Jay Gatsby, closet homeboy.

August 14, 2000 5:09 PM

Jay Gatsby, closet homeboy.
posted by Optamystic (2 comments total)

Heh. Funny story. Too bad both the person who wrote the paper and his critics miss the point. It is a passing story - just a different passing story than the one the prof proposes. And in fact it's quite explicitly a passing story.

The trick is that "white" now is not the same as "white" when Fitzgerald wrote the story - "white" then was reserved for Anglo Saxons and maybe northern French and Germans. Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Slavs - they weren't "white" then. Gatsby was clearly an outsider passing as a WASP.
posted by mikel at 7:48 PM on August 14, 2000

Not it even matters or has any relevence to the book. Not that it changes the way the book reads, or how the person feels in the end, or how Gatsby as a character develops. What is the point of this crap? Who sits there and thinks up shit like this. My theory is : if you look hard enough, you can find something in anything. Who cares, white/black.... it's a great book.
posted by Satapher at 6:47 PM on August 15, 2000