The part that annoyed me most was when Tyson said that the whites "stole" jazz from the African Americans. "Apparently, Fitzgerald decided not only to remove African Americans from his representation of the Jazz Age, but he also decided to remove jazz from the hands of the African Americans who invented it. For the novel gives the credit for jazz symbolically to whites. The only musicians we see playing jazz are the white musicians at Gatsby's party." (Tyson, 405). If Tyson considers it racist for whites to play jazz music, 'stealing' it from African Americans, then in Tyson's eyes, it must be racist for African Americans to play classical music, because that would be stealing it from Beethoven, or Mozart, right?
Something else that really bothered me was how she spent so long writing about the "sense of place", but only a few pages on actually why the text was racist. If she can only provide a few pages of why the text is actually racist, and some of those pages are examples of how Fitzgerald himself was a racist, that does not provide a strong argument for the text. Yes, Fitzgerald was a racist, but Tyson cannot prove that is the reason the Harlem Renaissance was excluded from the book. The author's intent is never truly known, therefore Tyson is just spit-balling; after rambling for a little while, she hopes that one of her arguments appears to be strong enough.
After reading Tyson's essays, I have said that all of them are stretching it to be plausible; however, I found that this one stretches it the most. Yes, some characters are racists, yes the Harlem Renaissance was omitted; that doesn't make the text racist and offensive to African Americans. I have a few questions after reading this: Do you think that having a racist author automatically makes the text racist? Is ignorance/omission considered racism? Do you think that the Harlem Renaissance had any effect on the text, but just wasn't included in the text?
The very first thing we studied out of Tyson’s book is about the “death of the author” (1). The death of the author is taking the “authorial intent”(2) out a text, and viewing the text as its own entity. “…the author is no longer considered a meaningful object of analysis. We focus, instead, on the reader: on the ideological, rhetorical, or aesthetic structure of the text… So, for all intents and purposes, the author is ‘dead’.” (2) This relatively simple idea has applied to every criticism we have studied and Tyson has kept authorial intent out of her essays for the most part. In this essay by contrast the thesis seems to be: the text is racist because Fitzgerald the “chronicler of his times” (396) has left out the rapidly developing black history and culture in the Harlem Renaissance. This observation may prove something about Fitzgerald, but it certainly doesn’t say anything about the text because as we know, the text is a timeless piece of work that neither the author’s intent nor the author’s time affects. In this essay Tyson spends almost ¾ of her time talking about Fitzgerald’s use of setting, and about ¼ describing how the text is racist. It would be appropriate to argue that calling Fitzgerald the chronicler of his times is racist given his omission of the Harlem Renaissance, but to call the text racist based on authorial intent would be going against most of our studies of criticisms this year.
ReplyDeleteRacism does not have to be intended, and I think Tyson's assertion that Gatsby is racist is correct. As you say, she spends a lot of time analyzing Fitzgerald's use of "place". She does this to make her first point: that The Great Gatsby is a book that attempts to give insight into 1920s society. She proves, through extensive examples, that the text appears to be trying to paint a picture of the "roaring twenties". She then asserts that an in-depth picture is woefully incomplete without inclusion of Black society. Be it "consciously or unconsciously" (Tyson 407), the omission is, in and of itself, racist. Chronicling the 20s without mention of Black influence is like chronicling fast food without mention of the big mac. It discredits (or as Tyson would put it: robs) Blacks of their influence of Jazz and the "Jazz age".
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question Leslie: Yes, omission is racism. If I were the principle of a school and I had an awards ceremony at the end of the year, during which I gave awards only to white kids, ignoring the accomplishments of black kids, I'd be racist. This is essentially what Fitzgerald is doing. In The Great Gatsby he is describing all the cultural developments and social trends, but patently ignoring all those that were due to black culture. Tyson spends some time (as noted by Adam) giving evidence that Fitzgerald knew of Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance. For example, he often attended racially amalgamated parties (406). Therefore, nobody could say that the lack of mention of black influence was out of ignorance.
I agree with the points made above. If nothing else, this chapter allows Tyson to address Fitzgerald’s lack of acknowledgement toward the African American community, and allows the reader to logically conclude that the significance behind the glaring absence of the Harlem Renaissance (in Gatsby) is racist in itself. But does that deserve twenty pages?
ReplyDeleteAs the chapter drew to a close, I was left wondering what Tyson’s agenda was. It seems that she chose to criticize The Great Gatsby through an African American lens solely to parallel the other examples throughout CTT. Perhaps, for the sake of the reader (because this is a text book, in sorts), she should have chosen a different text to examine – one that she could apply some of her aforementioned definitions to. In the end, her examples were too weak to be stretched over an entire chapter, making it an unsatisfying read.
-Sandra
Very nice post. I completely agree with all of your points. Tyson does bring up a semi-valid point of a nearly-complete omission of African American culture, but the majority of her writing is useless fillers, such as her endless listings of songs, books, and locations, that do little to add to her point.
ReplyDeleteTo directly address your second question regarding omission, I feel that it is a complete waste of time to attempt a thesis because something is lacking. Let's say an author, with a style similar to Fitzgerald's, wrote a fictional tale based upon a youth living in Burlington. He or she might briefly mention culture phenomenon's such as Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," Katy Perry's "Fireworks," a Burlington-based graffiti artist, or Leunig's Bistro. Notice how I didn't include any songs by Rihanna or Beyonce, or an exotic restaurant, such as Souza's. While the 20's may have been considered the Jazz Age, there is no doubt in my mind that African Culture is exponentially more widespread and available in modern times, yet you could easily miss it on a casual stroll in the city.
My point? If there truly were racist undertones in "The Great Gatsby," Tyson would not have had to spend dozens of pages listing books and songs in order to stretch out her weak thesis.
I agree with these statements, and I would like to add that the missing presence of jazz in this novel, (as explained by Tyson on page 405), serves only to explain that this book does not provide an answer to the question of "who invented it" (Tyson, 405). It seems unfair for Tyson to suggest that Fitzgerald intended to "remove African Americans from his representation of the Jazz Age" (405), first, because it is impossible to know whether or not this omission was intentional, second, because this speculation of intention goes against aforementioned, (in the other comments), "death of the author" (1), and finally, because the difference between "remov[ing]" (405) an entire race from the novel and simply forgetting them, is tremendous, as well as equally undeterminable. While the evidence that suggests that Fitzgerald was a racist suggest that this omission was intentional, it cannot and will not ever serve to prove this speculation.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the question of whether or not having a racist author makes a text racist, I would argue that a text can be racist regardless of the authors prejudice, although it seems more plausible for a racist person to write a racist novel.
In response to the question of whether or not ignorance/omission is considered racism, I would argue that ignorance/omission can be racism if it is intentional, but intent is impossible to derive.
Given these two answers, and the previous discussion of Tyson's essay, it seems to me that Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" could very well be a racist text, because Fitzgerald himself was of the mindset where he would produce a racist work, and the omission of such a rich aspect of the culture was major, but these possibilities are not and can never serve as evidence for the racist nature of this text. The text itself is not inherently racist, although it very well could be, we just do not have enough knowledge to come to that conclusion. Because of this, the problem with Tyson's essay on African American Criticism and "The Great Gatsby" is that she simply does not have enough information to draw an answer to her question, but she attempts to anyways. This, I believe, does not work.