Under the Red White and Blue

"And with the antidemocratic exclusion that Fitzgerald saw, a heavy door is slammed on the American experiment and the 'greatness' Americans love to claim. Marcus reminds us what a collective slap in the face Tom's assertion of hereditary dominance really is to the way America likes to think of itself. The cruelty is felt by those who want to become Americans, many of whom suffer unimaginably in the process, and by those who already are Americans by birth but either can't or won't fit this narrow mold. In Tom's world, as in ours now, you're either in or you're out. The very American Dream we're all told so much about, with its promises of pursuits of happiness, recedes ever farther, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

At The Baffler, Matt Hanson uses a new book by Greil Marcus to discuss the "Gatsbys of Our Time."