BARBARO: So, but what's going on here is the American project fundamentally tragic? It ends up being built on war, slavery, inequity, division. And maybe our best moment is this transitory moment way in the past when the explorers discover America and all this possibility exists, but the minute we actually start to make the thing is when we start to ruin it.
SCOTT:Yeah. And that has been part of the American story and part of the American mythos. It's, I mean, it's, it's one of the myths of the frontier that it's always being pushed back, right? This, this boundary, the new possibility that's always tantalizing the ahead of us. But I think what Fitzgerald is saying in a way, is that it was doomed from the start that from the very first moment, all of that tragic history, all of that tragic future was written.
I added boldface to mark the moment when I, listening through earbuds as I walked in the woods, groaned out loud in disgust.
You might be thinking I'd be especially excited about this podcast, since I had my "Gatsby project" a while back, but my project — read about it in "Althouse unfair to F. Scott Fitzgerald?" — wasn't about anything Barbaro and Scott were so jazzed up about. They were talking about the overarching themes and the meaning of the characters and aligning things with the History of America. I was all about isolating and getting all involved in particular sentences. I was pursuing my belief that there are some very strange and amazing sentences in that book.
I have chosen things like: "Sometimes a shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, that rouged and powdered in an invisible glass." And: "A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea."
I like small bites. I really do. Small bites the size of large bites.
To quote "Althouse unfair" again:
When can we put this "Gatsby" project away, like a dinner and an evening consumed blandly and casually in the Midwest, where all the Gatsby characters belong?
"I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life."
I had a dream of teaching the book to high school kids:
Class, this is a book with some very weird sentences. Who can find one? Students read individual sentences out loud and the teacher cuts and pastes the sentences, so they are projected on the board. Encourage the students to pull out things that are the most outlandish and impossible to understand. Encourage laughter. Email the list of sentences to the class and have them reply to the email cutting out all but one sentence, the sentence they'd most like to talk about. Quickly read the email and pick a sentence that got a lot of attention. Puzzle through what it might mean with the students so that they appreciate the fun of getting wrapped up inside one sentence. Give them 20 minutes to write about one of the other sentences. Must they read the book? Tell them they can read the book if they want.
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49 comments:
"So, but what's going on here is the American project fundamentally tragic? It ends up being built on war, slavery, inequity, division."
Every country in the world is built on war, inequity and division. And almost everyone owned slaves. But lets piss on America 1.0.
Yes, I enjoyed the discussion of various Gatsby sentences. But Fitzgerald was often trying to poetic, not literal.
People who have a crabbed and extremely limited view of humanity's history look at America as "being built on war, slavery, inequity, division." They have no other perspective, no way of comparing the great American experiment to any other human endeavor and objectively viewing the past or the present. It's just an awful place - one that half the people in the fucking world want to come to.
How would you survive if your spouse or your friends only considered your negative aspects and never, ever thought about your good traits?
I asked an acquaintance who she hated most in all of human history. She answered "Trump and Putin." Her history doesn't even go back to the 20th century. She would love this discussion that focuses on the horrors America inflicts on the world.
"It's just an awful place - one that half the people in the fucking world want to come to."
And half the people who came here illegally and protest the awfulness of the country while waving the flag of their homeland fight tooth and nail to avoid deportation.
Might as well analyze-analogize the History of America to "Dykes on Bikes."
Coupla wankers.
well thats a hobson's choice, because gatsby was a bootlegger, and buchanan was a murderous boor, the latter was the respectable one,
as we noted before neither redford and certainly not decaprio captured the character properly, similarly with waterson and tobey maquire, as carraway, (although the film chose the journal as a therapeutic exercise) to suggest everything that nick saw may not have been the complete story,
Weird question. Trump was Gatsby if you like him. Tom, if you didn't. People who like him see him as a rebel and a dreamer. Those who don't see him as conventional and brutish. I think the Trump=Gatsby folk are on the right track. How the bootlegger thing figures in, I don't know.
in the sense that Trump was a trail blazer in Palm Beach society, who opened up the gates to blacks and latinos
then the Gatsby prism works,
I’m going to say, just as a guess, neither.
Donald J. Trump is sui generis, and he can in no way he compared to fictional characters in fictional environments dealing with fictional events.
Coupla wankers.
Rotters and tossers!
