When I was an undergraduate English major at Stanford University, I eagerly met with the graduate teaching assistant in my “Fitzgerald and Hemingway” class to discuss The Great Gatsby. I suggested to him that the scene where a man tries to put his car in reverse to get it out of a ditch supports the novel’s overall theme of being unable to undo the consequence of past events. With an embarrassed, half-smile he shook his head “No.” I kept explaining why it worked. We each left the meeting unconvinced.

Then, in the summer of 2014, a friend and I were talking about writing, our true love. When she left my office, she said over her shoulder, “Well, you know Gatsby’s black.”

What?

It was a lightning bolt, obliterating whatever we were talking about before.

My friend tipped me to Professor Carlyle Van Thompson’s The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination in which he presents the thesis that The Great Gatsby explores racial themes and that Jay Gatsby is a character of black and white parentage who is passing as a white man.

Decades had passed since my conversation with the graduate student. Since then I had learned that some people only teach what they have been taught, and that the graduate student was no way going to be convinced by a sophomore of ideas that he had never heard before. I had also learned since then that F. Scott Fitzgerald chose every sentence, every word, and every image with exquisite attention to its service of the novel’s themes. He finished the novel in spring 1924 and then spent the better part of a year carefully editing it. The scene with the car stuck in the ditch was part of that polished whole. It likely meant what I said it meant, serving as one tiny pillar of thematic support. Could it be, I wondered, that there are more tiny pillars upholding a theme we didn’t see?

Immediately, I started researching this “Black Gatsby” thesis and found the November 1924 letter from Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald rejecting both Fitzgerald’s favorite title and a note he wanted to add to the book jacket.

I had to know what the note said, what Fitzgerald had wanted to tell us but didn’t. The hunt was on.

This is the account of my quest for the note in the summer and fall of 2016 that I serialized in my Facebook posts as I followed the twisty path of discovery with a curious mind and heart.

Post #1 Evidence and Assumption

Some may say that the Black Gatsby thesis is all conjecture. But that is the world of literary analysis. There is no proof. There is never proof. There’s only textual, contextual and biographical data subjected to responsible and reasonable analysis. Yes, circumstantial evidence - the type of evidence on which many a conviction and decision has been made and accepted. My goal is to gain a broader acceptance of the Black Gatsby thesis because there is more evidence that Gatsby is a bi-racial black man than that he is a white man, because it makes the best use of all the novel’s content, and because it sharpens Fitzgerald’s devastating commentary on the American Dream.

To this end, I commence the duel of evidence against assumption.

Post #2 So, who is Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and why would he write about race?

This question has many answers.

Part 1 Fitzgerald’s Sympathy for the Confederacy

With his St. Paul, Minnesota and Buffalo, New York boyhood and his Princeton education, we think of Fitzgerald as a northern writer. However, his roots and sympathies are distinctly 19th century southern. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, guided Confederate soldiers as a boy and grew up to be a failed businessman who regaled his young son with romantic stories of the pre-Civil War American South, southern manners and the southern resistance. (Mok, Bryer 240) Fitz was related to both Francis Scott Key (anti-abolitionist and writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner”) and Mary Suratt (Lincoln assassination conspirator). (Far 2) He refused his parent’s request to write a work exonerating Suratt, but showed his southern sympathies through his pride in having been named after Key. Key was a slave holder. He called black people “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that affects a community.” He sought to hang abolitionists whom he claimed rushed to “associate and amalgamate with the negro.” (Key)

Fitz’s most noted biographer, Matthew Bruccoli, concludes that from these roots Fitz grew to be a deep southern sympathizer. (Grand 19) There are many favorable appearances of the Confederacy in his fiction. There are Confederate heroes at Gatsby’s parties, the Confederate soldier Jack Saunders in Tender is the Night is based on his father and the protagonist of Fitz’s autobiographical novel, This Side of Paradise, is “for the southern confederacy.” (TSOP 17) Fitzgerald insisted on being treated as a southern gentleman. (Far 11) Ernest Hemingway mocked his southern sensibility this way: “He is always the brilliant young gentleman writer, fallen gentleman writer, gent in the gutter, gent ruined, but never a man.” (Sons 177)

There is no escaping Fitz’s point of view on race and he doubled down on it when he married Zelda Sayre who was steeped in Confederate culture. Her grandfather was a Confederate senator. (Zelda 4) She was proud that the Confederacy was born in Montgomery and that her ancestors had built the first Confederate white house. (Questia) Zelda considered herself a carrier of the Confederate tradition (Tragic) and a close childhood girlfriend said that she and Zelda “were brought up on the Confederacy. It meant more to us than almost anything else did.” (Montgomery)

It's clear that Fitz believed in the contemporary ideas of racial superiority as well as the correlated need to keep the white races pure by identifying and restricting the geographical and biological migration of the non-white races. Some commentators have characterized Fitz as being concerned about the fluidity of the American social hierarchy (Bender 399, Trilling) and some conclude that he had “at least the usual amount of ethnic prejudice of white Americans of his era.” (Race) “At least.” “The usual amount.” Not sure which is my favorite.

Race mattered to Fitzgerald and he did not leave the topic behind when he wrote The Great Gatsby.

