23 votes

Nick Carraway is gay and in love with Gatsby

6 comments

  1. [6]
    kfwyre
    (edited )
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    For a long time, I hated The Great Gatsby. I thought it was one of the most boring, pretentious novels of all time. I firmly believed it wasn't just bad; it was downright meritless. This,...
    • Exemplary

    For a long time, I hated The Great Gatsby. I thought it was one of the most boring, pretentious novels of all time. I firmly believed it wasn't just bad; it was downright meritless. This, correspondingly, led me to believe that its widespread acclaim was a sort of disingenuous, performative cultural lie. Nobody actually likes The Great Gatsby, I told myself. They're just pretending to because it's "important".

    I carried this belief with me for a long time, starting from when I first read it in high school. The Great Gatsby became sort of a literary heuristic for me for judging an entire person. If someone said they liked it, well, then I knew they weren't to be trusted, or at least had a bit of falseness to them. Whether that was deliberate on their part or more just a caving to the social pressures of "the canon" didn't really matter to me. What mattered was what I genuinely convinced myself was true: Nobody actually likes The Great Gatsby.

    If you're familiar with the content and themes of the book, there's a pretty obvious metatextual read here, but I promise that's not what I'm setting up for. Instead, I'm setting up for how someone changed my mind.

    A few years ago I was on a team with a new teacher at our school. Sure enough, early on in one of our discussions, she mentioned her love for The Great Gatsby and I, in my insufferably paternalistic way, assumed that was some bullshit, whether she was aware of it or not.

    Over the next few weeks though, I got more glimpses into her "love" and I started to have my doubts -- not about her convictions, but about myself. Her copy of The Great Gatsby was the most heavily annotated book I'd ever seen. Post-it tabs everywhere, highlighting on every page, copious notes in the margins. Furthermore, one of the notebooks she wrote in had a Fitzgerald quote on the cover. She didn't conspicuously show this around in order to garner attention or praise -- it was just there, for her, and I happened to notice it one day. That didn't seem very performative to me. What was her angle here?

    And then one day we had a conversation that left me with chills.

    Early in the book, one of the characters, Daisy, says that she hopes her newborn daughter grows up to be a "beautiful fool". We were talking about this line and the different ways it could be interpreted. My colleague shared that she believed it was a powerful comment on the gender roles of the time. Being a "beautiful fool" was the easiest possible life for a woman, because to be anything but beautiful meant you had no or lesser value, and being anything but a fool meant you were aware of this. To be a beautiful fool, then, was to live a life unaware of the unfairness and unkindess the world of that time put upon women, even and possibly especially those that were very privileged.

    I was particularly moved by all of this. It was complex, relevant gender and social commentary, and in such short phrasing! The author of this article, and many others, have praised the book for its word economy. Here was my first appreciation for that specific praise. The idea that a mother would want to spare her own daughter the understanding of her own suffering, and that the mother implicitly believes there's no way out from that suffering in the first place, left me floored. It captured a pre-liberation objectivity and lack of agency in a deeply resonant way. Instead of "I want more for her," the message was "I hope she never knows how bad it really is". Every parent wants their kids to have better lives than they did, but the highest her sights could rise, on the day of her daughter's birth, was that of "beautiful fool". Heartbreaking.

    That wasn't what gave me chills, though. What gave me chills was when my colleague said: "You know he [Fitzgerald] took that line from his wife, right?"

    I didn't know that. And it's true! Factoids like that are often apocryphal, but apparently Fitzgerald had a well-known and documented habit of taking quotes and stories from people he knew, and the "beautiful fool" line came directly from, Zelda, his own wife, after giving birth to their daughter.

    In actuality Scott stole the words right out of Zelda's mouth, or, to be more accurate, out of the ledger in which he'd jotted down the words his wife said, while still floating on waves of ether, as she learned the sex of her child: "I hope it's beautiful and a fool--a beautiful little fool."

    My chills came from the realization that those words weren't just a carefully constructed fiction for thematic resonance in the story, but instead were a genuine truth with genuine resonance, hidden as fiction under a pseudonym. As my arms tingled with the feeling of a mournful frission, I realized that maybe there was more to this whole "Great" Gatsby than I originally thought.

    Through our conversations and a directed re-reading of the story, this teacher helped me develop a strong appreciation for The Great Gatsby in the way that great teachers can. I still don't love it, but I can now acknowledge that there is actually a "there" there. The book has much more to it than just its lofty status in "the canon". I no longer roll my eyes at it when I hear about it being "the Great American novel".

