Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Fading Fast]

How about "whistling past the graveyard " I use it but dont hear it used much anymore.
All the Best ,Fashion Frank

Love this term and still use it, but rarely hear it used anymore. It is a powerful phrase that focuses the minds of those not appreciating the danger they are dancing with.

 

[Stearmen]

Terms that have not disappeared, but have done a 180 in meaning, Slick and Cowboy. They were both compliments into the 1950s, now you would be insulted if some one called you either of those names.

 

[Stanley Doble]

How about 'dude'. In a Thin Man mystery detective Nick Charles was trying to get into a millionaire's estate. The guard at the gate house, over the phone, described him this way "he looks like a pool hall dude".

Nick gave him a look but let it pass LOL.

The movie was from about 1938

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

How about 'dude'.
The movie was from about 1938

It's a long way from a fancy dresser to Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski!

 

[countryclubjoe]

From Gatsby, " How are you " OLD SPORT".. --

From Angel's With Dirty Faces, Rocky Sullivan, " Whata Hear Whata say"

 

[Fading Fast]

From Gatsby, " How are you " OLD SPORT".. --

From Angel's With Dirty Faces, Rocky Sullivan, " Whata Hear Whata say"

Was "old sport" a term that was in common usage in Fitzgerald's day? I thought I read somewhere that it was an affectation of Gatby's, but not necessarily a regularly used term. I bet LizzieMaine knows the answer.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Was "old sport" a term that was in common usage in Fitzgerald's day? I thought I read somewhere that it was an affectation of Gatby's, but not necessarily a regularly used term. I bet LizzieMaine knows the answer.

I haven't seen any postings from Lizzie in several days. Maybe she's still digging out from the blizzard that hit the northern Atlantic coast.

So I'll take a stab. It seems to me that "old xxxx" was, as the dictionaries say "chiefly British".
I've heard "old thing", "old boy", "old darling", and any number of other similar phrases in British movies and television shows.

Since Gatsby was, as I recall, a self-made illusion, my idea was that his use of "old sport"
was an affectation designed to give himself a faintly English flavor, and presumably a more respectable image.

 

[Fading Fast]

I haven't seen any postings from Lizzie in several days. Maybe she's still digging out from the blizzard that hit the northern Atlantic coast.

So I'll take a stab. It seems to me that "old xxxx" was, as the dictionaries say "chiefly British".
I've heard "old thing", "old boy", "old darling", and any number of other similar phrases in British movies and television shows.

Since Gatsby was, as I recall, a self-made illusion, my idea was that his use of "old sport"
was an affectation designed to give himself a faintly English flavor, and presumably a more respectable image.

That makes perfect sense as in the novel it also refers to Gatsby having been an "Oxford Man," but I think Tom debunks this as it comes out that Gatsby only spent a few months at Oxford, but he liked to affect the "Oxford Educated" pose. Very good LizzieMaine 2, I mean Kilo November.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Old fruit" is the one I always liked, but for some reason it fell out of favor.

Gatsby was a fluent speaker of "Kansas City British," that phony elocution-school dialect widely spoken by post-WW1 parvenus.

 

[sheeplady]

That makes perfect sense as in the novel it also refers to Gatsby having been an "Oxford Man," but I think Tom debunks this as it comes out that Gatsby only spent a few months at Oxford, but he liked to affect the "Oxford Educated" pose. Very good LizzieMaine 2, I mean Kilo November.

Gatsby was always very specific that he "went to oxford" and never said he graduated. Tom does debunk that he graduated, but it is not so much a debunking of what Gatsby said as it is a debunking of what people assume by the phrase "went to Oxford."

Gatsby, for all his illusions, is an honest man. I think the "went to oxford" phrase is meant to show how despite being an illusion, he is more honest and moral than the rest of the characters. (In my opinion.)

 

[Stanley Doble]

"old sport" was a phrase of Gatsby's but similar phrases like "old man" "old boy" "old top" were Britishisms of the time.

Fitzgerald borrowed the phrase from a man he knew who was one of the models for the Gatsby character. He often took people, incidents, and places from real life for his stories. One critic complimented him on his perfect ear for everyday speech. Gatsby is a perfect picture of that place and time, Long Island in the summer of 1922 written no more than a year or 2 later, by someone who lived there, and took the trouble to get the details right.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Jay Gatsby's life was a work of performance art created by Jimmy Gatz, a poor farm boy from North Dakota.

He may have been a crook and a four flusher but he was more of a real person than the society stuffed shirts around him. That is what Nick Carraway meant when he said "you are worth more than that whole crowd put together".

"So you are saying Gatsby was a phony and his life was a pack of lies?"

"He was an artist and his life was his art. Gatsby was real. It was Jimmy Gatz who was not real".

 

[Fading Fast]

Gatsby was always very specific that he "went to oxford" and never said he graduated. Tom does debunk that he graduated, but it is not so much a debunking of what Gatsby said as it is a debunking of what people assume by the phrase "went to Oxford."

Gatsby, for all his illusions, is an honest man. I think the "went to oxford" phrase is meant to show how despite being an illusion, he is more honest and moral than the rest of the characters. (In my opinion.)

