I've just read The Great Gatsby for the first time, after
Black Money, and the parallels totally escaped me despite
their having been pointed out here a couple of weeks
ago.
Now that I think about, I can see the similarities, but
Macdonald has gone in a different direction. Martel changes
his name twice, for reasons not entirely clear. He is also a
much more likely murder suspect than Gatsby is. My sympathies
were with Gatsby a lot of the time, but with Martel only
briefly.
The black Gatsby passing as white idea must have stuck with
me from earlier posts. Although it doesn't seem supported by
my reading of Fitzgerald, I did approach Black Money with the
notion that it might be a Devil in a Blue Dress kind of plot.
The word Black in the title suggested it by association, as I
had no clue what it referred to. Then Martel is described as
swarthy, too dark to be French, and so on. But without giving
too much away, that angle seemed irrelevant in the end.
Karin At 01:08 06/01/05 -0800, Brian Thornton wrote:
>I was interested in the line of discussion that
mentioned MacDonald intended
>BLACK MONEY to be a re-telling of THE GREAT GATSBY.
That was an interesting
>comparison to make, and I could really see what he
was trying to do with it.
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