Part 2 Fitzgerald and the Raging Twenties

In the first third of the 20th century there was great anxiety in America about racial migration and mixing. The Ku Klux Klan was at its peak, Nordicism was “a thing” and peoples around the world were on the move after WWI. At the same time, the Jazz Age, thought of as a time of slack morals and manners, and the Harlem Renaissance, a time of socio-economic rise for black Americans, threatened the world of white dominance and separation.

In this part of the century the nation debated whether whiteness was a “legal category; a commonsense understanding; or a worldwide civilization.” America was approaching a “demographic tipping point” that was complicated further still by increasing miscegenation. (Hsu) American society’s response at the time is reflected in its culture and governance. A popular book, The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy written by Harvard-educated Lathrop Stoddard in 1920, argued that the explosion and migration of non-white people (which included southern Europeans) would challenge white world-supremacy and that the elimination or absorption of the white race by non-white races would result in the destruction of Western civilization. (Wiki1) In his seminal work, The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination, Professor Carlyle Van Thompson notes the racially-based social upheaval of the time. (Buck 80) The 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” had been screened at the White House and its ideas were ascendant. The historic KKK “bloody summer” happened in 1919 and it helped introduce immigration limiting legislation in 1921. The Johnson-Reed Act to limit immigration by people of African descent was passed in 1924. Also about this time, New York and Virginia introduced legislation to ban interracial marriage. Lynchings were still happening.

Fitz said that he wanted TGG to be a novel about modern American society. (LitRef 156) Given the zeitgeist, it makes sense for it to have a race as a central theme.

Part 3 Fitzgerald’s Insecurity About his Place(s) in Rich, White, Hegemonic America

Some think young Fitz was a socially confident rich boy, but in fact he was never confident partly due to what he would call his mixed “breeding” and only sometimes rich.

The Irish were often called “white Negros” and were compared to black Americans, the African Bushmen and Hottentots. (Buck 79) His mother was “black Irish”, considered to be the lowest of the low. (1) She was born to a rich Catholic family, was educated at a convent, travelled Europe and lived in a mansion. (So 47) His father came from a whiter Irish Catholic family that claimed English ancestry and had been in America long enough to be “old American stock”, but which was longer on pedigree than cash. (Far 15, So 19) When his father lost his last good job, Fitz’s mother’s family money kept them in rented homes in ritzy neighborhoods. However, his father’s lack of status and inconsistent income meant that Fitz never felt socially secure amongst his wealthier neighbors. He was publicly disliked by his school mates and the teachers but he gained a degree of popularity through stories he wrote. (TurnBio 20) At Princeton, although he was otherwise a failure, his creativity earned him entry to the drama scene and to a prestigious eating club. (Far 46) At about the same time, his rich girlfriend’s society rejected him with the adage that would inspire his greatness: “Poor boys shouldn’t dream of marrying rich girls.” (Far 57)

Fitz once said “my experience was always that of a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy’s school; a poor boy in a rich man’s club at Princeton . . . I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich and it has colored my entire life’s works.” (So 56) His father’s financial failure clearly left a mark on him. His heritage left another.

A Darker Shade of Pale

Today, American whites are seen as a monolithic group, the countries of their ancestors being nothing more than a former neighborhood. (Pursuit, Catholics, Anti-Irish, Signs) Thus, it is easy to underestimate the severity of Fitzgerald’s racial inferiority complex and its significance to his writing.

The early British Americans opposed the migration and citizenship of non-whites, southern Europeans and Catholics. (Catholics, Signs, Anti-Irish) In Fitzgerald’s 1920s America, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (“WASPs”) still ruled. (Chosen 23) Amongst the most hated non-WASP groups were Irish people. The Irish were assigned a very low status within the white racial class – and some begrudged them even that. They were often caricatured as simians or monsters and were considered by some to be as inferior to Anglos as black people were thought to be. (Signs) They were called “white negroes” or “niggers turned inside out” and were mercilessly stereotyped as happy, lazy, drunk and stupid. (Pursuit, Anti-Irish) Freed black people and Irish people were often segregated into shared slums, thereby depriving the Irish of separate and better housing, one of the prime privileges of white skin. (Pursuit) Irish people received unequal and disrespectful treatment by the police, as exemplified by the description of police wagons as “Paddy” wagons. Paddy (short for Patrick) was a racist term for the Irish. (Pursuit) Businesses commonly posted “No Irish Need Apply” signs and some states forbade or taxed the entry of Irish people. (Signs, Anti-Irish) A British visitor famously declared that being called an Irishman was “almost as great an insult as to be stigmatized as a nigger feller.” (Anti-Irish)

Being Irish meant that you were not an Anglo-Saxon, of course, but it also likely meant that you were not a Protestant. Protestantism was central to the identity of the British American as opposed to the Catholicism that characterized people from Ireland and continental Europe. Catholics were “others” and the Pope was considered to be the anti-Christ. (Catholics) Most American colonies initially banned Catholics and all of them later discriminated against them. There were anti-Catholic riots and church burnings. (Catholics, Signs) Catholics were often banned from political office and even from voting by requiring them to take oaths that were known to be offensive to Catholics. (Anti-Irish) The top establishments of American culture and learning - Harvard, Yale and Princeton - did not welcome Catholics. (Chosen 2, 23, 24, 25, 48) Historian John Higham described America’s deep bias against Catholics as a “luxuriant, tenacious tradition.” (Catholics)

Thus, Irish Catholic Fitzgerald, a man who wanted more than anything to be an insider, was a natural born outsider. Catholicism, as a belief system, proved to be easier to discard than his racial footing. His sense that he could choose away from it is evidenced by this 1918 entry in his log: “last year as a Catholic.” (First) But his Irish roots bound him. To Fitzgerald, a person’s racial status - mixed or pure, high or low - was immutable, unchangeable by one’s actions or character. He believed that due to his mixed status, even if he became the King of Scotland or graduated from Eton he would be regarded as a “parvenu”, a person of obscure origin, therefore a person without respectable societal standing. (Tragic 78)

Fitzgerald knew that he was perceived as being barely white. He knew that his financial and artistic success would never be enough to match the pedigree of his neighbors and schoolmates. He hoped that Zelda’s unquestionable whiteness would help.

