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Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby
An "astute, challenging, and far-reaching” look ( Kirkus Reviews , starred) at how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of the American Dream has been understood, portrayed, distorted, misused, and kept alive
“I found great pleasure in . . . Under the Red White and Blue . . . about the idea of the American dream, its allure, the exploitation of it.” —Percival Everett, New York Times Book Review , “By The Book” section
Renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald’s story has become a key to American culture and American life itself.
Marcus follows the arc of The Great Gatsby from 1925 into the ways it has insinuated itself into works by writers such as Philip Roth and Raymond Chandler; found echoes in the work of performers from Jelly Roll Morton to Lana Del Rey; and continued to rewrite both its own story and that of the country at large in the hands of dramatists and filmmakers from the 1920s to John Collins’s 2006 Gatz and Baz Luhrmann’s critically reviled (here celebrated) 2013 movie version—the fourth, so far.
“I found great pleasure in . . . Under the Red White and Blue . . . about the idea of the American dream, its allure, the exploitation of it.” —Percival Everett, New York Times Book Review , “By The Book” section
Renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald’s story has become a key to American culture and American life itself.
Marcus follows the arc of The Great Gatsby from 1925 into the ways it has insinuated itself into works by writers such as Philip Roth and Raymond Chandler; found echoes in the work of performers from Jelly Roll Morton to Lana Del Rey; and continued to rewrite both its own story and that of the country at large in the hands of dramatists and filmmakers from the 1920s to John Collins’s 2006 Gatz and Baz Luhrmann’s critically reviled (here celebrated) 2013 movie version—the fourth, so far.
176 pages, Paperback
Published September 21, 2021
8 people are currently reading
154 people want to read
About the author
Greil Marcus
101 books273 followersGreil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He lives in Oakland, California.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 23, 2021
This collection of essays revolving around the role of 'The Great Gatsby' in American life and culture takes its inspiration from a telegram the author reprints at the very beginning of the book in which Fitzgerald asks his publisher what delay would result if the novel was re-titled, 'Under the Red White and Blue.'
Marcus looks at several fairly recent artifacts; the DiCaprio film and the stage reading, Gatz as well as the less faithful film adaptations of earlier times. I particularly enjoyed his readings of the DiCaprio film which got panned despite hitting a cord with the public that made it a big financial success. He suggests that this film captures the essence of the story which is displayed in the ridiculousness of the Gatsby house. Marcus also finds much in the DiCaprio performance to praise as well. In particular the way DiCaprio captures the quicksilver transformations that come over Gatsby. Gatsby is a hollowed out man with a shiny surface. DiCaprio captures both those sides to him which is what the people in the novel and people generally ever since have responded to in Gatsby.
The essays convey that most enduring American quality; the brash, bold, shiny belief that money can transform any individual into ersatz royalty. And that is what Americans want, royalty without the ability to reign. We want the gaudiness, the spectacle and the freedom to trash it at anytime. Just as we are able to trash our own environment. Every place is Las Vegas or the Gatsby Mansion; an improbable creation where right next store a fanboy like Nick lives in a ramshackle cottage. This is why the novel is the Great American Novel. It would never be another country's great novel because the character of Gatsby lacks depth just like an infantile America that loves it when certain citizens yell at moments of their greatest fear at being overtaken by Tom Buchanan's 'other,' that America is the greatest country that ever existed on the face of the Earth.
Marcus looks at several fairly recent artifacts; the DiCaprio film and the stage reading, Gatz as well as the less faithful film adaptations of earlier times. I particularly enjoyed his readings of the DiCaprio film which got panned despite hitting a cord with the public that made it a big financial success. He suggests that this film captures the essence of the story which is displayed in the ridiculousness of the Gatsby house. Marcus also finds much in the DiCaprio performance to praise as well. In particular the way DiCaprio captures the quicksilver transformations that come over Gatsby. Gatsby is a hollowed out man with a shiny surface. DiCaprio captures both those sides to him which is what the people in the novel and people generally ever since have responded to in Gatsby.
The essays convey that most enduring American quality; the brash, bold, shiny belief that money can transform any individual into ersatz royalty. And that is what Americans want, royalty without the ability to reign. We want the gaudiness, the spectacle and the freedom to trash it at anytime. Just as we are able to trash our own environment. Every place is Las Vegas or the Gatsby Mansion; an improbable creation where right next store a fanboy like Nick lives in a ramshackle cottage. This is why the novel is the Great American Novel. It would never be another country's great novel because the character of Gatsby lacks depth just like an infantile America that loves it when certain citizens yell at moments of their greatest fear at being overtaken by Tom Buchanan's 'other,' that America is the greatest country that ever existed on the face of the Earth.
June 15, 2024
Marcus’ riffs sometimes seem stray off topic, but it was a real treat to hear this genius of American Studies, Cultural Studies, and music history, discuss the legacy of the Great Gatsby, especially in film.
