Read Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography Online

Authors: Jeffrey Meyers

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Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (62 page)

29.
Fitzgerald’s best stories, in addition to these two, are “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” “The Rich Boy,” “The Swimmers,” “One Trip Abroad” and especially “Babylon Revisited” and “Crazy Sunday.”

30.
Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace,”
Flappers and Philosophers,
p. 47; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
pp. 44–45; Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace,”
Flappers and Philosophers,
pp. 58, 65, 60, 68.

31.
Fitzgerald, “May Day,”
Short Stories,
p. 126; Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,”
Crack-Up,
p. 13.

32.
Jackson Bryer,
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception
(New York, 1978), pp. 40, 39, 43.

Chapter Five:
The Beautiful and Damned
and Great Neck

1.
Fitzgerald,
The Beautiful and Damned,
pp. 423, 296, 62.

2.
Ibid.,
pp. 212, 204; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 600. Scott took Zelda’s advice about concluding the novel with Anthony’s last speech on the ship, which echoes the title of D. H. Lawrence’s volume of poems
Look! We Have Come Through!
(1917) and unconvincingly affirms: “It was a hard fight, but I didn’t give up and I came through!”

3.
Zelda Fitzgerald, “Friend Husband’s Latest,”
Collected Writings,
p. 388; Fitzgerald,
In His Own Time,
p. 419; Bryer,
Critical Reception,
pp. 92, 107, 74.

4.
Fitzgerald,
The Beautiful and Damned,
p. 285; Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
pp. 56, 78–79.

5.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 350; Wilson, “The Literary Spotlight,” p. 22; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 119.

6.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 111; Fitzgerald,
Tales of the Jazz Age,
pp. ix, vii.

7.
Fitzgerald, “Early Success,”
Crack-Up,
p. 87; Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 131.

8.
Edgar Allan Poe,
Selected Writings,
ed. Edward Davidson (Boston, 1956), p. 95; Fitzgerald,
Short Stories,
pp. 185–186, 188, 212, 204, 209; Fitzgerald,
Crack-Up,
p. 82. For more on Poe and Fitzgerald, see Appendix I.

9.
John Dos Passos,
The Best Times
(New York, 1966), p. 129; Interview with Ring Lardner, Jr., New York, March 14, 1992; Lane Yorke, “Zelda: A Worksheet,”
Paris Review,
89 (Fall 1983), 219; Fitzgerald, “Ring,”
Crack-Up,
p. 35.

10.
Ring Lardner,
What Of It?
(New York, 1925), pp. 18, 59, 118.

11.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald,
Romantic Egoists,
pp. 157, 115.

12.
Ring Lardner, Jr.,
The Lardners
(New York, 1976), pp. 164–165; Ernest Hemingway,
Selected Letters, 1917–1961,
ed. Carlos Baker (New York, 1981), p. 200; Fitzgerald, “Ring,”
Crack-Up,
pp. 38, 34, 39, 36.

13.
Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
pp. 9, 82–83.

14.
Dos Passos,
Best Times,
pp. 129–130; P. G. Wodehouse,
Yours Plum: The Letters of P. G. Wodehouse,
ed. Frances Donaldson (London, 1990), pp. 28–29.

15.
Van Wyck Brooks,
Days of the Phoenix
(New York, 1957), p. 109; Edmund Wilson, “Imaginary Conversations: Mr. Van Wyck Brooks and Mr. Scott Fitzgerald,”
New Republic,
38 (April 30, 1924), 249; Carl Van Vechten,
Parties
(New York, 1930), p. 78.

16.
W. A. Swanberg,
Dreiser
(New York, 1965), p. 272; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 138; Quoted in Mellow,
Invented Lives,
p. 272.

17.
Nelson Aldrich, Jr.,
Old Money
(New York, 1988), p. 182. See also Nelson Aldrich, Jr.,
Tommy Hitchcock: An American Hero
(privately printed, 1984). In World War II Tommy became a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and air attaché at the American Embassy in London. He was head of a fighter squadron in Texas, helped develop the Mustang plane and died in a test flight in April 1944. He was posthumously decorated with the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

18.
Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 327; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 64; Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
pp. 6–7; Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 18.

19.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
p. 57; Quoted in William Goldhurst,
F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Contemporaries
(New York, 1963), p. 88; F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Vegetable
(1923; New York, 1976), p. 143.

20.
Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
p. 84; Wilson, “A Selection of Bric-à-Brac,”
Vanity Fair,
20 (June 1923), 18; Quoted in Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur,
pp. 187, 189; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,”
Afternoon of an Author,
pp. 93–94.

21.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 456; Martin Esslin,
The Theatre of the Absurd
(New York, 1961), p. 288.

22.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
pp. 69–70; Quoted in Mizener,
Far Side of Paradise,
p. 134; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,”
Afternoon of an Author,
p. 95.

Chapter Six: Europe and
The Great Gatsby

1.
Quoted in Mellow,
Invented Lives,
p. 203; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 317; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year,”
Afternoon of an Author,
p. 111.

2.
Frances Fitzgerald Smith, “Où Sont Les Soleils d’Antan? Françoise ‘Fijeralde’?”
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest M. Hemingway in Paris,
ed. Matthew Bruccoli and C. E. Frazer Clark (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1972), n.p.; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year,”
Afternoon of an Author,
p. 105.

