Interesting Theory (Willie)

Lois Tyson's tendency to exhibit obsessive compulsive behavior in regards to facts and, fairly often, factoids, becomes extremely excessive and monotonous after, say, 20 pages. I'll just say "hyperbole" and leave that issue alone. With that said, her African-American critique of The Great Gatsby raises an idea that I never, throughout all of the time we spent reading and analyzing it, had come to think of; that is, the fact that blacks and black culture are all but entirely omitted from the text. In the context of her arguments, this reveals a layer of racism not inherently evident in the novel. However, returning to Tyson's disposition towards stretching facts and hypnotic methods of indoctrinating her readers, one must realize that her theses bring to the table a number of fallacies. In this essay, she constantly mentions that Fitzgerald was attempting to create an almost textbook description of the '20s in New York. What she fails to mention is that the primary locations in which the novel takes place, East and West Egg, are not technically real locations. On top of this, it is a novel and not a textbook. This, to a degree, undermines the idea of the theory in the first place, but I think that shows the weakness and fragility of race-, gender-, and sex-based criticism. That opens up a whole new can of worms, though...