The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald (23 page)

Hoag:
In other words, you promoted it like a bottle of cologne with him as its spokesman: The Man from
Bang
.

Samuels:
Go ahead and laugh. Until we came along, a publisher’s idea of publicity was to take out an ad in the
Times
. I put Cam Noyes in jeans commercials. I put a wine cooler in his hand. I put him on MTV. And why not? He’s not just an author. He’s a spokesman for an entire generation. I know the old flicks in tweeds think that it isn’t dignified, that it cheapens literature. To me it’s bringing publishing into the modern age. It’s bringing new readers to your product. I’m doing it with Delilah now. Starting next week she’s national TV spokeswoman for a new feminine hygiene spray — sassy but tasteful. There’s nothing undignified about it at all. It’s good, sound business.

Hoag:
And the way you got Ferris out of his contract with Skitsy — was that good, sound business, too?

Samuels:
I don’t apologize for that. I needed a loophole so I manufactured one. And hey, there were no hard feelings between Skitsy and me. She took her hat off to me for outsmarting her. That’s why I let her have Delilah. That was me taking my hat off to her. Her company’s going to make millions off of Delilah. You just watch that chick take off.

Hoag:
We were watching Ferris Rush take off.

Samuels:
Right. Where was I? Oh, yeah, so he took some of his stories to Tanner Marsh,

Hoag:
Using which name?

Samuels:
Cameron Sheffield Noyes, because it sounded so dignified. Tanner turned him down cold, but that didn’t stop him. He kept at it. Wrote his novel. And this time Tanner went apeshit. Why, I’ll never know. Personally I didn’t see that much difference between the diary sketches and the novel. But Tanner did, and more power to him.

Hoag:
How much did he know about Ferris’s real name and background?

Samuels:
He knew only what Ferris told him, which was zero. Since the lead character in
Bang
was privileged, Tanner assumed he was, too. I told Ferris — encourage the guy. Drop some names like Farmington and Deerfield and the Essex Yacht Club.

Hoag:
Why? What was the point?

Samuels: Image
. Tanner had to like the book even more if he thought he had a real live blue blood on his hands, an author with rich friends and relatives. People like Tanner, with their little nonprofit snob magazines, they suck up to money like nobody’s business.

Hoag:
He did eventually find out the truth though, didn’t he?

Samuels:
Oh, sure, from Skitsy. Ferris couldn’t keep anything from her. When she told Tanner, he got a little pissed at us for misrepresenting Ferris’s background, but hey, by then Cam Noyes was a household name, and
Bang
a national best-seller. How pissed could he be?

Hoag:
Ferris told me he hit something of a snag with Tanner because of what happened with Skitsy in his cabin at Stony Creek. Or should I say didn’t happen.

Samuels:
What do you mean?

Hoag:
He said he blew Skitsy off, and that as a result Tanner blew him off. He said you had to set him straight.

Samuels:
Never happened. Forget that wide-eyed innocent bit. It’s total fiction. Ferris Rush had been kept since he was thirteen. He didn’t need me to tell him the score. He fucked her that very night in his cabin at Stony Creek. Fucked her without hesitation because he knew she could do him a lot of good. Then, the next morning he was so overcome with self-loathing he ran off and hid. I think he must have realized he was embarking on another Maude-type relationship, and he didn’t like himself for it. Didn’t like seeing himself for what he is — a hustler. See, that’s always been his problem. He’s always wanted to be somebody dignified and classy. He’s always wanted to be Cameron Sheffield Noyes, the poor wigged-out bastard.

(end tape)

(Tape #1 with Tanner Marsh recorded May 17 in his office at Columbia University. Wears rumpled corduroy suit, smokes pipe. Books, papers, are heaped everywhere. Room hasn’t been tidied or aired out since the Truman administration.)

Marsh:
They said you were there just after it happened, Stewart. That you saw my Skitsy.

Hoag:
I did.

Marsh:
Tell me, did she know what was happening to her? Did she suffer.

Hoag:
It was over very fast.