And so it was for Jay Gatsby. Being as white as his darkest link, he reached out for Daisy’s apparent white girlhood. He almost made it in West Egg, just as Fitz almost made it at Princeton. Society man Tom Buchanan threw Gatsby into the animus of George Wilson just as the society men of Princeton’s Cottage Club threw Fitzgerald out of its rear window.

Fitz compared himself to Gatsby: “[Gatsby] started as one man I knew and then changed into myself. . . the amalgam was never completed.” (Buck 79) Think about that. Fitz, not fully rich, not pure bred from his perspective, says he is like his character Gatsby. Interestingly, despite the many, many letters Fitz wrote there are few references to his parents. (So 62) As he tried to pass into the upper-class, Fitz left them off the resume just as people who racially pass do, just as Gatsby does.

Fitz’s own biography forms the substrate of TGG. He wrote about the relationship between people with money and easy lives and those without because he understood what it was like to have neither, to be an outsider, to be on the brink of being called out, to be uncomfortable about where you fit in society. He knew the paradoxical desire to want to join the insiders even as you despise them. And he knew that a single slip up - a job loss, one inconvenient biographical/biological fact – could keep you out.

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(1) There are many definitions for this term, ranging from an Irish person with dark eyes and hair to an Irish person who may have black ancestry. (Wiki 13)

Post #3 Fitzgerald’s Prejudices

Evidence of Fitz’s belief in racial hierarchy is shown in his letters, by anecdote and in his fiction. Before launching into these next three posts I want to note that I am not writing them to prove that Fitz was a racist. I’m writing them to show that his attitudes and the climate in which he wrote make it very possible – and even likely – for TGG to have race as a central theme….

Post #4 Know the Writer, Know the Script

Some modern filmed entertainment studios make it a practice to know the attitudes and backgrounds of the head writers they employ. To know the writer is to get a sense of his or her angle on things and therefore get a better idea of what they might write and how they might write about it. Taking this approach, this is what I conclude about Fitz.

Fitz had a family background that supported the ideals of the Confederacy, which he doubled down on by marrying another person steeped in that ideology and by supporting the white supremacist ideals promulgated by eugenicists in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, though, he himself felt the sting of that supremacy due to – what he might call it when he was drunk – his own half-breed status. He also felt the sting of the lack of money. He voted for Roosevelt and supported left wing causes that would help eradicate socioeconomic distinctions between white people, but insisted on keeping the racial distinctions, which he felt were based on science and thus were fair play. This is why he might write a novel that cleverly plays with both race and class on the bumpy road to the American Dream, or as Fitz might say it “Under the Red, White and Blue”. (1)

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(1) That was his second favorite title for the novel. (Sons 39)

Post #5 The Art of Passing and the American Dream

The noted historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. said that the Europeans who came to America sought to “forget a horrid past and embrace a hopeful future. They expected to become American… Their goals were escape, deliverance and assimilation.” (Disuniting 17) So, then the American Dream is one of transformation. This lines up with the peculiarly American device of racial passing, particularly passing from blackness into the whiteness that is associated with privilege and property….

Post #6 A True Story of Passing in 19^th/20^th Century New York and its Parallels to Gatsby

In the first third of the 20th century there was quite a bit of concern about racial mixing and hiding. Think about it. Now that black bodies were not owned or controlled, it was harder to identify who they were or where they came from. There was no slave holder able to say, “I know that one – she’s black.” …

Post #7 Why does it matter if Gatsby is black?

Everyone agrees that TGG is a story about climbing over barriers to the American Dream. In the opening line, Nick says his father told him that “all the people in the world haven’t had all the advantages you’ve had.” (TGG 19) We know that the two biggest disadvantages to achieving the American Dream is membership in a “lower” class or a non-white race. Understanding Gatsby as black, then, does not undermine what we know about TGG. It underscores it….

Post #8 What does Taposiris Magna have to do with this?

Kathleen Martinez, a criminal attorney and maverick archaeologist from the Dominican Republic, has reason to believe that she will find Cleopatra’s tomb at Taposiris Magna, a gigantic, ancient temple complex in Alexandria, Egypt….

Post #9 Symbols, Weights and Measures

In July 1922, Fitz wrote to his editor, Max Perkins, that he wanted TGG to be “something new – something extraordinary and beautiful and simple – intricately patterned.” (So 106)

Perkins said TGG was a novel in which “a vast amount is said by implication” and that it was “over the heads of many.” (Life 109)

Fitz said that even his most enthusiastic reviewers had “not the slightest idea what the book was about.” (Sons 44)

Let’s go symbol hunting, and weighing and measuring, to see what they missed.

