The richest kid I ever knew was a close friend of mine and also became one of the most deep seated racists. Well read and educated as well. It seemed this was the direction he'd be heading in when his father showed my family a bunch of krugerrands he'd got during the sanctions placed on South Africa in the late 1960s. I basically broke ties over his openly racist rants that were echoed later on the Fox "hatethon" (hate marathon). I'd bet alotta the folks at Fox either share these views or are complicit (share these views). They've already got the entitled so we know and are better than you attitude that I know well.
Nick Carraway Is at least as reliable a narrator as Jake Barnes.
It’s hard not to compare “The Great Gatsby” to “The Sun also Rises,” given they were both written about the same time by young American men who were on-and-off friends (and possibly in love with each other) and arguably wrote about some of the same characters who are racist and anti-semitic.
Both novels end powerfully, with the narrators realizing that they have been caught in webs of self-illusion. Gatsby ends with a lyrical passage that nails the blessed/doomed nature of America. The Sun ends with Jake essentially confirming that he and his friends’ lives here been frantic, futile efforts to seize the present in order to erase the past.
In Fitzgerald, we cannot make ourselves new; we are ceaselessly borne into the past despite our efforts to cling to the future. In Hemingway, we can’t lie ourselves into escaping what we’ve experienced, said, or done; reality has the last word.
It’s ironic and a bit tragic that both men, who wrote about how our masks become us and we become our masks, essentially trapped and doomed themselves in their own personas.
I think SER's literary analysis is spot-on. Fitzgerald was a great writer, but I don't exactly give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to racism or other forms of bigotry. IIRC, "Gatsby" has a description of a crooked Jewish gambler with stereotyped features that could have come right out of Der Sturmer.
"The Great Replacement Theory is silly, even though Carlson and others are correct that a diverse electorate is more politically progressive than a predominately white one."
Oh goody, I get to post a vocabulary quibble. But maybe not so much a quibble, because words mean things. A diverse electorate is not necessarily more "progressive" than a homogenous one. The only thing it is, is more pluralistic.
As it happens, in modern U.S. politics, that tends to map on the Democratic side of our two party system, although that is not universal even here and now. Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley regularly support Republicans, and you simply don't get much more rabid in your conservatism than Cuban immigrants. It's also true on a micro scale. The large 2008 black turnout voted a Democratic ticket in California, but they were also decisive in approving Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage and was backed by radical reactionaries.
Years ago I visited wealthy white friends in upper Michigan. I was told going into a large gathering that one person there had a learning disability and made his living as a photographer. He quickly revealed himself as a major racist. I retreated. What bothered me almost as much is the way other people laughed it off as eccentricity.
The richest kid I ever knew was a close friend of mine and also became one of the most deep seated racists. Well read and educated as well. It seemed this was the direction he'd be heading in when his father showed my family a bunch of krugerrands he'd got during the sanctions placed on South Africa in the late 1960s. I basically broke ties over his openly racist rants that were echoed later on the Fox "hatethon" (hate marathon). I'd bet alotta the folks at Fox either share these views or are complicit (share these views). They've already got the entitled so we know and are better than you attitude that I know well.
Fitzgerald is worth reading, at least from an artistic perspective.
Fox's talking fuck heads can live off their inherited portfolios liker spoiled brats for a few generations without doing a thing.
At least James Spader USED to be fine.Fryer Tuck always looked like a sack of turds, even when he was 20.
Avondale boxed mac'n'cheez, 5 boxes for a dollar.
If there's one Nazi sitting at a table with ten people who are willing to tolerate him, etc.
most of the time...
Nick Carraway Is at least as reliable a narrator as Jake Barnes.
It’s hard not to compare “The Great Gatsby” to “The Sun also Rises,” given they were both written about the same time by young American men who were on-and-off friends (and possibly in love with each other) and arguably wrote about some of the same characters who are racist and anti-semitic.
Both novels end powerfully, with the narrators realizing that they have been caught in webs of self-illusion. Gatsby ends with a lyrical passage that nails the blessed/doomed nature of America. The Sun ends with Jake essentially confirming that he and his friends’ lives here been frantic, futile efforts to seize the present in order to erase the past.
In Fitzgerald, we cannot make ourselves new; we are ceaselessly borne into the past despite our efforts to cling to the future. In Hemingway, we can’t lie ourselves into escaping what we’ve experienced, said, or done; reality has the last word.
It’s ironic and a bit tragic that both men, who wrote about how our masks become us and we become our masks, essentially trapped and doomed themselves in their own personas.
I’ve read it 2-3 times and I recently picked up Tender Is the Night, which I hadn’t yet read. His prose is extraordinary.
I think SER's literary analysis is spot-on. Fitzgerald was a great writer, but I don't exactly give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to racism or other forms of bigotry. IIRC, "Gatsby" has a description of a crooked Jewish gambler with stereotyped features that could have come right out of Der Sturmer.
Yeah, especially Hemingway. He became so obsessed with proving that he wasn't afraid to die that he decided to speed up the process.
Thank you thank you thank you.
"The Great Replacement Theory is silly, even though Carlson and others are correct that a diverse electorate is more politically progressive than a predominately white one."
Oh goody, I get to post a vocabulary quibble. But maybe not so much a quibble, because words mean things. A diverse electorate is not necessarily more "progressive" than a homogenous one. The only thing it is, is more pluralistic.
As it happens, in modern U.S. politics, that tends to map on the Democratic side of our two party system, although that is not universal even here and now. Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley regularly support Republicans, and you simply don't get much more rabid in your conservatism than Cuban immigrants. It's also true on a micro scale. The large 2008 black turnout voted a Democratic ticket in California, but they were also decisive in approving Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage and was backed by radical reactionaries.
Years ago I visited wealthy white friends in upper Michigan. I was told going into a large gathering that one person there had a learning disability and made his living as a photographer. He quickly revealed himself as a major racist. I retreated. What bothered me almost as much is the way other people laughed it off as eccentricity.
The only one of those famous writers I liked less than Fitzgerald was Jack London. That was some boring stupid drivel.
Fitzgerald just read like a People Magazine article all about the beautiful people doing rich people stuff and shock surprise ending.
Jordan’s comment reminds me of Alice in Wonderland “We’re all mad here.”