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Q and A

Feb 05, 2013; Tom Asks:

Good take on Nick Carraway. I don't think he is gay (not that there's anything wrong with it). I see him as the soul so many of the other characters have neglected or lost. One of the best scenes in the movie, the old one, is when Nick refuses to shake Tom Buchannon's hand.

Stacey answers:

Thanks. I know, Nick is snooty. I've never seen the movie.

Jan 28, 2013; Captain Steubing Asks:

Stacey Richter, when can we expect a new written work (or for that matter any other artform) under your name? Or pseudonym.... Do you have something(s) in the works? I also wonder if you have ever taken up painting or singing or anything like that. Maybe a multi-media Stacey Richter 3-D videogame experience? I want to master the Stacey Richter videogame.

Stacey answers:

I don't know.

Jan 24, 2013; Kick Narroway Asks:

I was readin' around the meth alleys of Blogsville and someone done told that 'The Great Gatsby' narrator, Nick Carraway, is a big ol' flamin' queer-mo with an oily man-crush for his homie G-Gats. Proof being Nick-Nack's nitey-nite beddy-by meat-and-grease with an accumulater of Billie Holiday platters or some shizzit. What do you think? Is Nicky C. gay for Jay?

Stacey answers:

No. He doesn't even like Jay, I would say--he's too snobby right until the end, when he finally sees how fucked-up that is. That's when Nick yells to Gatsby that Daisy and her friends are a rotten crowd: "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together," he says, worth being the operative word, since this is a book about social class and money and how they're not the same thing.

BUT: I took a look at the book, and I do think a good case could be made for an interpretation of Nick as gay. The incident you're referring to above occurs, I think, at the end of chapter two, when Nick gets drunk in the city with Tom and his mistress. After Tom breaks Myrtle's nose, Nick scoots out with their neighbor, a photographer, who leaves without his wife. The brief, drunken vignettes that follow sure do have some homoerotic imagery in them: Nick ends up in the neighbor's apartment, standing beside the bed while the other guy sits between the sheets in his underwear showing him his BIG portfolio. And just before that, the elevator boy snaps at the photographer to, "Keep your hands off the lever," a lever which, if I were a Freudian-type, I'd paint neon-orange and call a phallus. Furthermore, there's a tradition in American fiction of the first-person narrator being a possibly-gay outsider--like Ishmael in Moby Dick, and like Ishmael, at the end Nick Carraway is the last man standing. Not to mention that there's a current of loneliness running through the book that reminds me of the loneliness of Winesburg, Ohio, which does seem to me to be about being gay, maybe because I'm under the impression that Sherwood Anderson was. Also, Nick himself doesn't seem to have any convincing romantic associations, or even friends, which could be code, in the era of the book, for gayness.

I don't think he's gay, however. I think the loneliness and disconnection stem from the strong and beloved themes of the book: the loneliness and disconnection of young men after the First World War, the drunken excesses of the flapper/bootlegger era--sexual and financial--and the growing disillusionment with the entangled ideas of race and origin and class. I attribute the homoerotic blips above to a little characteristic narrative wandering on Fitzgerald's part, and besides, why can't a man get drunk and talk to another man in his underwear without having sex with him? Seriously. What I'm saying is, I don't think Nick is gay, I think he's depressed. And he should be.

Also, given the times when the book was written, I would say that since Fitzgerald himself wasn't gay, neither is Nick. I just don't think he would have done that--he wouldn't have had the impulse, or empathy, or lack of prejudice to make his narrator a "queer-mo" as you so colorfully say. Nick is pretty sensitive though and might fall into the category of "art fag," the category from which I draw upon for boyfriends, and can therefore testify to as being not actually gay. Even if they do dress well. The end.

Jan 06, 2013; Derek Predept Asks:

I stacked books on top of each other until the bottom book's pages fused together. The stack was 17 feet high. After stacking I placed a miniature rowboat upon the topmost book. The rowboat had tiny oars made of lemon slices. This was all done on a Thursday. So I ask you, why did I do it?

Stacey answers:

You did it for the same reason that Richard Dreyfuss built the Devil's Tower out of mud in Close Encounters of the Third Kind: there are towers; they need to be built. Sometimes they're made of mud, sometimes of caulk. To be the one called on to erect one is complicated but exciting. Congratulations.

Either that or you're just trying to make me say "erection."

Or caulk.

Jan 04, 2013; cindy lassick Asks:

if you were teaching high school english class, what book would you teach? you can pick any book even an unknown one. i think you have good opinions and i want to know. thankyou staceeee

Stacey answers:

It depends on the age of the students, and I'd have to read a couple of these again to make sure they didn't contain too much sex and drugs and suicide, but some books I'd like to teach are My Antonia by Willa Cather, The Stories of John Cheever (a selection, not all of them), Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, This Boys Life by Tobias Wolff, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, The World of Normal Boys by K.M. Soehnlein, and The Ice Storm by Rick Moody.

Jan 02, 2013; Vituperative Vanya Asks:

I like the Stacey who posts photographs. I do not see any tattoos on your Oscar-holding arms. You have no tats? Hidden tats? What tat would you have if you had a tat? A cat? A bat? A marmosat? Do you have a day job Stacey? What sorts of jobs have you had? What was your worst job? Did you ever forget your billfold and have to wash dishes at the diner? Have you done landscaping or heavy lifting? Your photo indicates arm muscles.]]'']] Thank you Stacey.