May 13, 2020
Marcus' discussion traces a few of the resonances from Fitzgerald's novel, not just in Moby-Dick, written 75 years before, or in film adaptations, but in the blues and jazz of the Twenties, in Gilbert Seldes' The 7 Lively Arts, in staged readings of the novel, including Andy Kaufman's 1978 SNL appearance, and in the central chapter, John Collins' Elevator Repair Service performance of the text, called Gatz on stage, in the early 2000s. A premise of this latter was that on a stage, the text comes alive in a way mere reading (to say nothing of literary criticism) would not dramatize; Marcus, taking a reporter's warrant as his own, describes a Gatz performance as he traces out these resonances. These performances only occurred a few times across a decade. In a sense Marcus' description of them is spurious; not altogether appreciation of Gatz but nonetheless built on top of their interpretation of Fitzgerald. The effect in Marcus' prose is of a highly intertextual citation of myriad sources, often, within the same sentence, balanced in relation to each other. Usually some Fitzgerald gets in there.
The fascination in this technique is how it plays the novel's disenchantment out against nostalgia. The Great Gatsby remains in certain ways a difficult if glamorous text. The novel's opening sentences raise the issue of Nick Carraway's privilege in relation to his dupery, his tendency to be exposed, and Marcus wants to make it clear it's his author's criticism most of all we should be sensitive to. The Midwesterner's bootlessness in NYC is understood here as a plea for Gatsby's Jewishness, that operates similarly to David Lurie's (in Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, though the technique may come over from Dostoevsky). It had not occurred to me before to link Hyman Roth's remark, to Michael Corleone, in The Godfather II, that he'd loved "baseball ever since Arnold Wolfstein fixed the World Series in 1919" with Meyer Wolfsheim in Fitzgerald's novel, about whom the same remark is made. Marcus asks what the resonance of this remark is. Gatsby is Wolfsheim's prodigy. As Tom Buchanan complains about Gatsby in the hotel room, "nibbling," as Nick is aware, "at the edge of stale ideas" -- these being essentially the peril the white races find themselves in through "interracial marriage" and the like -- it's Nick's declassé indifference that Marcus hears as disenchantment. Jordan Baker links Tom's pout to the novel's opening lines: "We're all white here," she demurs. Marcus' point is that this isn't how the Tom Buchanans of the world view it. Marcus connects the novel's play in difference to the current Tom Buchanan in our midst, who occupies the White House. Our disenchantment is our own peril, Marcus seems to be saying.
The fascination in this technique is how it plays the novel's disenchantment out against nostalgia. The Great Gatsby remains in certain ways a difficult if glamorous text. The novel's opening sentences raise the issue of Nick Carraway's privilege in relation to his dupery, his tendency to be exposed, and Marcus wants to make it clear it's his author's criticism most of all we should be sensitive to. The Midwesterner's bootlessness in NYC is understood here as a plea for Gatsby's Jewishness, that operates similarly to David Lurie's (in Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, though the technique may come over from Dostoevsky). It had not occurred to me before to link Hyman Roth's remark, to Michael Corleone, in The Godfather II, that he'd loved "baseball ever since Arnold Wolfstein fixed the World Series in 1919" with Meyer Wolfsheim in Fitzgerald's novel, about whom the same remark is made. Marcus asks what the resonance of this remark is. Gatsby is Wolfsheim's prodigy. As Tom Buchanan complains about Gatsby in the hotel room, "nibbling," as Nick is aware, "at the edge of stale ideas" -- these being essentially the peril the white races find themselves in through "interracial marriage" and the like -- it's Nick's declassé indifference that Marcus hears as disenchantment. Jordan Baker links Tom's pout to the novel's opening lines: "We're all white here," she demurs. Marcus' point is that this isn't how the Tom Buchanans of the world view it. Marcus connects the novel's play in difference to the current Tom Buchanan in our midst, who occupies the White House. Our disenchantment is our own peril, Marcus seems to be saying.
December 5, 2024
I was hoping for more of a critical analysis of The Great Gatsby, and some historical context. But this felt like the author was just riffing.
May 22, 2020
My take on Marcus's book, and some of the bigger social implications of Fitzgerald's, once again for the great magazine The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/gatsbys...
August 29, 2022
Maybe it says something about the sometimes oblique angle Greil Marcus comes from that in a book about The Great Gatsby, it takes a third of the way in for the actual text of the book to be introduced in more than passing glances, and even then it's through the mediation of a theatrical performance. Before, during and after arriving at that point, there's a mountain of purposeful digressions into other cultural artifacts that glance off of The Great Gatsby and its influence, some from Fitzgerald's time, some of the aftermath that fell under his shadow, and a few that frankly felt like kind of a reach. As another reader once put it about Marcus's style, here he lets everything remind him of everything else, and while pulling things in from all directions can be revelatory at times, some of his shots go straight into the weeds. Eventually we do make it back to Gatsby after these side-trips, but it does take some time.