GG in my hand, near end of Chapter 8, last time Nick sees Gatsby alive.
"We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around.
'They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.'
I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end."
That is how I feel about DJT. 2024 DJT voter here and 100% happy I voted for him after not voting in 2016 and 2020, but he still does lots of things I wish a U.S. President would not do.
Where does Hulk Hogan fit in the story?
The Indians Were Right, and So Are We
In Defense of the Right of Conquest
"I wish to begin this with a note on nomenclature. When I refer to the inhabitants of pre-Columbian America, as an overall group, I use the term Indian. I do so for two reasons:
I am a white man, and it has been the tradition of my people to use this term in this way for centuries. It is, as you might say, part of my culture.
The origins of the term serve as a reminder of the fact that Indian is not a word they chose for themselves, but a word my ancestors invented to refer to them. It reminds me that I am speaking as a white man about a group I don’t belong to, that it encapsulates my and my ancestors’ perception of them, and not how they perceive themselves. It is in that way, honest.
Contrariwise, all other such terms are typical modernist polysyllabic mendacities. Native American is grotesque. “America” is our word for this place, our word for ourselves. To stamp upon a conquered people the name of their conquerers, while still differentiating them, adds insult to injury. Indigenous People is academic tedium. First Nations is better, but still altogether too precious, too clean. Indian carries the weight of history.
Of course, the best thing is to refer to a specific nation or tribe by its name. If one is talking of, say, the Blackfoot, one should say that, just as one should not say European when you mean Scot. Know the history of this continent, and you will be able to avoid insulting men for no reason.
Now, to the main point: the contention of Leftists that America has no right to regulate its immigration laws, or even to keep people from flooding over its border without permission, because long ago we conquered the Indians. This is usually expressed in snarky meme format, an exercise in pretending that anyone has forgotten that we conquered the Indians.
I assure you, we have not forgotten...
...For you see, to one who reads history, there is no such thing as Land which is not Stolen.
The Saxons in Britain live on Stolen Land.
The Franks in Gaul live on Stolen Land.
The Turks in Anatolia live on Stolen Land.
The Xhosa and Zulu in South Africa live on Stolen Land.
The Japanese outside of Hokkaido live on Stolen Land.
The Arabs in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and PALESTINE live on Stolen Land.
Mexico, too, is Stolen Land. The Aztec Empire, which was the first entity to call itself “Mexico” barely extended between Gulf and Pacific in what we would call today Central Mexico. It did not include the Yucatan, Chiapas, Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa, or the Baja peninsula, to say nothing of Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Alta California. All of this was conquered by the Spanish, organized into the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which ceded its territory to the first Mexican Republic in 1821. Why did the Spanish do so? Out of a keen respect for Justice and the Rights of Man?
No, because the people there impelled them to do so by force of arms, just as the Spanish created it by force of arms.
This is what is known as the Right of Conquest, and it means nothing beyond the recognition that he who controls a land controls it. The term “occupied” or “occupier” is nothing but the rhetorical refusal to recognize said control, and about as useful as the American diplomatic pretense that the Kuomintang was the true Government of China from 1949-1972. If you can kick the occupier out, the land is yours. If you can’t, it isn’t."
More at the link.
Distilling all the above, plus the rest of the article, I come to this. Absent conquest, we would have tens, maybe hundreds, of Gazas scattered about the Americas. Would the First Nations (my preferred term) be better off, or would we, the colonizers? I say no.
"wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea"
An allusion to Homer's wine-dark sea?
Can I pick none of the above?
Donald J Trump is The Mule from Asimov's Foundation trilogy.
John Henry
It... interests me? Irritates me? that the faction so breathlessly committed to History fails to place Fitzgerald in his own time. Doesn't WWI count for anything?
Chuck said
Where does Hulk Hogan fit...
Based on the gawker story, pretty much nowhere
I was forced to read "Gatsby" twice in school. I hated every word.
Instead, I ate up WWII history, and moved on. If it must be fiction, read "Once An Eagle." Don't be Courtney
"That's Michael Barbaro asking the question and then A.O. Scott answering."
Bozo the Clown was not available for comment? What does Grok have to say?
Gatsby was directly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness - both stylistically and thematically. Conrad’s is the more original and superior work.
“ I added boldface to mark the moment when I, listening through earbuds as I walked in the woods, groaned out loud in disgust.”