Marsh:
I feel so much better now that she is in the ground. These past few days and nights all I have been able to think of is, where is she? Is she in a plastic body bag somewhere? In some refrigerator? Now I know where she is. … We divorced, of course. But I-I never stopped loving my Skitsy.

Hoag:
I’m sorry, Tanner.

Marsh:
Thank you, Stewart.

Hoag:
Make it Hoagy. The only person who calls me Stewart is my mother.

Marsh:
Skitsy was not perfect, Stewart. She had her insecurities. She was capable of ruthlessness, cruelty. But she knew talent and how to handle it. She was the best.
He
was the best. Young Noyes. What a tragedy … She felt so strongly for him. Not like the others. And there were others. She collected them, just like she collected her antique dolls. My writers are just like my dolls, she said to me once — childlike and rare and extremely breakable. … Skitsy wasn’t shy. If she saw someone she wanted, she took him. But none of them meant a damn to her — until he came along, that cold-blooded, murdering bastard. Tell me, Stewart, how does it feel to be collaborating with a man who has killed two women? Two women who loved him?

Hoag:
I can’t say it’s the most fun I’ve ever had.

Marsh:
Why do you do this crap, Stewart?

Hoag:
Everybody ought to be good at something.

Marsh:
I suppose I was awfully hard on your last novel. It was only because
Our Family Enterprise
led me to expect so terribly much. You’re the most gifted of them all, Stewart. You do know that, do you not?

Hoag:
Careful. My ego swells easily. How did you feel when Skitsy eventually revealed his real background to you?

Marsh: (pause)
I felt, I suppose, a bit used. Duped. Angry … I imagine I felt just like you are feeling right now yourself, Stewart.

Hoag:
Possibly. Would it have mattered to you if you’d known it from the start?

Marsh:
Let us put it this way … There is a great deal to be said for Texas authors — provided they write about Texas. Actually, my first impression of him was that he did not seem the writer type at all. By that I mean he was so robust and handsome and charming. Looked me right in the eye. Smiled. I found myself wondering what on earth this beautiful boy would be writing about. I suppose that was why I agreed to look at his stories, even though I do not generally accept freshman submissions.

Hoag:
And?

Marsh:
They were crude and juvenile, aswim in run-on sentences, wild mood swings, shifts in tense, voice. I did not understand half of his references. More significantly, I did not want to. I told him so. I was not particularly tactful.

Hoag:
How did he respond?

Marsh:
He did not get defensive or huffy, which is what they generally do. He simply thanked me for my time, shook my hand, and told me with utter conviction that he would be back in the fall with new and better material. I expected never to see him again, or if I did, to receive more of the same. … Undaunted, he did return a few months later, now clutching the manuscript for a novel. Inasmuch as he had shown no talent before, my inclination was to refuse to read it. But again, I was intrigued. Who was this boy? What drove him to work so hard? I glanced at his manuscript that evening. It was … It was nothing like what he had shown me before. He had grown so tremendously, both as a talent and as a man. He had his own voice now, a voice filled at once with self-assurance and with self-doubt, with strength and with hurt, with cynicism and with idealism. There was a sense of wholeness and purpose, a
vision
. Rereading the first page of
Bang
never fails to give me goose bumps, Stewart. … I sat here in my chamber until well past midnight until I finished. And when I did, I put down my pipe and wept. I wept because only once in a lifetime — and only then if he is very lucky — does someone in my position have the privilege to discover such a great talent in its very infancy. To be allowed to refine it, shepherd it. The manuscript was not perfect, mind you. There were numerous spots where his pacing faltered, the quality of his observations diminished. The ending was not nearly momentous enough. But all of this was minor. All that truly mattered was this robust young sophomore, this magazine cover boy, was a genius.

Hoag:
He told me that the ending was your idea.

Marsh:
At best, I pointed our conversations in a certain direction. Toward a fuller, more dramatic climax. It was he who came around to the suicide idea. … Working with him was a most interesting experience. The boy simply did not
get
what he had done. I had heard of writers like him — totally instinctive — but I had never worked with one before. If I were to ask him about a particular sentence or observation, what it meant, he would simply reply, “It means what it says.” Not disagreeably, mind you. He simply did not know how to talk about his work. … I arranged a fellowship and residency at Stony Creek for him so he could complete his revisions at once without distraction.

