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Gatsby
In response to Slayton (12/28), although I do think you may have overstated my points of view in a couple areas, your comments in general are the most incisive and helpful (at least to me) of all the posts I have read.
No, I never saw the novel as a "grumbling about the division of wealth" (a sentiment not be popular for a few more years), but rather as a legitimate criticism of general post-war Roaring Twenties greed, excess and moral superficiality.
Fitzgerald's East-West distinction still seems to me to be out of place, and somewhat "inserted" into the text, and your attempted connection of that trope to the Dutch sailors and the frontier does not convince.
Regarding the concluding section, I perhaps phrased my perception too strongly and critically. I think that it is the jarringly abrupt change in voice that, in part, I find unsettling. As it stands by itself, I also find it at the very least "rather beautiful", certainly not "poor writing", and I neither see nor feel any "scorn" regarding this section or the book as a whole. I find it flawed. I was using the term "stream of consciousness" rather loosely, and not as a technical term, probably an obvious mistake in a literary forum; I possibly should have left it at "rambling", which I think it is. Modernist, the passage and to an extent the book, may be. However, I must take issue with the notion that the "stream of consciousness" style or technique was "pioneered" by Joyce. Stream of consciousness as a literary style or technique goes back at least to the mid-19th C.; slightly later in that century, and almost iconically, it is associated with Proust. As for Derrida, well, with him we are several generations of literary interpretation beyond stream of consciousness.
"Gatsby's confusion of the ideal and the material" is an exceptionally important point which you make, and, while certainly not unnoticed by me, I find that refocusing on it assists my overall perception of the unity of the book. Finally, modernism as associated with the "fragmented nature of the novel throughout" is a fine observation, and useful.
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Gatsby is great for a lot of reasons but I think the reason that it really got popular and became a classic is it's social commentary. At the time it was written.... it was the first realistic look at all the horrible things that can spawn from a thriving Capitalist society. The fact that it's not a happy ending is something that obviously doesn't sit well with some people, but others appreciate the validity.
