The Great Gatsby has entered the public domain

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/04/the-great-gatsby-has-entered-the-public-domain.html

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But resist the urge (we all have it) to implement it in Flash.

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One of my favorite English Lit classes used Gatsby as the text for the term. We were to read it in the first weekend – not actually that daunting a task, it was enjoyable – and then interpret it through a different critical lens (Marxist, queer, etc.) each week.

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The question remans: can Muppet Gatsby be done without Disney?

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Is this a thing? I really racking my brain to decide if Fozzy Bear or Gonzo would be the better Gatsby.

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I think Sam the Eagle could give it a pretty decent crack.

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Scooter. He has the right combination of bland likeability, ambition, and do-whatever-it-takes mentality to be Gatsby.

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Sam has the right wing viewpoint to be Tom Buchanan. Miss Piggy is obviously vain and shallow enough to be Daisy. Kermit is sardonic but still decent, so he would be a passable Nick, as long as you can set aside the temptation to do the standard Frog-Pig love affair

Bunsen Honeydew as the Owl Eyed Man, of course.l

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That was leading me to consider Camilla as Daisy and Gonzo as Gatsby. Sam would be a credible Tom.

Or maybe start from Sweetums as Gatsby (the big Muppet who chased Kermit to Hollywood). I just always want more Sweetums.

I hope this happens so the real writers can impress me.

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Beaker as Gatsby. Gatsby’s inability to feel joy would be captured well by meeping.

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It’s more difficult than you’d think to get things in Project Gutenberg. They want to cover themselves against legal attack, and it is isn’t as simple as just buying a paperback of Gatsby and scanning it in, as while the text may be in the public domain, there may be small changes in formatting and punctuation that were introduced later and which are still copyrighted. So to be safest, they generally work from first editions.

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Also, copyright terms are different in different parts of the world. Eg. the Poem
“Does it Matter?” by Siegfried Sassoon has, I believe, been in the public domain in the US since 1974 (published in 1918, +56 years, the duration of copyright at the time) but will be covered by copyright in the UK until 2037. (Sassoon died in 1967 + 70 years)

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