• 49:05 - 52:58
Michael Wann | Burnt Offerings, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, & World’s Fair Synchro-Strangness
The Valley of Ashes and The Great Gatsby
The host connects the "Corona Ash Dumps" of the 1920s to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby," where the site was famously depicted as the "Valley of Ashes." The naming of the Arthur Ashe Stadium is viewed as a linguistic pun on these literal ashes, symbolizing the death and rebirth of the "Phoenix." This literary and historical landscape is framed as a representation of the "lower 33" or the underbelly of New York affluence.