Welcome to the Classics section, in which, inevitably, The Great Gatsby comes first. When we launched Shipwreck in 2013, the Baz Luhrmann movie was making the rounds, and it only made sense to lead with that foot. A year later when we took the show to New York, we couldn’t resist taking Gatsby’s yellow car out of the garage for another spin. Why?

We learn this book as teenagers, when we’re tiny doe-eyed babes who think this is what grown-ups are like. Gatsby’s preoccupation with and unrelenting pursuit of Daisy maybe makes sense when you’re in high school. To a person with an incomplete frontal lobe, Jay Gatsby’s obsession comes off as romantic, and generally indicative of what True Love™ looks like in the sophisticated world of jazz parties and Rolls-Royces (Rollses-Royce?).

But then you read the book again as a grown-up with fresh eyes, eyes that have devoured countless think pieces and formed Serious Opinions on the white cis male hegemony we’re all trapped in, and a few things jump out at you. As a grown-up, and even more so if you’re a female grown-up, you probably want to fire Jay Gatsby out of a cannon into the sun, because oh my God, dude, seriously. Get a hobby, join a bowling league, do SOMETHING besides pine for a married woman with an alcohol problem and an extremely neglected kid.

The undeniable fact is, no matter how your life differs from the denizens of the western Long Island in the 1920s, this goddamn book resonates with people. Amy can tell you that in ten years of bookselling, she’s never gotten through a shift at the register without ringing up at least one copy of Gatsby. T-shirts, matchboxes, pencil cases—if a piece of merch bears that signature image of the sad flapper with the naked girls in her eyes, it immediately becomes a bestseller. People. Love. This. Story.

So, there’s your context. In this chapter, we learn how to care for Gatsby’s car, we hear what Myrtle Wilson’s remaining tit thought in its last moments of existence as a plot device at a gas station in Queens, and we down endless, endless champagne.

This is maybe a good time to clear up any potential confusion as to why certain authors in this book seem obsessed with ludicrous minutia and inanimate objects: We assigned them ludicrous minutia and inanimate objects. For Gatsby it was a certain billboard advertiser; for Gone with the Wind it was those fancy velvet drapes. Maybe we’re jerks for this sort of thing, but our defense is twofold. First, even the most well known of books have only a handful of memorable characters. Second, nothing highlights the sexual imagination of a great writer like being stuck with a metaphor for a dance partner.

From Gatsby we move to Great Expectations, or #DeepDickens, as we now call our December shows. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the parallels between Pip’s dogged pursuit of Estella through changing fortune bears more than a passing resemblance to Gatsby. Literature loves its creepers after all. Oh! Also, Miss Havisham makes an appearance via our first ever choose-your-own-pornventure submission (spoiler alert: All roads lead to Miss H getting her groove back).

From there, we drive our phaeton to Pride and Prejudice, with apologies to Darcy’s horse, where we live out our vicarious and all-too-modern need to see these staid Regency types muddy up their skirts and set aside decorum. Pair with pearls to maximize clutching opportunities.

Then we mount the decks of Moby Dick to call Ishmael a fuckboy to his weather-beaten face. Like the source material, these pieces explore the deeds, loves, and faith of hardened seamen. Unlike the source material, there are a couple of women in the pages.

From Nantucket we turn our attention southward—after a brief layover in the passive-aggresivity of Little Women—to Tara in Gone with the Wind. We chose this book for our one-year anniversary show, with all past winners competing. We really did assign the velvet drapes to one of our writers (see “Maybe we’re jerks” above). In addition, a dashing, if short-limbed, predatory lizard leaves his calling card, and we catch a glimpse behind the doors of an Antebellum-themed orgy for maximum ick factor.

Animal Farm is next, and it is so gross you’ll probably never again read the words farm to table with the rustic appeal intended by marketing copywriters. You will, however, come away with a healthy respect for the tenacity of farmhouse cats.

Next is The Picture of Dorian Gray, and we like to think of Oscar Wilde up in heaven, lounging in a trunk full of cash a la Rihanna in “Bitch Better Have My Money,” jeering, “What was that about gross indecency?” Come for the dandies hurling themselves at fainting couches. Stay for a lesson in the loveways of anthropomorphized art.

And finally, back to #DeepDickens for a Christmas massacre that ensured nothing but coal in our stockings (or, in this case, up Bob Cratchit’s ass [yes]).

Let that serve as your bar napkin roadmap as we turn our sights back to the glittering shores of the Long Island Sound, where if you listen closely you can just make out the dripping of tiny male tears beating back the wants and needs of any other characters on or around West Egg.