Hoag:
And you introduced him to Skitsy.

Marsh:
Yes. I had called her in a daze that, first night upon reading the manuscript. Told her I had come upon a brilliant young pupil who I felt certain would shortly have a manuscript she would agree was more than worthy of publication. She was, naturally, anxious to meet him.

Hoag:
I’m a little vague about what happened up there between them.

Marsh:
I do not trade in bedsheet gossip.

Hoag:
Nor do I. I’m simply trying to understand their relationship. I have to, considering what has happened.

Marsh:
Very well. … I knew the instant she set eyes on the boy that she wanted him. She acted nervous and girlish the entire ride up there, chattered incessantly. I left them up there that evening fully aware that by dawn they would become lovers. And they did. They made passionate love for the entire night in his cabin. Ferris is an inexhaustible and violent lover, she advised me.

Hoag:
Did she always fill you in on the details of her conquests?

Marsh:
Yes, she did.

Hoag:
Didn’t that bother you?

Marsh:
Far from it. I insisted upon it.

Hoag:
I see.

Marsh:
Then at dawn, without warning, he suddenly became abusive and cruel toward her. Called her the vilest names. Yanked her from his bed by her hair and pushed her out the door into the woods, naked. He would not let her back in, or even give her her clothing. She had to return naked to the main house in the semidarkness, debased and humiliated. After she had bathed and dressed, she returned to his cabin, determined to have words with him. Only he was gone. Packed up and left the place without a trace. Disappeared for weeks. To this day, I do not know where he went. Skitsy told me all of this as soon as she returned to New York. She also told me that if I ever so much as uttered the name Cameron Sheffield Noyes in her presence, she would have me disemboweled. When he resurfaced with his finished manuscript, I let him have it. I told him that I had gone to an extraordinary amount of trouble to introduce him to the finest editor in New York, and that the stupidest thing a boy in his position could do was make an enemy of her. I told him that to make an enemy of her was to make one of me. I told him to get out of my office and to take his manuscript with him. He left with his tail between his legs. … Their romance resumed almost at once. I used that word advisedly, Stewart. For it was a romance. Stormy. Emotional. It was love.

Hoag:
That’s not exactly how he described it.

Marsh:
I am not surprised. For him to be so attached to a woman twice his age does not fit with his public image. The rest of the story you know. The book was published nine months later to excellent notices.

Hoag:
You yourself wrote the most important one, the one in the
Times
.

Marsh:
I did.

Hoag:
Didn’t you regard that as a conflict of interest on your part?

Marsh:
Absolutely not. I regarded it as my due. I had discovered him. I was entitled to present him to the publishing community. Besides, it is not as if the boy
needed
my help. He has a unique gift for drawing attention to himself. People
wanted
to read him, and to read about him. Meet him at parties. Be seen with him. Look like him. Talk like him. From the outset he has been, quite simply, a star. It is his gift and, I believe, his curse. Nothing about his celebrity has helped him as a writer. I have always believed the writer is a marathon runner. His eyes must remain focused on the long distance, and shielded from the easy diversions — the movie deals, the cocktail parties, the women. Boyd Samuels, alas, does not happen to share my belief. He proceeded to turn him from a budding literary talent into a marketable commodity. I wanted nothing but the best for Ferris. I had the highest of literary ideals. Samuels wanted bucks. Such a waste. Think of his potential, Stewart. Given time and nurturing, he could have been among the giants of this century. Instead, he is a drugged-out, burnt-out, angry young mess. A murderer. I hope he rots in jail for a long, long time. After all Skitsy did for him.

Hoag:
She did a lot for herself, too, according to Ferris.

Marsh: (pause)
Meaning what?

Hoag:
Her little kickback scheme. He told me she did mighty well by it. He didn’t slight you, in case you’re wondering. He told me all about how you skim off the profits from your writers’ conferences. I never got a chance to ask Skitsy for her response. I’d like to ask you for yours.