Post #10 Racial Signifiers

There is a growing body of literature that discusses Gatsby’s race. Most reviewers don’t go as far as calling him black. Instead they refer to his ethnicity or race as some form or another of “off-whiteness” (Obscene 132) – which is curious as we live in a one-drop society. Some refer to it as “somewhat vague” (Slater 56), possibly not “pure Aryan stock” (So 101), not “quite white” (Native 25), etc. Either way, the point is that there is growing understanding that he is not the ultra-white character that we assumed. The word is out.

Professor Thompson argues that Fitzgerald skillfully uses signifiers of blackness to indicate Gatsby’s non-white status. The signifiers (not blatant descriptors) suggest not only the blackness of Gatsby’s body, but also the presence and atmosphere of black culture around him – which when weighed and measured together imply his race.

The next parts explain the import of the signifiers identified by Professor Thompson and others I identified.

Part 1 Gatsby’s Music

“ORCHESTRA [at Gatsby’s party…] NO THIN FIVE-PIECE AFFAIR, BUT A WHOLE PITFUL OF OBOES AND TROMBONES AND SAXOPHONES AND VIOLS AND CORNETS AND PICCOLOS AND LOW AND HIGH DRUMS” […] plays “YELLOW COCKTAIL MUSIC” and the “JAZZ HISTORY OF THE WORLD” and a party goer does a “FRISCO” dance while Gatsby himself “SURPRISES” Nick with his “GRACEFUL FOX-TROT”.* (TGG 47, 48, 55, 97)

There’s much to unpack here. Obviously, one stereotype of black people is the ability to dance to rhythmic music. In the 1920s the Fox Trot – which Gatsby does so well – was one of many dances that were initially popularized by black Americans. The Fox Trot and its pre-cursors, the Bunny Hug and the Turkey Trot, were danced to ragtime music, another tag to black culture. All three dances were considered imitative of the sex acts of lower animals. While the presence of such dancing and music at Gatsby’s party does not mean that he is black, it does associate him with entertainment that originated with, and is deemed by some to characterize, black people.

Then there’s the standard European-style orchestra mashed up against black culture by playing “yellow” cocktail music. Not just “cocktail music.” The yellow is to signify the blend, perhaps even, a taint. Musician Richard Williams and Professor Thompson each say that Fitz refers here to a variant of jazz music called “symphonic jazz” - classical music with jazz influences. (Bluemoment; Buck 88) One piece of music played at this Gatsby party is said to have caused a sensation at Carnegie Hall. Well, the year that Fitz wrote TGG a piece of symphonic jazz did just that at a hall up the street. It was “Rhapsody in Blue” played by George Gershwin himself at Aeolian Hall. (Cocktail) Think of its opening bars… and there you have it – yellow music. Again, Gatsby is surrounded by black culture, in this case a mixture of black and white.

Fitz, by detailing the orchestra, the dance, the music, etc. is showing us a presence and acceptance of blackness around Gatsby and is encouraging us to make the leap, to follow the implication.

Part 2 Gatsby’s Physicality and Possessions

“HIS TANNED SKIN WAS DRAWN ATTRACTIVELY TIGHT”* (TGG 55) At the start of the novel Gatsby has no reason to be tanned. Tanning became especially trendy when Coco Chanel came back suntanned/burnt from a vacation in 1923. This novel is set in 1922 and no one else of the East or West Egg set is noted as having tanned skin. “Pale” – yes. “Brown” or “tan” – yes, if the person spends time out of doors (like Gatsby when he was a sailor and outdoor worker and the golfer Jordan.) But “tanned” with no reason to be so? No. No one else.

“SHORT HAIR LOOKED AS THOUGH IT WERE TRIMMED EVERYDAY”* (TGG 55) This styling allows very curly hair to lie flat.

“HIS GORGEOUS PINK RAG OF A SUIT”* (TGG 134) Gatsby wears white and pink suits, colored and silver shirts, and gold ties. That is the outlandishly colorful and ridiculous outfit of a minstrel, a Jim Crow, a circus barker. Also, why is his suit a “rag”? Certainly, this is not the dress of respectable, white, wealthy Yale or Oxford men of the times. It is more likely a tie to both rag music and slave rags.

“CARAMEL-COLORED SUIT” (TGG 65) Gatsby wears this suit that reveals his true, blended color during scenes in which (a) he states a series of lies, (b) he is between a car of white people and a car of black people and (c) he meets his friend, the gangster Wolfshiem, in a restaurant that is appropriately located in a cellar.

“RICH CREAM COLOR . . . SWOLLEN HERE AND THERE IN ITS MONSTROUS LENGTH” (TGG 65) and “YELLOW CAR”* (TGG 123) These are the descriptions of Gatsby’s car. A common moniker for a light-skinned person in the black community – especially one who is putting on airs - is “high yellow.” Add this to the myth that black men have extra-large sex organs and voila – you have two race signifiers in one. (By the way, Tom with his blue blood has a blue coupe.)

“More than 40 ACRES OF LAWN AND GARDENS”* (TGG 22) That and a mansion describe Gatsby’s property. This echoes the 40 acres and a mule promised by the government to former slaves. The property of both Gatsby and the former slaves can be seen as ill-gotten: from bootlegging in Gatsby’s case and from the confiscation of slaveholder property in the ex-slaves’ case. In this way, Gatsby shares a profile with newly freed black Americans whom many felt had been unfairly and illegally benefitted, causing a disruption to the social order.

