One Hundred Years Ago, It Was Still Humid

Although I can't relate to the parties that Gatsby threw in West Egg, or the way the Gormers eschewed social conventions in Edith Wharton's House of Mirth and -- in a precursor to Gatsby --"started a sort of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs," but what I can understand is that going to one of these parties will be a good deal better than suffering "a broiling Sunday in town," as both The Great Gatsby and House of Mirth contain the palpable heat and humidity of the East Coast -- and this was long before the idea of global warming-- and both novels put forward the very advanced idea that no civilized person should stand this sort of weather.