    I think what I initially disliked about the book, and what my colleague helped me to appreciate, is that the entire book is indirect. Everything is only hinted at, or talked about in circumspect ways. There's innuendo and subtext behind everything, but it's all seemingly shellacked over with a finish of nothingness. When I first read the book it seemed like the longest short book I'd ever read. Nothing happens! I would scream in my mind to myself, page after page, Nobody cares about any of this!

    As I re-read it, under her guidance, I started to "get" it more. I started to see behind the curtain. I was floored when I got to the scene mentioned in the article, where Nick goes home with a man, because the obvious truth was there, plain as day, but only because I was intentionally reading with implication in mind. I'd read the book twice before, and I'd missed it both times, and I'm someone who's liable to invent a queer subtext where there is none, just for fun! Nick wasn't gay on either of my first two reads, but suddenly, on my third read he stood out like a gaudy rainbow flag.

    I talked about it with my coworker the next day and asked her, tentatively, if she maybe thought that Nick was gay or bi or something like that? I'm used to that sort of thinking being either wishful or reaching on the part of queer-folk like me, so I didn't expect her response to be a certain, forceful "Oh, most definitely."

    This conversation led us to discuss points similar to those brought up in the article: how Nick describes women in largely disconnected terms yet has an eye for Tom's muscles, how Nick's "romance" with Jordan is uninvolved and unspectacular, even in Nick's own retelling.

    Ultimately, my colleague came to the same conclusion as the author of the linked article, and she believes that it's central to understanding The Great Gatsby in the first place. What, if not love -- or at least a deep infatuation -- can describe Nick's affinity for Gatsby? Why else would Nick write an entire book about him?

    It's a compelling take on the story, and admittedly one for which there is a good amount of support. I've seen debates about this very thing, with some arguing that it's too much of a reach or it's trying, as I often do, to find the gay subtext where none exists. Literature is hardly ever definite, but I would argue Gatsby requires a more indirect read than most. The entire book is a book of inferences -- of things hinted at but not outright said. That Nick is queer in some way is not necessarily the "right" way to read it, but at the very least it's a plausible and compelling one.

    Also lending weight to this reading of the text is the cultural context of the book. Even if Fitzgerald definitely intended Nick to be interested in men, he would have faced great difficulty in being direct about Nick's sexuality. Three years after the publishing of The Great Gatsby, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness went on trial in England, where it was found to be obscene. The book was subsequently banned, and copies were seized and destroyed in response to the ruling. It also went on trial in America, though it was upheld as literature there. The most obscene passage in the book?

    and that night, they were not divided

    in reference to two women.

    That's it. That's the obscenity. We cannot say with certainty whether Nick is actually gay or not, but it's also the case that Fitzgerald likely literally couldn't as well.

    There's also lot of discourse about whether we can even retroactively apply modern identities in historical contexts. This is a complex and often nuanced issue. What we can and should do while reading, however, is try to make sense of what we're given and use the text and its context for corroboration. It's no secret that Nick has a powerful, blinding, idealized affinity for Gatsby. It's a centerpole for the text, around which the entire story is built. One of the possible, if not most plausible, explanations for this is that Nick's love for Gatsby went beyond platonic affection.

    26 votes
    1. [5]
      thundergolfer
      Link Parent
      I enjoyed reading this, but got to say as someone who holds The Great Gatsby as probably my favourite novel, I winced reading the first paragraph. When you hated the book, wouldn't you have...

      I enjoyed reading this, but got to say as someone who holds The Great Gatsby as probably my favourite novel, I winced reading the first paragraph.

      When you hated the book, wouldn't you have seriously doubted your own opinion of it, given the enormity of the love and praise people have for it?

      5 votes
      1. [3]
        eve
        Link Parent
        Just an anecdote off of your last sentence; why should someone doubt their own tastes just because it's acclaimed? There are plenty of books that are classics or important that many people love...

        Just an anecdote off of your last sentence; why should someone doubt their own tastes just because it's acclaimed? There are plenty of books that are classics or important that many people love and others hate. I've enjoyed Frankenstein and Picture of Dorian Gray and Vanity Fair and I can understand why someone might not enjoy it. That's the blessing of opinions, there's no real right or wrong to hold, especially in the realm of preference.

        I personally never had to read Great Gatsby for school and it doesn't interest me to read it now. I've tried on my own time before and didn't like it but maybe now, and a little later in life, I'll maybe pick it up and maybe it'll be of more interest to me.

        Also as a side note, I know a lot of people who, while in high school, were forced to read and interpret Great Gatsby amongst a slew of other "greats" and the majority didn't like them. Greats get a lot of derision here in the US education system but that's a bit off topic :')

        8 votes
        1. [2]
          thundergolfer
          Link Parent
          Isn't the answer to that obvious? If you didn't doubt your own tastes you'd have to have dismissed the opinions of so many people. Movies and books have been made about The Great Gatsby. How many...

          why should someone doubt their own tastes just because it's acclaimed?