Part 3 Gatsby’s General Biography

BOOTLEGGER* (TGG 63) A bootlegger is one who sells counterfeit products. In TGG, Gatsby is both the bootlegger and the product. He sells himself as old money and white when he is neither. Bootleg whiskey was illegally manufactured and was deemed to be aberrant and impure. A Gatsby of mixed race fits the bill.

WEST INDIES* (TGG 93) Jimmy Gatz’ journey to become Jay Gatsby begins as he sheds his shredded clothes and replaces them with the blue and white nautical dress of a yachtsman. Where do he and his slick benefactor Dan Cody go first? The West Indies. This is a signal that those nautical whites will not change where you came from or where you are going. (Sounds like currents sweeping you ceaselessly into your past, doesn’t it?)

MONTENEGRO* Here Fitz uses one word to do double duty. Montenegro is in Southeastern Europe and the name means “black mountain.” Here Fitz gives Gatsby a history that tangentially connects him to two races.

DEAD FAMILY/MISSING PARENT* Only Gatsby’s father shows up for his funeral. There’s no explanation for his mother’s absence and no discussion of her reaction to his death. For obvious reasons, in the literature of passing the black parent usually does not share scenes with the main characters. This doesn’t prove Gatsby’s mother is black; but if she were she would not be seen and she isn’t seen or even mentioned in the novel. Thus, Gatsby’s biography falls in line with that of other passing literary characters who must craft a new identity out of a shady past.

Part 4 Spotters, Conspirators, and the Possible N-word

“A PALE WELL DRESSED NEGRO [said] . . . IT WAS A YELLOW CAR”* (TGG 123) Back in the day, light-skinned blacks were used by businesses as “spotters” of other light-skinned blacks. The spotter’s purpose was to prevent unintended integration by racial passers. After Myrtle dies it is just such a person who ends up calling out Gatsby’s car. This man does not identify Gatsby himself as the driver, but the fact that Fitz chooses to have someone of his description be the one who points the finger towards Gatsby references such spotters.

“WHAT DID YOU SAY TO WILSON THAT AFTERNOON?” (TGG 152) Tom admits to Nick that he told George that Gatsby had killed Myrtle. The text indicates that Tom knew it was a lie. Professor Carlyle Van Thompson has noted the conspiratorial nature to this co-operation between the two men whose commonality is not class but race. These white men cross the class divide to work together to save the honor of their white wives. Which leaves Gatsby on the other side of that other divide. (1)

“ON THE WHITE STEPS AN OBSCENE WORD, SCRAWLED BY SOME BOY WITH A PIECE OF BRICK, STOOD OUT CLEARLY IN THE MOONLIGHT, AND I ERASED IT, DRAWING MY SHOE RASPINGLY ALONG THE STONE.”* (TGG 153) In chapters three and five Gatsby’s steps are referred to four times as “marble”, no color noted. By chapter eight those steps are referred to as “white” and Gatsby in his pink suit stands out as a “bright spot of color” against them. In chapter nine they are white again. But now Gatsby is dead and where he last stood in pink-of-life relief against them, there is an obscene word. Could the single word have been one about blackness? Could the boys have tagged Gatsby’s home the way the homes of neighborhood undesirables have been tagged for centuries? Seems very possible. This small action occurs just three sentences before we get to the green light stuff. When we think about the patterning and the clues that have come before, it seems unlikely for the word to be unrelated to the story, or to the man. It has to matter. And just one single, meaningful, obscene word comes to mind.

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* These signifiers were identified by Professor Thompson. (Buck 75-103)

(1) Further evidence of the Tom-George-white supremacy link (and thus also Gatsby’s race) is that Tom and George each share a surname with a president who is especially associated with the preservation of slavery and/or racist behaviors and policies: James Buchannan and Woodrow Wilson. Another tiny pillar.

Part 5 Mind the Gap

Gatsby’s war record sounds like that of black WWI soldiers

There was a famous WWI battle in the Meuse-Argonne forest. The all-black 92^nd American division (92^nd) was ordered to fill the gap between the all-white 77^th American division on one side of them and the allied French soldiers on the other side. (Wiki5, Dallas) That means the 92^nd was in the middle. The middle. This is important.

Some scholars believe that Gatsby’s description of the battle he says he engaged in matches up with this real battle. (Wiki5) It is easy to assume when reading TGG that Gatsby was white and not French and so therefore participated in this battle as part of the 77^th Division, the white American unit. However, the description of Gatsby’s service better matches the experience of black soldiers who were at this battle, like Nathan Goodloe.

Gatsby’s war story: Gatsby tells Nick that he fought in the “ARGONNE FORREST” as a “LIEUTENANT” and that he engaged in a dangerous operation where a “GAP ON EITHER SIDE” of his unit developed and he killed many Germans with machine guns called “LEWIS GUNS”. With an unusual level of detail, he also says that he was in the infantry until “JUNE 1918” when he joined a “MACHINE GUN BATTALION.” Further he produces a medal that he says is the “ORDERI DI DANILO” medal from Montenegro for this service. (TGG 66)

Goodloe’s war story: After much public controversy, the US Army created two black combat units in WWI: the 92^nd and the 93^rd. (Respect) The 92^nd Division shipped out in “JUNE 1918.” (Wiki4) One black soldier named LIEUTENANT Nathan Goodloe in that division joined the MACHINE GUN BATTALION. During the Meuse-Argonne battle, Goodloe fought heroically. Even though his division, the 92^nd, was roundly criticized for allowing the gap to occur, he was given a commendation – but it was not the Orderi di Danilo.

