Opinions are like butts: everyone has one, and I'm showing mine.

 I saw the trailer for a new television show where a black teen complains that reading The Great Gatsby is a waste of time -- it's a book that should be replaced with one about immigrants, black single mothers or other more relatable figures. When the white male student behind her proclaims the book a classic, the white, male teacher chimes in, "Spoken like a true Nick Carraway." She furthermore insinuates that Gatsby is a book that perpetuates the privilege of the white male in all his rich and excessive glory. 

*skiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrttttttttttttt*

Did we read the same book? Did we? Is this the part where I pick up the phone and the TikTok song plays ominously in the background as I zoom into my face and say, "but did we read the same book? Did we? Show me. Show me the privilege in dying alone, framed for an affair and murder you didn't commit."

I'm not sure what book she read, but Jay Gatsby is far from the picturesque white man reveling in his "born-with-it" privilege. West Egg, in and of itself, was Fitzgerald's way of representing Gatsby as a nobody -- someone who didn't come from money and who was secretly acquiring it through the deeply criminal but highly political business of bootlegging. Jay Gatsby is a prime representation of Fitzgerald and other expatriates who hopped the pond back in the early 20th century -- writers and artists who were so disillusioned with America that they wrote about all its pitfalls and terrible people from afar. T.S. Eliot even termed it "The Wasteland"; not an unfair assessment for the debauchery that a story like The Great Gatsby unveiled. 

Anyway, back to this purported waste of time about another white guy with money...

Gatsby was broke. Flat. Out. Broke. His money was as "funny" as the money that floats college students on scholarship. It was all tied up in business, dirty business, that was bound to fall apart and prove the age-old adage that "money can't buy happiness." The Great Gatsby is a sad story about unrequited love -- about a man who thinks he'll only be loved if he can convince people he's something he's not. Yacht clubs, pool parties, rubbing elbows with politicians/businessmen/financiers: Jay Gatsby is convinced that his lies will make people like him and will make him happy. When he gets what he wants, the girl who can't possibly love him back because she's too shallow and simple to understand what true love looks and feels like, his notoriety makes a swift decline, and his anxiousness and tendency to anger quickly prevails. 

This book has nothing to do with a white man flaunting his wealth. As a matter of fact, I'd argue it's very much an embellished version of the hellish existence and relationship of F. Scott Fitzgerald (a raging alcoholic) and his wife Zelda (a diagnosed schizophrenic) and their stark decline in the public eye over the course of their 20ish year relationship. It's also narrated by a one Nick Carraway, the humble, broke-as-a-joke cousin to the shallow biscuit at the end of the pier, who sells bonds (or tries to) and still hardly makes enough money to have a social life. Having Nick's perspective is key to understanding people -- black, white, male, female, polka-dotted, etc. -- Nick believes that we should see the good in people, something that Gatsby holds onto up until the very end of the book as he's falling to his death with whispers of "Daisy" on his breath, truly believing in her goodness even though the dramatic irony is that we know her shallow butt skipped town with her selfish and privileged husband who has not a compassionate bone in his body but sees women as property and playthings...want to argue on that front? 

I've sat in meetings where people told me because I'm white I can't teach A Raisin in the Sun because I can't understand Beneatha's hair. I've been told Atticus Finch was a "White Jesus," clearly martyring himself to save Tom Robinson from the corrupt, white system (um, did we read the same book? Tom didn't listen and got shot 17 times trying to climb a fence -- Atticus didn't "resurrect" anyone); in those same meetings, books like Their Eyes Were Watching God (written by a black, female author and about black people who built their own town, opened their own businesses, etc.) and A Lesson Before Dying (written by a black, male author -- a brilliant look at humanity) were deemed too inappropriate to teach because of one-page scenes that imply sex or mention breasts. Toni Morrison has several books on the challenged and banned lists all because people claim topics like slavery, motherhood, mercy killing, and general violence are too much, yet reading The Scarlet Letter about a Puritan woman who has an affair with a preacher man isn't considered all that scandalous? 

It takes a lot to offend me -- let's just say there aren't many books that will do it -- but my point is that there's a bit of a double standard on what's considered appropriate for our society. The biggest issue I take with some of these proclamations regarding books like The Great Gatsby is that people read them and miss the point, or they haven't read them at all, but the stories are so surface-level that it's clear they're meant to disparage certain races or genders *insert eye roll emoji here.* 

You should read or re-read Gatsby. Just be sure to have the dictionary handy, as the vocabulary is a bit inflated. Fitzgerald didn't sell millions of copies of his book off the rip: the military sent copies to the troops on the idea it was a love story, and their purchase saved thousands of published copies from rotting away in dusty boxes; it wasn't an insta-hit -- people weren't impressed because they didn't get it. It requires some serious thought and deserves more than a 2021 write-off by some Hollywood director who thought it would be cute to tear down a book because the main character is a white man. Funny: F. Scott Fitzgerald was convinced that if the book didn't do well it would be because there were no significant women in the story, and he believed that women were at the height of the fiction world in the 1920s. Chew on that one for a minute.

Books often reveal things about human nature, sometimes culture-specific but often just regarding humanity. Stop looking for reasons to be offended and stop reducing complexities to nothing more than dust to be blown aside as you spread your self righteousness on the proverbial table.