September 11, 2014

Twitter user vows to tweet The Great Gatsby in full for some reason

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Gatsbyjp-popupA new Twitter account hit the web yesterday, boldly vowing to tweet F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby in full, one day at a time. The incredibly bored enigmatic user, @ihatejoemarshal, apparently made the account for the sole purpose of gifting the internet with this obscure work, stoically filling the account’s bio section with “To tweet the entirety of the Great Gatsby. 140 characters at a time.” Sounds pretty damn serious.

This endeavor brings to mind @publicdomain’s successful attempt to tweet the entirety of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, way back in 2009. We’ve not heard from him since, but he’s ostensibly coming up with an idea for another book to tweet. His last tweet, on December 15th, 2009, read, “If you have an idea for the next book to tweet, please let me know. Remember, it has to be in the public domain (author dead for 70 years).”

Unlike Alice’s Adventures, however, The Great Gatsby is not yet in the public domain, so @ihatejoemarshal may face legal trouble over this generally harmless project.

Only time—like, five years time according to Galley Cat—will tell whether @ihatejoemarshal’s literary undertaking will gain momentum. And questions persist. Questions like: Who is Joe Marshal? Why does this user hate him? And why, we must ask, does this person think this is a good use of their time? But, hey, we’re not complaining. Tweet on, old sport.

 

MobyLives