12 Postcolonial criticism

By the early 1920s, the automobile had become the new machine that everyone wanted. Unlike the American landscape of just fifteen years earlier, in which cars were an oddity, in 1920 cars could be seen everywhere, and traffic jams were not uncommon in American cities (O’Meara 53). In The Great Gatsby, in addition to the autos owned by the main characters, cars on the road are routinely mentioned whenever the characters drive into Manhattan. Moreover, Nick mentions traffic jams at least twice: he reports that the cars “parked five deep” (44: ch. 3) in Gatsby’s driveway one Saturday evening become tied up in a traffic jam when the party is over (58; ch. 3), and Nick tells us that he likes to walk up 5th Avenue at eight o’clock in the evening when “the dark lanes of the Forties [are] five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district” (62; ch. 3). Indeed, on their way to Manhattan, the two cars carrying Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Nick, and Jordan can’t even pull up side by side for a brief exchange of words without “a cursing whistle [from a truck] behind [them]” (132; ch. 7). No doubt, modern times have arrived. Although the reading materials mentioned in The Great Gatsby are not numer‑ ous, they are significant in terms of their contribution to the novel’s sense of place, for they offer us a glimpse of the beliefs that were prevalent among many Americans at that time. For example, Tom’s reference to The Rise of the Coloured Empires by Goddard, which echoes the sentiments of The Rising Tide of Color (1920) by Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, bespeaks an opinion widely held in the 1920s that “the dominant ‘Nordic’ race was being threatened by the intermar‑ riage . . . with persons of ‘inferior’ races” (Gidley 173). Indeed, The Saturday Evening Post, which is also mentioned in the novel (22; ch. 1) and which was the most popular magazine in the United States at that time, began in 1920 to recommend the ideas of a similarly racist book Madison Grant published in 1916 entitled The Passing of the Great Race (Gidley 173). In fact, the popularity of Nordicism—the belief that the United States was founded and developed by the “Nordic race” and that the “cross‑breeding” of this “superior” race with other races would result in the disappearance of the “Nordic race” (Decker 122)—was so widespread in the early 1920s that a restrictive Immigration Bill was passed in 1924 and supported by President Coolidge, who said that “America must be kept American” (cited in Decker 123). Mention of the popular New York newspapers of the day, the Tribune (42; ch. 2)—presumably the New York Tribune or the New York Herald Tribune, which absorbed the former in 1922 (see “New York Herald Tribune”)—and the Journal (89; ch. 5), presumably the New York Journal American, as well as Town Tattle and similar “scandal magazines of Broadway” (31; ch. 2) also contribute to the novel’s evocation of place: these are newspapers and magazines published in New York with an eye to news likely to be of interest to New Yorkers. An analo‑ gous claim can be made for the novel’s reference to Robert Keable’s Simon Called

Peter (1921), a popular novel of the day. Its plot concerns “an army chaplain who becomes involved in passionate episodes” (Bruccoli, “Explanatory Notes” 209), a subject that clearly resonates with the 1920s reputation for living life in the fast lane and breaking all the old rules. Finally, places mentioned in the novel are often so specifically located that we could probably find our way to them, in 1922 at least, with just a copy of The Great Gatsby as our guide. To cite just a few of the novel’s many examples, we learn that the Plaza Hotel fronts “the south side of Central Park” (132; ch. 7), that movie stars—many movies were made in New York in those days—lived in “tall apartments . . . in the West Fifties” (83; ch. 4), that we can go to a movie in one of the “big” movie theatres “around Fiftieth Street” (132; ch. 7), that the old Murray Hill Hotel is located on Madison Avenue within walking distance from the financial district in lower Manhattan, and that Pennsylvania Station is on West Thirty‑third Street (61; ch. 3). And if we can get a member to sponsor us, we can visit the Yale Club, where Nick usually eats dinner, and see its library, which is still located on the second floor, where Nick “studied investments and securities” after his evening meal (61; ch. 3). We also learn that we can get from Great Neck (West Egg) or Manhasset Neck (East Egg), Long Island, to Manhat‑ tan by crossing the Queensboro Bridge (73; ch. 4). And we’d recognize the view of the city, as Nick describes it from that bridge—buildings “rising up . . . in white heaps and sugar lumps” (73; ch. 4)—because the buildings actually had “[w]hite and light . . . finishes” (O’Meara 58). Indeed, on our way from Long Island to the Queensboro Bridge, we’re even prepared to pass by the unpleasant sights and smells of the Corona dump, known in the novel as the “valley of ashes” (27; ch. 2), which was “a swamp . . . being filled with ashes, garbage, and manure” (Bruc‑ coli, “Explanatory Notes” 208). As I mentioned earlier, the cultural details noted here are but a small sampling of The Great Gatsby’s evocation of 1920s Manhat‑ tan, a city with which the novel’s main characters are well acquainted. Although in point of fact, Manhattan is just one of five boroughs of New York City (the others are Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island), The Great Gatsby’s characters refer to Manhattan, just as we do today, as New York City, New York, the city, or even just town. And they know that it’s the place to go for fun as well as to conduct business. As early as page 15 (ch. 1), Daisy responds to Jordan’s complaint about lying on the sofa all afternoon by saying, “Don’t look at me. . . . I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.” Nick works in New York, of course, but he also spends much of his leisure time there, dining at the Yale Club after work, walking around lower Manhattan after dinner (61; ch. 3), and “trotting around with Jordan” (107; ch. 6). We even see the couple driving through Manhattan’s Central Park in a horse‑drawn Victoria (83; ch. 4), a vehicle similar to the horse‑drawn hansom cabs in which twosomes tour the park today. Myrtle, who lives in the borough of Queens, often visits her sister in