Durg Prohibn, gay nightlife and culture reached new heights—at least temporarily.
Contents:
- WHAT IS THE SIGNIFINCE OF NICK BEG GAY THE GREAT GATSBY?
- NICK CARRAWAY IS GAY AND LOVE WH GATSBY
- HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFINCE OF NICK BEG GAY THE GREAT GATSBY?
And wh that ado has e a rurgence of tert Nick Carraway’s unclear sexual orientatn — somethg you probably missed as a high school sophomore, but is obv wh even a ltle attentn as an adult rear.
Earlier the year, an article at Salon, Greg Olear poted out that naggg passage that suggts Nick’s homosexualy, ntled between those ellips and g directly off of a blatant penis joke. And today The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky argu that Baz Luhrman’s new film adaptatn suffers om not beg gay enough, and thereby unrmg Nick’s character and elimatg his nnectn to Gatsby based on “their shared need for ceptn.
”On the other hand, Olear argu that the reason Nick’s homosexualy is important is bee reveals him as an unreliable narrator. ’ And that’s why matters that Nick is gay and love wh Gatsby: bee Tom’s asssment is spot-on, but Nick will never adm . But what do the slippery prentatn of Nick’s sexual preferenc reveal about Fzgerald’s attus towards homosexualy?
NICK CARRAWAY IS GAY AND LOVE WH GATSBY
Certaly they mt have been plex — Fzgerald was famoly sensive about his masculy, and Zelda supposedly once claimed that her hband was a “fairy” who was havg an affair wh Hemgway (there’s no proof of that, though there is that scene A Moveable Feast where Hemgway tak a look at Fzgerald’s, let’s say, manly equipment, and judg to be aquate) one might expect a renunciatn, or a rtoonish portrayal (surely Fz had enough opportuny wh Gatsby’s ragers to throw a few stereotypil gay party boys), but neher of the exist this novel. Jordan Baker, who n be read as at least possibly homosexual herself (a female athlete, particularly unual at the time; all those remarks about gog on trips wh other girls) ’s Nick who is both the removed wns and the ambivalent center of the book, and who is ultimately absolved by his limaly. Stt Fzgerald: Homosexualy and the Genis of Tenr Is the Night, “In [Miss Tbe and her iends] the homosexual is not jt a symbol of moral and sexual chaos, but a projectn of votnal secury.
Th Fzgerald’s notor sensivy about his masculy, as well as the acute homosexual doubts attted to him by observers such as Morley Callaghan, may well rive not jt om the fact that he was so often the self-nfsed ‘woman’ of his marriage, but om the Achill’ heel of his secure masculy as related to matters of craft: Fzgerald the years appears to have spected that he himself was the te homosexual his choice of votn. Homosexualy therefore f the circle of his creative difficulti that he is homosexual both his moral and artistic mment and his pronens to moral llapse: homosexualy n nvey to him both his own much greater emasculatn (the attenuatns of art) and his own paci for self-abandonment (the perils of self-dulgence).
HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
”In the same article, Colls c a letter Fzgerald wrote to Richard Knight 1932, which giv some sight to his feelgs on homosexualy: “I’m sorry I ed the word fairy and that you found offensive, ” he wr. ” While this isn’t five evince as to his feelgs on homosexualy, Fzgerald claims a semi-nsc e of of the word “fairy” as an sult, blurted out while half asleep, and follows wh scere apologi — perhaps an ditn of a nflicted md. Tantalizg Taboos: Homoerotic Language The Great Gatsby.
The most mon, however, is homosexualy and homoeroti.
Of urse, the outlook on homosexualy and the rt of the LGBTQ+ muny has changed dramatilly over the past one hundred years.