Once again, Gatsby is placed near blackness. First, by having Gatsby fight in the space between friendly forces, he places Gatsby in the middle, which is where the black 92^nd unit was supposed to be. Second, it’s unlikely that Gatsby was in the 77^th Division. That was a famously heroic division and if he were in it he surely would have claimed it. He doesn’t. Third, because the army was segregated, if you declared your unit, you declared your race. A black Gatsby would have every reason to lie about his division and he does. (See below) Fourth, Gatsby says he used Lewis guns, which are machine guns. Those guns were disfavored and not adopted by the American army, but they were popular with the French. (Wiki7, Military) Parts of the 92^nd during this battle were under French command. (Wiki4) Gatsby’s specific statement that he used Lewis guns is further indication that he was part of the black 92^nd Division.

Of all the battles in all of WWI…

Why does Fitz attach Gatsby so closely to this battle where a black unit famously fought? Why is the date Gatsby left the infantry to join the machine gun battalion the same date that the 92^nd’s machine gun battalion shipped out to the Argonne? Why does Fitz even specify the month and year of such a seemingly unimportant fact? Why does he tell us exactly what sort of machine gun Gatsby uses? It seems that he is tracing real events and perhaps even real people. (1)

Gatsby’s Role Models

Camp Taylor in Louisville housed black soldiers and officers from the 92^nd Division. Even though the camp had segregated facilities, the white and black soldiers did see and meet each other and sometimes trained together. (Sweeney 79, 80, Scott 81) Fitzgerald spent a month at Camp Taylor in Louisville in 1918. (TurnBio 82) While there he likely observed black soldiers like Goodloe and knew something about the 92^nd’s general movements. He would have seen black soldiers who could pass as white – such as Julian Bond’s grandfather who was stationed there. It is well-established by critics and Fitz himself that he wrote closely from his experience and frequently used events from real life. Thus, it is plausible that Fitz used his knowledge of these soldiers when coming up with Gatsby, a young soldier who met Daisy in Louisville, of all places.

Gatsby Dresses the Part

The circumstance in which Gatsby presents his war medal also indicates that he is lying about his race. In chapter 4 of TGG Gatsby presents what he says is an Orderi di Danilo medal given to him by Montenegro for his military service. It is metal and engraved in English. (TGG 67) The real Orderi medal is enameled and not engravable and the printing it does have is in Cyrillic. Clearly, Gatsby’s medal is fake.

In a 1924 letter, Fitz asked his editor to tell him what the Orderi medal looked like. (Sons 33) If there was a response, it has been lost. What is clear though is that the medal’s physical description matters to the story in some way because Fitz took care to describe it. It seems he wanted to know what the real one looked like so he could make Gatsby’s medal as wrong as these other statements in the passage are:

Gatsby was the son of a westerner, not a middle-westerner;

he had the chance to take some classes at Oxford, but was not a true Oxford student;

he was the assistant to paternalistic wealthy people, not their son; and

he didn’t travel Europe like a rajah.

What’s important about this is that when spouting these lies on what Nick calls the “disconcerting ride” to New York (TGG 65) Gatsby wears a “caramel-colored” suit. In this scene, Fitz invites us to take another look at the man we now know for sure is not who he says he is. And when we do, there he is, covered in brown.

The 7th Infantry Lie

A seemingly unremarkable conversation between Nick and Gatsby is one of the most revealing passages in the novel. In this conversation, Nick’s truth about his military service exposes Gatsby’s lie about his, and thereby Gatsby’s lie about his race.

In chapter 3, Gatsby tells Nick that he was in the 7^th Infantry. (TGG 53) In the lie-filled passage in chapter 4 mentioned above, Gatsby says that he fought in a battle in the Argonne Forest. (TGG 66) The problem is that the 7^th Infantry was never in the Argonne Forest. (US Forces) So, is he lying about the 7^th or about the Argonne? And why?

He is lying about the 7^th and here’s how we know. In chapter 3, Gatsby tells Nick that he has seen him during the war, which implies that Nick and Gatsby fought in the same place. Remember, Gatsby claims to have fought in the Argonne. In that same conversation in chapter 3, Gatsby tells Nick he was in the 7^th Infantry and Nick says that he was in the 3^rd Division, 9^th MG Battalion. (TGG 53) Nick’s claim checks out – his division and battalion were in the Argonne. Again, Gatsby’s was not. (USForces) Both men fought in the war, but these facts give Nick’s statement the ring of truth and Gatsby’s the ring of truthiness.

Fitz deliberately places this exchange about military units outside of the lie-filled passage. If both the 7^thInfantry statement and the Argonne statement were in the lie-filled passage, we wouldn’t know which was false even though we know that one must be. By placing Gatsby’s vague 7^th Infantry lie next to Nick’s specific 3^rd Division, 9^th Battalion truth, Fitz is tipping us that that is where the lie is. Gatsby fought in the Argonne, just not in the division that he claimed. Fitzgerald has skillfully introduced one truth into the lie-filled passage (i.e., that Gatsby fought in the Argonne), and uses that truth to prove an earlier statement to be a lie. (Here, I pause to remind that it is important to read TGG with heightened awareness of its intricate design.)