Stacey answers:

Hi Vanya. So many questions! Let's focus on the arms. I think one reason they look so muscular is that those Oscar statues are extremely heavy. Easily they could be used to brain someone on the head until dead. Not that I would (or would not). I don't have any tattoos which is somewhat related to the day job, which I don't have for both happy and unhappy reasons, the unhappy one being that I hurt my back badly and irreparably 19 1/2 years ago. Though I'm not disabled (in part because I've never applied for disability), I did recently get a letter from the county telling me that I am permanently excused from jury duty, which is basically impossible, like being excused from airport security or something, and even more improbably seems to be the result of a very tart note I scrawled on my tenth or eleventh summons that said something like, "You can keep calling me twice a year if you want but I will never, ever be able to serve because my back is destroyed, basically, and I wish you would stop rubbing it in." It was that, or else they just drop you after ten doctor's notes. Anyway, when I told a gal in book club about it I began to cry, which besides being embarrassing seemed to indicate that I believed the jury excuse had bestowed some kind of tiara of disability on me, though maybe I'd just had too much wine. Usually I don't like to go on and on about this but I don't want to be secretive either since pain is a defining fact of my life on a day-to-day basis, which is why I thought that for the 20th anniversary of my injury, I might get a giant, beautiful tattoo all over my back and torso and down the dermatomes of my legs and feet of the life cycle of a plant in the style of a botanical drawing: roots, flowers, seeds; growing, wilting, being reborn--isn't everyone's tattoo about that? Either that or Jackson Pollock loops and splotches running all down me. I'm not sure if this will actually happen.

I have never professionally landscaped but I like to plant plants and dig holes, though that's probably not the best activity for me. I have a small, fur-covered cat who believes my job is to accompany her on her food bowl viewings, which occur every half hour.

Dec 22, 2012; Valerie Orange Kiss Asks:

Howdy there miss Staceykins, indulge my curiosity but can you tell me about your brushes with fame? Whom did you meet or rub shoulders with? Have you ever made out with a famous celebrity or a group thereof?

Stacey answers:

Hi Valerie. I've never made out with a group of celebrities--I wish!--but I once had dream-sex with Tom Cruise, in a church, and I'd do it again. Other than that, the most notorious charmer I've met is Ray Evans of the song-writing team Livingston and Evans, who wrote such standards as "Silver Bells," "Bonanza," and the theme to Mr. Ed. That's right, Ray penned the brilliant line, "A horse is a horse/ Of course, of course," which is almost as wonderful as my beloved, "One fish, two fish/Red fish, blue fish." Ray was a mad flirt (sadly, he's passed away) but we never got to make out. He did, however, let me hold his three big, heavy Oscars.

Stacey & Ray Evans Med

Dec 22, 2012; Schoenhaumerspergendreigel Asks:

DEAREST STACEY OF THE RICHTER CLAN: WHAT IS THE MOST OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVEST THINGY YOU HAVE EVER DONE DID?

Stacey answers:

I guess getting out of bed to check the iron, finding it's off, then getting back in bed and deciding I have to get up again and go touch it and be sure it's really off, then getting to the doorway before turning around and checking one more time, then going back to bed and getting up to check all the doors (though in general I am a fire-checker), then thinking I should cry but not crying. In the grand scheme of things, I've decided that isn't really that bad. I only do it now and then, and only because I actually do leave things on and burning and unattended. I don't actually have OCD. Oh sure, I do count everything, all the time, footsteps and so on, but that's just to for amusement purposes.

Dec 22, 2012; Michael Finn Asks:

Good to speak with you, Stacey. I have had an opportunity to read your works. Color me impressed. The wordsmithing, the conceptual slyness, the adroit view of humanity....these comprise your hallmarks as an author. I might know little of the literary world but I know distinction and you embody it. Now, might I add this: Via the magic of Google and Googling of a search on your name, I had occasion to observe your image, Stacey Richter. A lovelier woman I cannot recall having seen. Both gorgeous and adorable. Stacey Richter you are as pretty as the word pretty will allow. The word pretty is filled to bursting and can take it no longer, thanks to Stacey Richter. If there is a God then he was having a good day when he made you. At the end of that day, God said 'Hot damn! I'm on fire!' and did a self-congratulatory fist bump to no one in particular. God is used to that....he has no one to relate to. But he's used to it and has made peace with it. What he hasn't made peace with is is how wholly, perfectly, thoroughly fine a job he did when he built himself a 'Stacey Richter' from scratch. What a beautiful woman you are, Stacey.

Stacey answers:

You're not bad looking either, Michael. Look at this great pic I found of you! Michael Finn

Nov 23, 2012; Ace Cherry Tits Asks:

Have you a favorite anagram of your name, Stacey Richter?

Stacey answers:

Create Cry Shit. It's good with commas, evilly placed beside Eat, Pray, Love. Like this: Eat, Pray, Love. Create, Cry, Shit. "Do you have a copy of Eat, Pray, Love?" No, but we have a few Create, Cry, Shits on the sale table."

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