]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Which was smack in the middle of.
- [38:20]
Debbie Gress Jensen
COVID Yes, it was.
- [38:22]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Good timing. Good timing, Debbie.
- [38:23]
Kate
Yeah, right.
- [38:24]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Smart, smart.
- [38:25]
Ann Margaret Daniel
So what. What possessed you to do that? Knowing how severe and serious Covid was and what kind of a negative impact it was having on businesses.
- [38:37]
Debbie Gress Jensen
I can't say anything other than I knew it was meant to happen then and I had to do it then, and that was the time. That was it. I had to do it. And, you know, our opening day, we had masks. It was. But I had a humongous line. I mean, just a line out the door, which was incredible.
- [38:54]
Ann Margaret Daniel
There's a song in South Pacific, the Great Rodgers and Hammerstein show, in which the lyric is about a cockeyed optimist. If you're opening a bookstore, it's smack in the middle of COVID a new venture, not having, as you said, business acumen. It seems to me if I look up cockeyed optimist in the dictionary, I'm gonna see Debbie Grace Jensen.
- [39:21]
Charlie
I think the only riskier business venture during COVID I think, would have been a kissing booth. Yes.
- [39:26]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Me. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was accused of being a Pollyanna my entire life. So I accept the cockeyed optimist, absolutely, 100%.
- [39:37]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Tell me about branching out with books, what that is and how your store is involved.
- [39:43]
Debbie Gress Jensen
We collect books here in the shop, and then we take them down and donate them to Treehouse and then they take it from there, which is great. And we have a huge outpouring. I mean, we have people dropping books all the time. And it's so important, particularly for the children. I mean, there's such a. Unfortunately, such a reading gap right now, and particularly in the nine year olds and on. So we're working to really help and make sure that the joy of reading is not lost.
- [40:12]
Ann Margaret Daniel
I was having a conversation with somebody about what's the best way to assure that if you start a bookstore, it's going to be successful. And he said, put it next to a Starbucks.
- [40:23]
Debbie Gress Jensen
And I guess you probably saw I'm next to a Starbucks. So I am. I am not only that, but I'm also next to another coffee shop that just opened. So I've got two. I'm sandwiched between two. But also, if you ever saw where I am, where we are, we are in the center of the town and the foot traffic is fabulous. And I do still have people coming in, discovering us. They haven't discovered us yet. How long have you been here? My favorite is how long have you been here? Oh, we're on our Fourth year. Are you sure? Yeah, I actually am.
- [40:57]
Ann Margaret Daniel
What part of it do you like best? Do you like the ordering? Do you like to work the floor? Do you like personnel issues? God love you. Do you What. What is the part of it that has been most rewarding?
- [41:11]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Oh, I have to tell you, you know that old adage of you find something you love and you'll never work a day. And I love every bit of it. I love everything. I love coming in here. I love putting the candles on. I love putting the lamps out. I love looking at the stacks. I like it just. It does not feel like a job, I swear to you. It really does not. It is just a magical place. I know every shop owner feels that way about their shop, but I. I can't express it any more than it's a dream.
- [41:41]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Debbie Gresh Jensen, thank you very much. It is booked small B period at the end. It is on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. Thank you.
- [41:52]
Debbie Gress Jensen
Thank you.
- [41:57]
Charlie
Thank you so much. Debbie. That one was a personal recommendation from a friend of mine, Donna, Saul, Mel, as you mentioned.
- [42:04]
Ann Margaret Daniel
Donna, as you mentioned. As you mentioned. Yeah, we like recommendations of bookstores.
- [42:09]
Kate
Yes.
- [42:10]
Ann Margaret Daniel
You can put them into the comment section on Apple Podcasts and we will try to follow up on whatever bookstore you particularly like. Tell us which bookstore you like and why you like it. And we will, as I say, follow up. It's always fun talking to the owner of a bookstore. Wonderful program that they have with that Philadelphia organization called Treehouse that she mentioned in that if you bring books in, particularly children's books, to booked, they will give them to Treehouse and get them in the hands of young kids and try to get more young kids reading. So that was Debbie Jansen and we appreciate it. We'll call attention to the folks who make this podcast possible and then a coda. And we're going to have Katie read the coda. I wanted to know what's your favorite passage from the book? And Kate said, oh, I've got lots, but let me pick one. That'll be our coda after the credits.
- [42:55]
Charlie
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producers are Laura Mayer and Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Taylor Rhodes, Amanda McMaster and Sabrina Kohlberg at Good Morning America as well as Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Please follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review if you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode. We have them linked in the episode description. So my favorite passage is the closing of the Great Gatsby, and I'll read that I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's Dog. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere, back in that vast obscurity beyond the city where the dark fields of the Republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine morning, so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
- [44:11]
Ann Margaret Daniel
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