Maura Pennington, Contributor
I write about my lost generation and our unmet expectations
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Paul Krugman has so much to say now that he has a blog in addition to his column in the New York Times. Over a week ago he posted "The Great Gatsby Curve" made by his Princeton colleague, Alan Krueger. Krugman and Krueger cite that there is a negative relationship between social mobility and inequality based on intergenerational elasticity of income. People are accused all the time of misinterpreting economics, yet here are economists misunderstanding literature.
It's been a long time since junior English for a lot of people. The Great Gatsby has faded into a fuzzy memory only to be revived by the new Leonardo DiCaprio movie. It's only remembered that Jay Gatsby threw lavish parties. From an enigmatic source of income, he bought a mansion near the woman he once loved. He has less vindictive motives than Edmond Dantes of The Count of Monte Cristo for inserting himself in the society of those he knew when he was penniless, but Gatsby throws his wealth around as a point nonetheless.
So, how did Gatsby become great? Where did he get his money? Krueger seems to think that the namesake of his chart achieved it when there was a balance of a winnowing gap of equality and more easily enabled social mobility. This might be argued a few decades later when people rose into the middle class thanks to the G.I. Bill, but Gatsby didn't come back from his generation's war with anything in his pockets.
To figure out how exactly Gatsby became rich, you have to actually read the end of the book. It's revealed that the businessman of dubious means that could have only occurred during Prohibition, Meyer Wolfsheim, took him under his wing, saying: "I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away that he was a fine appearing gentlemanly young man." It was quite an act James Gatz was playing, but it paid off. He was able to execute his new polished, Oxford-educated, but entirely false identity because he put work into it. His father shows Nick Carraway a book with Gatsby's schedule in it. He filled his days with exercise and sports, studying, hygiene, and financial saving. Most importantly, though, he sought to "practice elocution, poise and how to attain it" and "read one improving book or magazine per week."
Many of F. Scott Fitzgerald's heroes in his short stories are the nouveau riche. They go to the same parties as those with old money, but they stick out somehow. They never get over in their minds how they used to be the caddies for the fathers whose daughters they now court. Gatsby achieved his success because he left his old, penniless identity behind. He trained himself to be wealthy just as Dantes cultivated himself as a Count. It has less to do with social mobility as individual determination.
It wasn't a lack of inequality that gave Gatsby his lucky break in business. It was his daily schedule and resolve to keep it. It had nothing to do with how much money his father had or how much of an improvement that was on his grandfather's situation. Jay Gatsby was, in essence, the truest kind of American. One who made himself and not just his fortune out of nothing.
We can try to forgive Krueger and Krugman for being the literature students who write essays based on summaries rather than details. Given that they think The Great Gatsby is a tale of social mobility and not one of a self-created hero, these two economists seem to think our inequality is the root of all evil, that no one can move in society because the rungs of the ladder are too far apart, so to speak.
How many rungs and how far apart do you think they were in Gatsby's case? Some of the countries low down on the "Gatsby" curve are homogeneous Scandinavian socialist nations. They don't even need ladders there because there's nowhere to go. Inequality exists when there is an apex worth reaching.
That's not to say that there isn't anything to remedy in this country. It's just not what Krugman would suggest. Gatsby and Dantes had personal benefactors, neither of them being the state. They earned the good will of those individuals by being upstanding men themselves, by proving the quality of their character. When it's the state administering the equalizing funds, there's no test of character. Yet, the only people who will move in society are the ones who have the character to do it. What good is blanket stimulus then? It's throwing money to the wind. It might hit the dashboard of a getaway car of thieves or sink into the mud of a ditch somewhere to no one's benefit. Gatsby worked every day of his life to be the man he created. How hard will someone work when it's the state that creates who he is and enables his existence?
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Ms. Pennington,
You wrote:”Jay Gatsby was, in essence, the truest kind of American. One who made himself and not just his fortune out of nothing.”
Correct me if I am wrong but Mr. Gatz(by) was a criminal. He was a bootlegger who made his great fortune from a criminal enterprise, the illegal manufacture and sale of alcohol. He is good friends with one Meyer Wolfsheim, who like many gangsters in the era, was Jewish (Meyer Lansky and Meier “Micky” Cohen are examples). He was a man with cufflinks adorned with human teeth.
All of his “hard work” and “self-improvement” is deception, for other and perhaps himself as well. It is a cover for a very successful criminal. This is the irony of the title, in what why is Gatsby “Great”? His “success” and “respectability” are corrupt and shallow. He was “great” at being a criminal with fellows like his Mr. Wolfsheim.
The broader irony of the story is indeed apropos of Alan Krueger’s point, there was actually very little upward social mobility in the 1920′s, at least through honest, hard work. There was as much income inequity then as now. Mr. Gatz, the “Great” Gatsby’s father, works hard and honestly all of his live but is penniless his whole life. His son achieves upward social mobility but only through dishonest means.
So unless I am missing something, I see the Gatsby Curve as illustrative in economics as the Great Gatsby was ironic as literature.
It’s about his character! The most famous line: “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
His worth has nothing to do with his money or how he made it. It’s the quality of his character.
As I said: The only people who will move up in society are the ones with the character to do it.
As for irony, that’s a diluted term, which cannot be applied to all literature simply because it sounds intelligent. Fitzgerald made little use of irony in his novels. Very much so in his stories, but his novels have more clarity. The great irony of his age was that talented, bright young Americans wasted themselves.
