On Reimagining The Great Gatsby As A Black American Story

When I first discovered Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt I didn’t consciousness for illustration nan sound was reaching maine not done my ears. Rather it was vibrating done my skin. It was visceral, haunting, unsettling… its hit pressed guardant pinch a throbbing, seething frustration.

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Trent Reznor was still successful his twenties astatine its recording, which made Hurt the benignant of azygous that could unnerve older generations arsenic they held it up arsenic a motion of nan brooding aggression of nan day’s youth.

And then, years later, astatine nan property of seventy-two and 10 months earlier his death, Johnny Cash released a screen of Hurt. With a sound shaking pinch stubborn but dwindling life, he gave nan world a gentle, profound, heartbreaking type of nan azygous that had group each complete nan state pressing their hands complete their hearts, flooded pinch a bittersweet melancholy.

Cash didn’t effort to copy Rezner’s Hurt. Instead, he responded to it, sang it into a different genre, gave it caller discourse and added a caller furniture to nan speech astir nan original work.

That’s what you telephone a awesome cover.

It’s besides what I sought to do erstwhile I wrote The Great Mann, my 1945, Black reimagining of The Great Gatsby. I group this reimagining successful nan real, humanities Los Angeles vicinity of Sugar Hill wherever able African American business moguls and movie stars lived successful mansions and threw lavish, Gatsbyesque galas.

Readers of The Great Mann will walk clip pinch nan existent residents of this rarefied spot specified arsenic Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Williams and Lena Horne. All of them arsenic attracted to luxury arsenic Jay Gatsby aliases Daisy Buchannon were.

The Great Mann will now beryllium portion of nan rich | and varied history of retellings of classics. We’ve seen it our music, books, films and plays. In West Side Story Riff dances down nan thoroughfare pinch his pack declaring, “When you’re a Jet you’re ever a Jet…” moreover though underneath it all, we cognize he’s really a Capulet.

We callback nan themes and characters of our favourite Dickens novels erstwhile we publication The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt moreover earlier we’re introduced to a characteristic named Pippa.  We watch pinch delighted scary arsenic Poe’s haunting brilliant takes caller style successful nan tv series, The Fall Of The House Of Usher.

And The Great Gatsby? There are fewer American novels that person inspired truthful galore interpretations successful almost each mean 1 tin deliberation of. Some are dazzling but others look to deficiency a raison d’étre.  Plugging successful somewhat different characters, actors aliases euphony into nan nonstop aforesaid communicative isn’t enough. The extremity can’t conscionable beryllium to capitalize disconnected Fitzgerald’s story—to return connected a classic, 1 must person purpose.

Purpose is what you find successful Percival Everett’s James, nan groundbreaking retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain was a progressive for his time. With nan Adventures of Huckleberry Finn he asked his readers to place pinch nan mischievous Huck and consciousness affection for his sweetly foolish friend, a runaway enslaved named Jim.

In James, Percival Everett asks his readers to consciousness affection for Huck and to understand James. Twain dared to subordinate nan expectations of critics by utilizing nan colloquial dialect and slang of those pinch small education. But Everett reminds america that men for illustration James had to hide their eloquence and learning successful bid to survive.

James is not an imitation of Twain’s book, nor is it a critique of it. It is simply a consequence to it.

With The Great Mann I am, responding to The Great Gatsby. More specifically, I’m responding to 4 propulsion distant sentences Fitzgerald tucked wrong its pages:

As we crossed Blackwell’s Island, a limousine passed us, driven by a achromatic chauffeur, successful which sat 3 modish negroes, 2 bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud arsenic nan yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward america successful haughty rivalry.

“Anything tin hap now that we’ve slid complete this bridge,” I though; “anything astatine all…”

Even Gatsby could happen, without immoderate peculiar wonder.

Fitzgerald utilized these wealthy, African Americans described successful bestial terms, arsenic a constituent of joke and arsenic a measurement of showing really nan spot his protagonist recovered himself successful was outlandish and preposterous to nan constituent that Black men could beryllium able capable to prosecute a achromatic driver.

Fitzgerald was a genius, but erstwhile it came to title he lacked enlightenment. While visiting Europe successful 1921, 4 years earlier publishing The Great Gatsby, he wrote a missive to chap writer Edmund Wilson successful which he stated:

The negroid streak creeps northward to defile nan Nordic race. Already nan Italians person nan souls of blackamoors. Raise nan bars of migration and licence only Scandinavians, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons and Celts to enter…I deliberation it’s a shame that England and American didn’t fto Germany conquer Europe. It’s nan only point that would person saved nan fleet of tottering aged wrecks….

I judge astatine past successful nan achromatic man’s burden. We are arsenic acold supra nan modern Frenchman arsenic he is supra nan Negro.

So, he’s not precisely trying to beryllium subtle here. What’s unnerving is that this missive was written successful nan aforesaid twelvemonth that nan able African Americans of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street were maimed, slaughtered and stripped of each their possessions by a achromatic mob who recovered it outlandish and preposterous that Black Americans should unrecorded pinch immoderate benignant of luxury astatine all.

I cannot abstracted nan man from his art. But I tin clasp emotion for nan creation of a profoundly flawed man. There are individuals who tin beryllium mini and sadistic successful their individual lives only to entree their champion selves and go expansive and wise while successful nan throes of imaginative genius. I tin condemn 1 and observe nan other.

I observe Fitzgerald’s art. I americium inspired by his genius. With his writing, he demanded we, his readers, grapple pinch some our attraction and our repulsion to conspicuous displays of wealth. He skillfully explored themes of reinvention, capitalism and nan contradictions of nan American dream.

But of course, it’s African Americans who person been nan motor of this country’s reinvention.  It is African Americans who collectively rejected nan roles we were initially assigned by Western Society.

I besides can’t deliberation of immoderate organization that has had a much analyzable narration pinch capitalism than Black Americans.

Retellings activity erstwhile they person purpose. They besides must move to their ain hit and person their ain voice.

With The Great Mann I return a portion of little-known Black history and weave it done nan building of 1 of nan world’s best-known stories. By dressing an overlooked organization successful nan dazzling garments of Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel I americium doing what I tin to make judge they are seen. That’s my purpose.

I americium fundamentally taking a classical symphony and brining it into nan genre of soul.

In nan extremity it will beryllium nan readers who decided if they tin creation to it.

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The Great Mann by Kyra Davis Lurie is disposable via Crown. Featured image courtesy LA Public Library (Sugar Hill, circa 1950)