English students attend Great Gatsby Gala

Dr. Kirk Curnutt wears a light pink Jay Gatsby-inspired suit and poses with students at the Centennial Extravaganza Party.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – The Roaring Twenties came to life at the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Saturday for “The Great Gatsby Centennial Extravaganza Party.” The celebration was the 30th annual rendition of the “Great Gatsby Gala,” originally founded by a Troy University professor.

Guests, including senior English majors from Troy, came donned in their best 1920s apparel – pearls, feathered headbands, fringed flapper dresses, pink and white suits – while pretending to smoke candy cigarettes and calling each other “Old Sport.” Imitating the glamorous party life of Jay Gatsby, a live jazz band played in front of an outside, black-and-white checkered dance floor while a silent auction touted out-of-print Gatsby and Fitzgerald memorabilia.

“Literature is such an important part of our history, and it's such a great way to reconnect with our roots,” said Destiny Ford, a senior English major from Slocomb, Alabama. “As someone who wants to get into education eventually, one way of teaching students how to empathize, how to learn about other human experiences around them, is through literature and with literary tourism like this.

“We’re all social creatures, so just being able to get up, get dressed and have something fun to do while also promoting books is really cool.”

This year’s gala coincided with the 100th anniversary of “The Great Gatsby,” a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once lived in Montgomery, Alabama, the hometown of his wife Zelda Sayre. They lived in an Old Cloverdale home, which now houses the only museum in the world dedicated to the Fitzgeralds.

Gov. Kay Ivy honored the anniversary by proclaiming April 10 as the “Great Gatsby Centennial Day” in Alabama.

“I just think about how Fitzgerald passed thinking that he had been a ‘has been’ and that this novel wasn't a hit, and now we have hundreds of people here tonight,” said Alaina Doten, the current executive director of the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. “It is lovely to see all these people here in remembrance of that, but we're also all here because of the love of literature and the book’s enduring legacy.

“Jay Gatsby threw his doors wide open because he wanted one person to come to his party, but the thing is, we're in Montgomery, Alabama, and when you look around, this is a racially diverse group here, and a hundred years ago, this party wouldn't have happened on this lawn, so I think it marks how far we've come in a great way that we can celebrate. As friends, as loved ones, as readers, here in Montgomery.”

Chair of Troy University’s English department is Dr. Kirk Curnutt, who serves as the executive director of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and formerly served in leadership at the museum. He was involved in the very first gala celebrating the novel in Montgomery. From the start, Curnutt has involved his English students, who have either volunteered to help at the event or just came to learn about literary tourism.

Curnutt shared what he thinks makes the gala, and “The Great Gatsby,” so appealing even 100 years after publication.

“One way you can approach a Great Gatsby party is by thinking of it just like cosplay,” Curnutt said. “It's like going to Comic-Con, except you're finding Gatsby, and we all look for a sort of escape or a fantasy to get away from the drudgery of everyday routine.

“I think part of the charm in Fitzgerald is that a lot of his stories, especially the romantic ones, are this fantasy that we can live our lives at 120% and everything can be beautiful and glamorous and sort of supercharged with the electricity of love and passion and intensity.”