Sound familiar?
Ms. Pennington,
You wrote:”It's about his character! The most famous line: ‘You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.’”
The man was a criminal. Yes it was about character, bad character. The statement is ironic. Nick Carraway thinks that Jay Gatsby is worth more than Daisy, Tom, Jordan, &c but that is backhanded compliment. They are lazy, thoughtless, careless, and cruel people. That Jay Gatsby is “worth” more than those people are is no real compliment at all! It is like saying “Well Mussolini was better than Hitler”, perhaps but that is hardly much as praise goes.
This is the danger of irony, it can be easily missed.
All of Fitzgerald’s characters are victims of their era. (Yet universal, which is why we still read them in school). People of good character corrupted by their superfluity. Gatsby’s only crime was holding fast to an unattainable dream. The last line of the book is inscribed on Fitzgerald’s tombstone. That’s the essence of the age—the fruitlessness.
It’s not about money and making sure everyone has the same number of dollars in their pocket. It’s about being a worthwhile person, a hero of our own creation. Everyone feels they are entitled to exactly the situation they desire. The mansion in East Egg. They want what’s fair in their minds. But we’re a world of complex characters. The fictional man you consider a criminal had, as we read in the first few pages of the book, “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness” that Nick says he will never find again. To me, that makes him worthwhile. Yet you compared him to Mussolini, a gratuitous insertion of fascism into an otherwise chaste discussion of American literature.
So why then can some people claim to know the character of other people? How can we say that men with money and power are evil and undeserving and people camped out in tents are righteous? Because it’s fashionable to assault those with more? Gatsby’s dream was unattainable, but the American Dream is not. It’s the dream of cowboys, not prefab split-levels. It’s the dream of being our own selves, not owning the things we see in commercials.
Perhaps I’m too lofty-minded to offer practical solutions to complicated problems. Perhaps I should leave that to our economists and their charts. I just ask two things: that people remind themselves of their own human potential and free will outside of the state apparatus and that people actually go back and read F. Scott Fitzgerald if they haven’t done so since they were 16.
Ms. Pennington,
You wrote;”Gatsby's only crime was holding fast to an unattainable dream”
I have to disagree, he was certainly guilty of dealing in illegally produced liquor (given the realities of the tine and crime, he probably was also guilty of tax evasion). He was also guilty of pretending to be something he was not, he was not the owner of a chain of drug stores as he claimed nor was his name Gatsby. He was a complete fake.
Further, what was his “dream” but to win the respect of the wealthy people who Mr. Carraway thinks Jay Gatsby is better than, the selfish, cruel, and thoughtless people Mr. Gatsby wrongly admires. He dreams of winning the heart of Daisy who, despite her “high” birth is actually beneath him. The final irony is that his vain dream, a dream of wealth, respect, and love was built on lies, kills him. His lies, warped values, and misplaced dreams gun him down amidst his luxurious but empty surroundings.
You wrote “Yet you compared him to Mussolini, a gratuitous insertion of fascism into an otherwise chaste discussion of American literature.”. I did no such thing. I compared Mussolini to Hitler to illustrate the irony of faint praise, like Nick Carraway’s faint praise of Jay Gatsby.
You wrote:”So why then can some people claim to know the character of other people? How can we say that men with money and power are evil and undeserving and people camped out in tents are righteous? Because it's fashionable to assault those with more?”. No one says that the wealthy are evil just because they are wealthy or that the poor are virtuous by virtue of being poor. You are holding up a straw man argument that you can knock down. The problem is that a few people are becoming wealthier by impoverishing millions of others.
You wrote:”Perhaps I'm too lofty-minded to offer practical solutions to complicated problems.”. The problem is not lofty-mindedness but a failure to understand the irony Mr. Fitzgarld’s work and how that irony illuminated the social problems of the 1920′s and today.
Hello David,
Yes, he was a bootlegger. Had he occupied himself similarly a few years before, he would have been probably a credible businessman responding to the needs of the community. But the temperance movement and a foolish hunt for votes urged the authorities to criminalize an aged product and behaviour that had received little sanction or penalty from the state since the birth of the US.
And it was not only those that produced and distributed the alcohol that fall under your definition of criminal. It is also the millions of US citizens, a number of them very prominent, that indulged in the use of these proscribed substances during this period of unreasoned government intervention into the daily life of Americans.
The US Government admitted its mistake by repealing the legal sanctions. You see, the US Government got it all wrong, and so acted. The problem was not the American people, but the US Government.
Hitler essentially criminalized being a Jew in Germany. Now if one disagreed actively with the policy and laws, the Jewish sympathizer then became a criminal by Hitler’s standard, and also by yours. Just because a law is enacted does not make it right. Just ask Mussolini, Hitler, Hussein, Ghaddafi, and so many other unfortunate leaders about the proceeds of ridiculous, immoral, criminal, and unsound legislation.
And what do we have presently. We have the same mentality criminalizing or enforcing all penalties against all sorts of similar behaviour and practices engaged in by millions of US citizens.
GM
Hello Ms. Pennington,
You will have to forgive David. He is an idealist, but of a rather stupid kind. He sees only what he wishes to see. He has his ideal. Those facts or evidence which agree with it, he acknowledges. Those which do not, he happily ignores.
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