Good for you!
Ann:
What else did you expect from an NYT podcast?
"but the minute we actually start to make the thing is when we start to ruin it"
Which is why I am donating my condo on East 134th street to the society for profiteering on ancient history. Except for, not.
for those of the lost generation, like fitzgerald the brief experience with mechanized death, did scar them
gatsby apparently is sourced from an infamous murder case, that occurred around that time in the region of long island
One thing that pierces me to the bone is "startling bluntness". God, it just goes through me like an electric current.
with rare exception perhaps john updike, the literature of an era, almost invariably get the tenor of the times wrong say mcinerney and bret ellis easton on the 80s, I'm sure such bacchanals were present in that era, but did it really represent a cross section
Tom wolfe was one of those exceptions in fiction like bonfire and in his earlier work re the Panther trial and the Mau Mauing
speaking of, an infante terrible gerald lefcourt, some 30 years later would emerge as a counsel to Epstein where he proferred some interesting details
it was merely meh in my opinion, now brave new world, that made me nauseous, about the world view suggested, which is not far removed from certain factions in contemporary society
the Great War was certainly a wrenching experience among the war poets like Sassoon and Graves, perhaps a little less so for the Americans,
the Times decided the 1619 project was gospel and everything flows from that, despite it echoing the worst of the segregationist arguments,
those words they are using, don't mean what they think they do,
a question is not blunt, unless its like was Biden physically capable of being president, something they elide, I wonder why
now tom buchanan was a pillar of the establishment, but a eugenicist at best, a proto nazi at worst, gatsby for all his foibles was a little naive at this society he was aspiring to,
MadTownGuy,
Interesting quote. For myself, I have a different reason for using the term "Indian". At least once a week, on average, I pass the Emerald Queen Casino, just west of where I-5 crosses the Puyallup River. In front of the building there is a large, illuminated sign that proudly proclaims that the casino is run by the "Puyallup TRIBE of INDIANS". What could possibly be wrong with referring to a group in the terms they use for themselves?
"And let me just put it to you with startling bluntness is President Trump Gatsby or Tom?”
Hitler wasn’t an option?
narciso said...
“the Times decided the 1619 project was gospel and everything flows from that, despite it echoing the worst of the segregationist arguments”
I refer to Nikole Hannah-Jones as John C Calhoun’s daughter.
Kirk Parker said...
"MadTownGuy,
Interesting quote. For myself, I have a different reason for using the term "Indian". At least once a week, on average, I pass the Emerald Queen Casino, just west of where I-5 crosses the Puyallup River. In front of the building there is a large, illuminated sign that proudly proclaims that the casino is run by the "Puyallup TRIBE of INDIANS". What could possibly be wrong with referring to a group in the terms they use for themselves?"
The article touches on that, and I can see it as being comfortable to Indians as they're used to it, and in some respect, possess it as their own. I prefer First Nations as it seems both accurate and respectful. Either one is better than "Native American," as anyone born in the Americas can claim that moniker.
Trump really is neither one but is closer to Gatsby than Buchanan.
Donald J. Trump is sui generis, and he can in no way he compared to fictional characters in fictional environments dealing with fictional events.
Agree--Except that Al Czervik comes pretty close.
Ireland was built on eight hundred years of famines and failed rebellions. Throughout it all, the Anglo-Irish lived in their grand houses and, more than any Norman Castle, those stately homes expressed the power and protective karma of their owners. ......America is not a land of famines and failures, but some of the ghosts migrated with us from Europe. Buchanan has some of the perks of an aristocrat, but, despite what Carraway says, his comfort and ease is not guaranteed. He could have just as easily ended up Sherman McCoy, and Gatsby could just as easily have ended up founding a dynasty. Gatsby is an Irish fairy tale set in New York.
According to Grok, "Wind itself doesn’t make a shadow on the sea, as it’s invisible and doesn’t block light. However, wind can create patterns or textures on the water’s surface—like ripples, waves, or whitecaps—that might appear shadow-like due to light reflection and refraction. These effects depend on the angle of sunlight and wind strength but aren’t true shadows, which require a solid object to obstruct light."
when the left hears any statement about returning to past eras, morals or community they immediately and ALWAYS brand you as wanting slavery.
But that's because they do not seem capable of imagining anything good about America's past.
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