I absolutely agree with your second point about him being more honest and moral than the rest of that crew (excluding Nick), but I'm not sure I'd agree that Gatsby is an honest man. Doesn't he tell some tall tales about his past (son of rich blah, blah, then, later, but they lost all their money - none of which was true) and aren't his business dealings illegal bootlegging? To be sure, those are modest compared to the rest of the crew, but still honest might be a stretch. And to further support your point (and undermine what I just wrote), he seems honest in his personal dealings, but he might have the type of honesty that he wouldn't cheat or lie in certain situations and to certain people, but would in others - a personal code, not an absolute code. I need to reread this if I am going to try to discuss it in any more depth than this.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Gatsby was anything but honest or moral in the conventional sense. Nick admired him because he was true to his ideal conception himself and true to his love, Daisy. The rest of that crowd would use people and throw them under a bus without a thought (literally in the case of Myrtle Wilson).

 

[sheeplady]

I absolutely agree with your second point about him being more honest and moral than the rest of that crew (excluding Nick), but I'm not sure I'd agree that Gatsby is an honest man. Doesn't he tell some tall tales about his past (son of rich blah, blah, then, later, but they lost all their money - none of which was true) and aren't his business dealings illegal bootlegging? To be sure, those are modest compared to the rest of the crew, but still honest might be a stretch. And to further support your point (and undermine what I just wrote), he seems honest in his personal dealings, but he might have the type of honesty that he wouldn't cheat or lie in certain situations and to certain people, but would in others - a personal code, not an absolute code. I need to reread this if I am going to try to discuss it in any more depth than this.

I think other than his obsession with Daisy, he was more moral than the rest of the crowd (except for Nick).

He was never anything but honest in my opinion. I don't remember him stating anything about his family losing their money but I could be mistaken, and that would change my opinion if he outright lied. I do know there are multiple times stories are suggested about him, and he never denies them nor agrees with them. If I am remembering correctly, no one directly confronts him about his past other than Tom, and when Tom does that Gatsby says that he never stated he graduated from Oxford, which is true. Even down to the books in his library that are unread- and uncut- a less honest man would pay to have them cut. (And yes, I understand the books represent other things too- the facade- the impression- the fantasy- etc.)

I see him mainly as an honest man- who becomes obsessed with a woman. All of his bad behavior- the bootlegging, the shady characters, his later firing of his staff- all have to do with his growing obsession. (This is not blaming it on Daisy, but on obsession.) But being involved in bootlegging doesn't make him dishonest (my opinion). It makes him a criminal. It may make him morally suspect, but I don't see bootlegging as being dishonest behavior. He never hides that he is a bootlegger. He doesn't lie about it and say he does something else. He doesn't admit it either or broadcast it.

Again, that is my personal opinion. And you know what they say about opinions.

 

[Stanley Doble]

You should know that in the first couple of years of prohibition,a bootlegger was seen as a kind of swashbuckling adventurer. It was only later that the real gangsters with machine guns took over. Gatsby wouldn't have lasted a week against that kind of competition but in the 1919 - 1921 period he didn't have to.

The business of the drug stores worked like this. Drug stores could sell liquor for medicinal purposes but were supposed to have a doctor's prescription. Also, the fact that he owned a chain of drugs stores could qualify him as a manufacturer of patent medicines, liniment, after shave lotion and other products. This meant he could get a license to buy pure grain alcohol, wholesale.

These loopholes allowed Gatsby to buy and sell liquor and to buy alcohol which could be turned into bathtub gin. One five gallon can of alcohol would make 125 bottles of 40 proof gin.

After a time these loopholes were closed and the drug store racket was washed up. This was about the time we meet Gatsby. Please notice that his bootlegging was a matter of evading the law and diverting legal alcohol, not crashing a Cadillac loaded with moonshine through a road block with a tommy gun on his lap.

 

[Fading Fast]

From the text (emphasis mine):

"Look here, old sport," he broke out surprisingly. "What's your opinion of me, anyhow?" A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.

"Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life," he interrupted. "I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear."

So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavored conversation in his halls.

"I'll tell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. "I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition."

He looked at me sideways--and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him, after all.

"What part of the Middle West?" I inquired casually.

"San Francisco."

"I see."

"My family all died and I came into a good deal of money."

And later:

"I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself."

 

[sheeplady]

Ok, I'll admit to being wrong. Still think he's the most moral and honest of the bunch, though (excluding Nick).

But I would also note that the phrase "my family died" doesn't mean a thing.... as he never directly states he inherited the money, just came into it. The rest of it I can't explain away though.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've never known a social climber yet who wasn't a Gatsby type -- fictionalizing their past to fit in. It's like a certain upwardly mobile relative of mine who tells everyone her father is an "electrical engineer," when in reality he's a lineman for the power company. It's not so much a sign of rank dishonesty as it's a sign of deep self-loathing.

 

[Fading Fast]

Ok, I'll admit to being wrong. Still think he's the most moral and honest of the bunch, though (excluding Nick).

But I would also note that the phrase "my family died" doesn't mean a thing.... as he never directly states he inherited the money, just came into it. The rest of it I can't explain away though.

I'm with you on the morals' angle - other than Nick (a wonderful character), Gatsby is the only one that has any values or integrity. But he is bonkers as she is not worth it. It has always been the biggest challenge for me with the novel: what does he see in her? Yes, I understand what she represented for him in youth: the unattainable, the uber-class, the money, the acceptance, the social standing, and the dish ran away with the spoon. But after having lived through WWI and all the intelligence and effort to make his fortune, he never saw it for what it was - a youthful crush on a flighty, self-absorbed girl? Really? It is the "perfect" novel in many ways, but all that for her? Hence, the motivation of the protagonist is hard for me to believe.