          Isn't the answer to that obvious? If you didn't doubt your own tastes you'd have to have dismissed the opinions of so many people. Movies and books have been made about The Great Gatsby. How many hours and millions of dollars have been spent extending the book? OP was looking at all that and still held the book to be "meritless". They did not merely say they didn't like it.

          1. eve
            Link Parent
            But millions of dollars and countless hours have gone into the Harry Potter series yet is it more acceptable to not enjoy those as opposed to a "classic"? I enjoy Jane Austen novels but I'm sure...

            But millions of dollars and countless hours have gone into the Harry Potter series yet is it more acceptable to not enjoy those as opposed to a "classic"? I enjoy Jane Austen novels but I'm sure there are plenty of people who consider them meritless or don't consider the significance of the novels at the time they were written and what path they paved in the literary world. But that doesn't mean someone can't like them or consider them meritless and have to follow the mass love of a thing (if that wording even makes sense). Still, we're getting off topic from the original so I'll leave it at that, but I do appreciate your response! It is still important if we're trying to be a responsible consumer of basically anything to consider WHY something would garner the amount of attention and love it has and to reconsider or even try again, but that may not change someone's mind.

            3 votes
      2. kfwyre
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        I should have, yes. Instead, I was young, arrogant, and had a sizable chip on my shoulder. My formal education had me reading a diet of classics, and while some I "got" (e.g. To Kill a...

        I should have, yes. Instead, I was young, arrogant, and had a bit of a sizable chip on my shoulder. My formal education had me reading a diet of classics, and while some I "got" (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird), others I didn't (e.g. The Red Pony). Rather than having a sense of self-awareness about this, I instead took a bit of an sizable iconoclastic stance and assumed that I, being young and arrogant, knew better than everyone else.

        There was also a bit of a cultural element here. I grew up in the American south, in a community where direct conversations about one's feelings were rare. We were socialized to prioritize politeness in conversation and putting forth a good face to others, so I was already used to the idea that people would espouse beliefs not because they genuinely believed them but because they were supposed to on account of social pressure.

        So, all through my classics-based education, with books that I didn't "get", I just assumed people were falsely praising them because that's just what you were supposed to do. We all did that sort of thing with everything else in our lives, so why wouldn't it be the case for literature too? In fact, it felt frustratingly circular to me. Some books, it seemed, were simply held in high regard, and because they were held in high regard, you, correspondingly, treated them as such regardless of how you personally felt about them, which maintained the high regard they held. I assumed the praise for these classics was a form of "saving face" rather than something rooted in actual, genuine human experience.

        Over the course of my education there was a building pressure as I encountered stuff that I didn't like, and I think the dam burst for me with The Great Gatsby. Here was one of the most revered books of all time, and, when I read it, it left me completely cold. It had been hyped for effectively my entire lifetime. Every adult I knew had read it. It showed up on every "greatest novels" list. And, when I read it, I was left scratching my head, thinking "That's it?! Really?!" I genuinely did believe there was no "there" there.

        As such, more than any other book, The Great Gatsby, was for me the literary equivalent of the "Emperor's new clothes". It strutted around to acclaim on account of its status alone, and I felt like I was the only one willing to admit the embarassing truth: there was truly nothing there.

        I was, of course, completely wrong in this assessment. It was a selfish and presumptuous way to view the world, but it was my honest truth for years. It was also buttressed by the fact that when I would talk about hating The Great Gatsby, I would almost always be met by someone saying something to the effect of "Thank you for saying that! I hated it too!". By breaking the social norms of politeness and esteem regarding the book, I was flagging that it was safe for others to do so too, and I found that I was far from alone in my dislike for the book. This, unfortunately, probably made my convictions even stronger. Because of the widespread social pressure to like the book and my uncompromising committment to not yield to that, I saw myself as the "voice" of people who were too afraid to speak the "truth". I alone was willing to breach the social barriers that left undeserved pillars of culture like The Great Gatsby uninterrogated and uncritiqued!

        I realize now, in hindsight, how misguided I was, and how much it makes me look like a tool (and deservedly so).

        I do think tables have turned considerably since then though, as widespread critique is now commonplace, and nothing, not even the most esteemed classics, are considered unassailable. What I thought was a daring takedown of a cultural monolith would instead be seen today as a limp, tepid, and self-centered complaint at best -- indistinguishable from all the others like it flying about online.

        4 votes