That one guy who kept talking over everyone during our discussion of The Great Gatsby

We were doing our monthly book club meetup at the Denny's on Route 22, and we were about 20 minutes into debating whether Gatsby was really a tragic hero or just a creepy stalker. This one dude, I think his name was Mark, kept cutting people off to say "actually, Fitzgerald meant X" like he was the only one who read the book. He literally told this older lady, Margaret, that her point about the green light symbolism was "surface level" and then launched into a 5 minute speech about the American Dream. Has anyone else had a member like this who thinks they're the professor of the group?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris_davis9027d ago

That's just how some folks act when they've never had a real conversation before.

the_cole27d ago

Tbh I knew a guy exactly like this in my old book club and honestly I kinda miss him. Not because he was annoying but because he actually did his homework. Half the time people in these groups just skim the book and show up for the coffee and snacks, and at least Mark was keeping the conversation grounded in the text. Margaret might have felt put on the spot but sometimes people need to hear that the green light stuff has been analyzed to death and there's deeper meaning there. I get that it's supposed to be casual but if nobody pushes the discussion past the basics it just turns into a gossip session about which character you'd date.