Which is my way of saying that if you're from the "stick to what's on the page" school of literary criticism, you'll be tempted to throw this book across the room.
And yes, I did like "Under The Red White And Blue", but I'm not convinced that all the things I liked in it had a connection to Fitzgerald or Gatsby.
Which is my way of saying that if you're from the "stick to what's on the page" school of literary criticism, you'll be tempted to throw this book across the room.
And yes, I did like "Under The Red White And Blue", but I'm not convinced that all the things I liked in it had a connection to Fitzgerald or Gatsby.
January 24, 2021
I am preparing in a few weeks to teach The Great Gatsby graphic novel so I wanted to read something that wasn't the kind of typical literary criticism that I'd seen or read before. There are a lot of connections that I enjoyed but I wonder if students would miss or not completely understand. I've read a bit of Raymond Chandler but I doubt my students have. The strongest part of Marcus' work here is tracing film adaptations, particularly the 1974 film and its failings. As someone whose parents were quite taken with that adaptation (there was a huge framed poster of the film hanging in our family room where we watched TV) this was a really interesting delving into how it was perceived and why the lens of nostalgia was so damaging.
I found his analysis and embrace of Baz Luhrman's film fascinating since there seemed to be much criticism upon its release, a lot of which I felt was unwarranted.
Ultimately, I enjoyed Marcus' analysis throughout and it was a quick read. Good preparation for teaching the novel. I'm going to have my students read a chapter, as well.
I found his analysis and embrace of Baz Luhrman's film fascinating since there seemed to be much criticism upon its release, a lot of which I felt was unwarranted.
Ultimately, I enjoyed Marcus' analysis throughout and it was a quick read. Good preparation for teaching the novel. I'm going to have my students read a chapter, as well.
June 20, 2021
This extended essay offers some interesting insights into 'Gatsby', but is often repetitive and sometimes wanders far afield. Still, it has a place in the library of any 'Gatsby' fan.
August 15, 2022
“But as Pauline Karl said of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, “it is generally only good movies that provoke attacks.” Bad movies don’t send critics to the ramparts,; they file them by genre and move on. Luhrmann had struck a nerve. It might have been that going on a century since Fitzgerald’s story first appeared, Luhrmann had completed it: brought it to a fullness that, when the final note was hit, revealed that the movie was what the book had been searching for all along. He tore the tale around the edges, giving it a new frame. He filled in the plot with drunken could make you think a movie director had somehow divined hat a long-dead novelist wanted to say but couldn’t.”
NOPE. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Despite this tidbit in the beginning, I kept reading…and regretted it. It was poorly edited and organized.And perhaps too much time dedicated rehashing storylines and plots of the works he claims are inspired by The Great Gatsby instead of literary criticism. Probably something that would have been a lot better if treated as an extended essay, rather than a book, and forced to have more focus. As it is, it reads like it was written by an old man having trouble staying on topic and desperately pulling older and newer pop culture items to prove that he was and still is hip.
NOPE. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Despite this tidbit in the beginning, I kept reading…and regretted it. It was poorly edited and organized.And perhaps too much time dedicated rehashing storylines and plots of the works he claims are inspired by The Great Gatsby instead of literary criticism. Probably something that would have been a lot better if treated as an extended essay, rather than a book, and forced to have more focus. As it is, it reads like it was written by an old man having trouble staying on topic and desperately pulling older and newer pop culture items to prove that he was and still is hip.
August 4, 2025
I enjoyed listening to this meandering, lucid essay. It illuminates some things I wouldn’t have thought of had I overlooked the title. Since I read Gatsby less than two years back, I was ready. But I was not a big fan of the most recent film. So, I think our opinions may differ there. Maybe I should read a Philip Roth novel soon. Referenced here by Marcus and by someone else I was speaking to recently. I would definitely read another title by Marcus.
November 18, 2024
Between the scattered readings of various Gatsby adaptations and vainglorious attempts to mine the Ur-text for nuggets of relevance there’s a disconnect between the ramblings here and the attempt to concoct a thesis regarding the ‘self-made’ American: as analytical fanfic, it’s no And So We Read On but that’s a tough act to follow.
August 30, 2020
For fans of early modern American literature (and specifically of Fitzgerald's Gatsby), this is a a jaunty review of why and how Gatsby has remained relevant nearly a century after it was first published. Good bits on the Baz Luhrmann movie and a nice tangent on Melville and Moby Dick.
March 24, 2022
There were some really fascinating ideas, but the organization (or lack thereof) made it more difficult to follow in some sections.
March 29, 2024
I have read The Great Gatsby twice. 30 years ago and then 3 years ago. I guess I didn't get it. And thus I don't get this book. I found it obtuse. Sorry Greil.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews