More on “Gatsby”
Tom Buchannan: “You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” while driving with the female athlete Jordan Baker. “Perhaps I am, but I have an almost second sight, sometimes that tells me what to do. Maybe you don’t believe me, but science–“. Jordan: “I’ve made a small investigation of this fellow. I could have gone deeper if I’d known– And you found he was an Oxford man?” Tom: “An Oxford man! Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit. Oxford. New Mexico, or something like that.”
I think this part of the novel has to do with the idea of other people finding out Gatsby has self-mythologized. He was doing almost anything to impress Daisy and wanted to go to have gone to what some people consider the best university in the world. Tom Buchannan went to Yale, which many consider the best university in the U.S. So that makes the ego match between them more intense.
The novel has a lot to do with male vanity and anger. NIN has a song called “I Just Want Something I Can Never Have.” The song is rather maudlin, but I think it expresses the same emotion Gatsby feels in the narrative.