Gatsby lied and now here’s why. It was big news - even civilians knew – that the 92^nd was a black unit and that it was the only one in the Argonne. If a bi-racial Gatsby wanted to brag about his Argonne experience he could not have stated his true military unit. And he doesn’t.

This is a curious sequence of choices by Fitz. When added all together it seems that Gatsby was an undistinguished soldier in a black division in the Argonne battle. If so, what to make of Nick’s exclamation that the medal “had an authentic look”? (TGG 67) Answer: It looked as real as Gatsby’s uncut library books looked from far away. Neither the medal nor the books are quite what they should be. A careful read of Nick’s response to the medal shows that it is similar to the response of the wiser Owl Eyes who more clearly expresses his appreciation for the quality of the fakery, calling Gatsby a “regular Belasco.” (TGG 52) Belasco was a pioneer of stage lighting and effects. (Wiki6) But what about the war medals that Wolfshiem says Gatsby wore on his uniform? Well, we know he offered at least one fake medal, so why not more?

Gatsby’s less than stellar military service fits in nicely with his racial and other lies. They all have a few drops of truth.

_____________________________________________

(1) Goodloe’s story made headlines and could have been known by Fitz. An armchair follower of the war, he followed the news and even mapped out the battles.

Post #11 Charactonyms

A charactonym is a literary device where the author gives a character a name that suggests that character’s traits. Charles Dickens used them often. The tough teachers in his Hard Times are named Mr. Gradgrind and McChokum Child and the title character in his most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, shares his initials in reverse. Remus Lupin, the werewolf in the Harry Potter series, and Daddy Warbucks in “Annie” are other examples.

Now, “Gatsby”….

Post #12 Who’s “all white here”?

Gatsby, Nick, Daisy, Tom and Jordan sit in the Plaza Hotel room when Tom “standing alone on the last barrier of civilization” once again launches into his eugenics theories. In one of TGG’s most iconic lines Jordan says, “We’re all white here.” (TGG 116)

No one objects.

So, then how can Gatsby be black?...

Post #13 What did Nick Know?

There’s a call and response in the literary world. It goes like this:

Call: “unreliable narrator”

Response: “Nick Carraway”

He’s the prime example of a narrator who does not tell you everything. He’s a Yale man, an upstanding Middle- Westerner. While lying may be beneath him, courteous and secret omission is not.

He lets us know in the second line of the novel that when someone has not “had the advantages” that he has had, he has been taught to avoid criticizing them. And he does just that by laying out Gatsby’s lies, but never calling them lies. For example, Nick likely knows that Gatsby is lying about his hometown because San Francisco is not in the Middle-West; that the 7^th Infantry was not in the Argonne; and that Gatsby is not a legitimate businessman. Nick knows these things, but never directly says to the reader that Gatsby had lied. Even more indicative of his penchant for omission is that Nick also doesn’t tell the other characters.

This pattern of Nick showing us the lie, but not calling it repeats when it comes to Gatsby’s race.

It seems that Nick is suspicious of Gatsby’s race from the start. Shortly after his tanned skin/frequently trimmed hair observation he says: “I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or the lower east side of New York.” (TGG 54) Note, not just the swamps. Not just Louisiana. Not just New York, but the lower east side. Why?

To this day older black New Orleans residents refer to the “front of town” and “back of town”. The back of town is the swampland close to Lake Pontchartrain that flooded in Hurricane Katrina. In Fitz’s time, free blacks and Creoles lived in the back of town/swamp neighborhoods. (Wiki8) There was so much racial mixture and social fluidity in these neighborhoods that Creoles developed a term for the racial passers: “passabone”. (Buck 85) If Gatsby is a passabone it is plausible that someone like him had started out from such a place, just as Nick suggests.

Nick suggests that Gatsby could also have come from the “Five Points” neighborhoods of New York’s lower east side. Freed black people were originally segregated there and they stayed there until they were pushed to Harlem in the 1920s. (Columbia1) It’s of note that around the time of Gatsby’s birth (c. 1890) other lower east side districts that were close to the black ones had so many German immigrants they were called “kleindeutschland” (Columbia2). There are hints that Gatsby is part German because the name “Gatz” is mostly considered to be German (Jew, Obscene 133) and his father follows the Lutheran religion, popular in Germany. (Slater 56) It’s easy to imagine a Gatsby of mixed race springing from here.

Swamps or New York’s lower east side, either way Gatsby is once again placed amongst black populations and culture. And if it is both ways (i.e., he has a German father and a Creole mother), then Gatsby is the personification of the northward creeping negroid streak. (Thus, it makes sense within the novel’s themes that Tom has a hand in vanquishing him. This is an example of how a black Gatsby renders this book whole and seamless.)

Let’s re-consider the caveat: don’t criticize people who “haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.”