3.
Quoted in Honoria Murphy Donnelly with Richard Billings,
Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After
(New York, 1982), p. 14; Dos Passos,
Best Times,
p. 152; Interview with Fanny Myers Brennan, Kew Gardens, New York, March 14, 1992.

4.
Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 430–431; Interview with Honoria Murphy Donnelly, Palm Beach, Florida, February 7, 1992.

5.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 172; Interview with Ellen Barry, Hobe Sound, Florida, February 7, 1992; Calvin Tomkins,
Living Well is the Best Revenge
(New York, 1972), pp. 125–126.

While living in Havana in 1939, Hemingway behaved in a remarkably similar fashion: “During his high-spirited fortieth birthday party at Sánchez’s house, Hemingway got completely drunk, threw Thorwald’s clothes out the window and began to break the Baccarat crystal glasses while Tina Sánchez screamed for her butler to lock them up” (Jeffrey Meyers,
Hemingway: A Biography,
New York, 1985, p. 332).

6.
Quoted in Mellow,
Invented Lives,
p. 269; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
pp. 196–197, 398; Quoted in Laura Hearne, “A Summer with Scott Fitzgerald,” p. 209.

7.
Quoted in Tomkins,
Living Well is the Best Revenge,
p. 128; Fitzgerald, “Handle with Care,”
Crack-Up,
p. 79; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 447.

8.
Quoted in Tomkins,
Living Well is the Best Revenge,
p. 120; Wanda Corn, “Identity, Modernism and the American Artist After World War I: Gerald Murphy and
Américanisme,” Nationalism in the Visual Arts
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 169.

9.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 377; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 141; Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz, Collected Writings,
p. 86; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 433.

10.
Fitzgerald, “Handle with Care,”
Crack-Up,
p. 77; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 246; Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 113.

11.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald,
Romantic Egoists,
p. 120; Zelda Fitzgerald, “Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number——,”
Crack-Up,
pp. 44–45 (this work is attributed to Zelda in Scott’s
Ledger
); Letter from Scott Fitzgerald to Charles Warren, December 6, 1934, Princeton.

12.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The High Cost of Macaroni,”
Interim
(Seattle), 4 (1954), 15; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 349; Myers, “Scott and Zelda,” p. 32; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 160.

13.
Joseph Conrad,
Collected Letters. Vol. III, 1903–1907,
ed. Frederick Karl and Laurence Davies (Cambridge, England, 1988), pp. 230, 239, 241; D. H. Lawrence,
Letters. Volume III: 1916–1921,
ed. James Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge, 1984), p. 469; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 197, 376.

14.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
pp. 82–84.

15.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 501; Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer,”
The Shadow-Line and Two Other Tales,
ed. Morton Zabel (New York, 1959), p. 123; Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
p. 99.

16.
Joseph Conrad,
Lord Jim
(New York, 1931), pp. 81, 215; Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
p. 111; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 383–384, 329.

17.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 378, 499.

18.
Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
pp. 65, 129–130; Herbert Asbury, “The Noble Experiment of Izzy and Moe,”
The Aspirin Age, 1919–1941,
ed. Isabel Leighton (New York, 1949), p. 34.

19.
Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
pp. 74, 172; Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 143.

20.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 218; T. S. Eliot, “Gerontion” (1920),
Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950
(New York, 1952), p. 22; James Joyce,
Ulysses,
ed. Hans Gabler (New York, 1986), p. 178 (for the names in the execution scene, see p. 252); Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
pp. 93, 97.

The shirt display may have been partly inspired by Zelda. Speaking of Zelda in a letter of January 17, 1950, Sara Murphy told Mizener: “Cleanliness and order were a sort of fetish with her.—Bureau drawers the admiration of all” (Princeton).

21.
Fitzgerald,
Great Gatsby,
pp. 131, 133, 134, 180.

22.
Wilson,
Letters on Literature and Politics,
pp. 121, 173; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 158; Stein, in Fitzgerald,
Crack-Up,
p. 308.

23.
Edith Wharton,
Letters,
ed. R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis (New York, 1988), pp. 481–482; Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 163; Eliot, in Fitzgerald,
Crack-Up,
p. 310.

24.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
p. 102; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 375–376;
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 175; Quoted in Henry Dan Piper,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 126.

Chapter Seven: Paris and Hemingway

1.
Quoted in Mizener,
Far Side of Paradise,
p. 193; Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz, Collected Writings,
p. 95; Frances Fitzgerald Smith,
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest M. Hemingway in Paris,
n.p.

2.
Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 689; Ernest Hemingway,
The Sun Also Rises
(1926; New York, 1954), p. 44; Ernest Hemingway,
Across the River and into the Trees
(New York, 1950), p. 45.

3.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 322; Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 176; Fitzgerald, “Author’s House,”
Afternoon of an Author,
p. 186; Janet Flanner,
Paris Was Yesterday, 1925–1939,
ed. Irving Drutman (New York, 1972), p. xix.

4.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
p. 194; Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
pp. 162–163; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 503–504; Quoted in James Woodress,
Booth Tarkington, Gentleman from Indiana
(Philadelphia, 1954), p. 265.

5.
Meyers,
Hemingway,
p. 159; Glenway Wescott, in Fitzgerald,
Crack-Up,
p. 325;
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
p. 78.

6.
Fitzgerald,
In His Own Time,
pp. 148–149; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 183;
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
pp. 127, 131.

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