We know that Nick largely doesn’t criticize Gatsby. Based on Nick’s principles, it follows that he must deem Gatsby to have disadvantages. Since Nick believes that Gatsby may have come from one of the well-established locales of free (usually lighter-skinned) black Americans, it is possible that Nick believes (or at least wonders) whether Gatsby’s disadvantages go beyond class to race. But having concluded that Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch” of the “rotten crowd” (TGG 134), Nick is not going to tell us. He is not going to let anyone else tell us either – that’s why he calmly erases the obscene word on the steps, a word whose appearance didn’t seem to surprise him. Thus, following the pattern, Nick has laid Gatsby’s biggest lie out in front of us, but refuses to call it.

I think in the end Nick was indeed what he said he was: a “keeper of the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.”

Post #14 “Gatsby can’t be black because…”

A) Tom Buchannan would not have a black man in his house. The rebuttal is that Gatsby is a light-skinned black man and that Tom doesn’t know. Tom’s ignorance is part of the novel’s structure and its theme at once. (Fitz is a genius.)…

Post #15 Why Fitz didn’t “tell” on Gatsby

A) Fitz repeatedly said that no one understood what the book was about. Since readers and reviewers alike saw the obvious class theme, that could not have been what they didn’t get. So if Gatsby is a bi-racial character, why didn’t Fitz tell everyone? He tried. His first instinct was to tell us through his favorite title for the book (“Trimalchio in West Egg”), which his publisher advised against, and through the book jacket note, which his publisher forbade. The reason Fitz gave in is that he was on dangerous ground….

Post #16 The Great Gatsby – A great farce?

A few years ago, I saw the fabulous six-hour production of The Great Gatsby (with a 30 - minute intermission.) One actor read the book cover-to-cover as he and others silently performed some of the action. I recall remarking that the audience laughed quite a bit. I thought nothing more of it until now….

Post #17 Everybody loves Jay because everybody is Jay

I’ve never met a single person who dislikes the character Jay Gatsby even if they dislike the novel itself….

Post #18 The Physical Evidence

Upon hearing the Black Gatsby thesis, I went in search of evidence that would support it. First, I examined the contextual evidence (i.e., Fitz’s political point of view and biography as well as the zeitgeist.) Next, I examined the textual evidence of the thesis.

The following posts include an analysis of the physical evidence. If someone is stabbed, there should be blood somewhere. If there is an underlying principal theme of blackness in TGG, there should be some residue of that scheme beyond the pages of the book. In short, there should be "chatter". Everywhere I looked I found it. Here goes.

Post #19 The Title

The next three posts show how the history of the selection of the title, the deletion of the infamous book jacket note and the physical description of Gatsby support the Black Gatsby thesis….

Post #20 The Character Description: Revelation and Concealment

A “scheme” is a clever and often dishonest plan to do or get something.

I have never heard of character description being part of a novelist’s scheme. But it is in TGG and Fitz and Perkins worked together to preserve it. First, they kept the safer title to avoid betraying Gatsby’s character. Then, they had to come up with a physical description of him….

Post #21 (This is a long one. Make like Fitz and grab a Gin Rickey.)

The Note and a Little Mystery

I started this quest looking for the note that Fitz wrote for the book jacket. He thought the note would support the book and Scribner’s thought it would injure it. In the end the note was not included….

Post #22 The Repeating Past

I agree with Professor Maureen Corrigan that the novel has a “fated feel to it. All exit doors are locked before the story begins: . . . the end is preordained.” (So 10) In the face of this unchangeable and persistent past, it is appropriate that Fitz’s own hopeful, hardworking protagonist dies in a pool of tiny currents, befitting both his limited boundaries and insufficient power to disturb what came before, to make a wave….

Post #23 Closing Argument – “It’s a masterpiece, Mother.”

“The whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a young man not being able to marry a girl with money,” said Fitzgerald. (TurnBio 150) If that is what it was all about, I suggest that it is not what it was only about….

Afterword

I will always wonder what Fitz would have had left in his tank if he had not filled it with so much gin and Zelda….

Works Cited

92^nd	“History of the American Negro in the Great World War eBook” <http://www.bookrags.coom/ebooks/16598/148.html#gsc.tab=0>
AMC	Mad Men, AMC, 2007 – 2015. Television.
Anti-Irish	Dolan, Jay P., “Anti-Irish Racism in the United States”, August 1997. <http://www3.nd.edu/~jdolan/IRISHCONFERENCE-CORK.html >
Auction	Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. And Judith S. Baughman, F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Marketplace: The Auction and Dealer Catalogues, 1935-2006, Columbia, U of South Carolina Press 2009
Authorship	Fitzgerald, F. Scott, F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press 1996

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Bibliography

“92^nd Infantry Division (United States)”, Wikipedia, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Infantry-division-(United_States)> Accessed 11/14/2016

“93rd Infantry Division (United States)”, Wikipedia, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/93rd_Infantry_Division_(United_States)> date last modified 10/25/2016 Accessed 9/29/2016

“African American Heritage” <http://www.dkv.columbia.edu/demo/tenement/african_american_heritage.html > Accessed 11/16/2016

“Anti-miscegenation laws and the U.S. Constitution” <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation-laws-in-the-United-States> Accessed 11/11/2016

“Awards and Decorations, World War I Statistics”, An extract from the Annual Report of the Secretary of War to the President: War Department Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1923. Government Printing Office, 1923, p. 172

Bender, Bert, “His Mind Aglow: The Biological Undercurrent in Fitzgerald’s ‘Gatsby’ and Other Works,” Journal of American Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, Part 1 (Dec 1998) <http://www.jstor.org/stable/27556476>

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