Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (581 page)

Besides, it is not only the question of the repetitions but there are certain other stories in the collection that I couldn’t possibly think of letting go out in their current form. I fully realize that this may be a very serious inconvenience to you but for me to undertake anything like that at this moment would just mean sudden death and nothing less than that.

Ever yours,

Scott

P.S. I have just gotten a royalty report and don’t know whether the sum of my debit is on the red page or on the regular royalty report. Please have someone let me know.

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

October
17, 1934

Dear Max:

The mood of terrible depression and despair is not going to become a characteristic and I am ashamed and felt very yellow about it afterwards. But to deny that such moods come increasingly would be futile.

I took you at your word and went down to Welbourne for an afternoon to prance before Elizabeth and found her in her usual good form, and also Mary Rumsey. But the trouble about women is that when you need them most they are never in a receptive mood (not that both Elizabeth and Mary were not hospitable, it’s just the old story that when you feel like weeping on somebody’s shoulder you’re usually in such a state of mind and body that nobody wants you to weep on their shoulder).

The country was beautiful, however. Will write at length later. They missed you, and I added to their chagrin by telling them how I urged you to go down the night before.

Feel somewhat refreshed and am finishing my story today.

Ever yours, Scott

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

November 8,
1934

Dear Max:

In further reference to my telegram of Tuesday night: first, I am sending you the third story in its proper place ready to go into the book. The thing that worried me when I did it was whether the proof-reader is going to be able to release a lot of type, because, due to the fact that the end of one story and the beginning of another were run on one galley, he will have to scrap half the type in the galley and yet retain the other half - this because the stories were not set up in proper order. I know this is a terrible and costly mess and I take full responsibility; nevertheless, I did think the stories would be set up separately and getting at them is as if the chapters of a book were set up any which way, like, I, VII, II, V, III, VI, and it all has to be straightened out each time. As you know that is fatiguing work and can best be done when one is fresh, and is hard to do at night.

My big mistake was in thinking I could possibly deliver this collection for this fall. I should have known perfectly well that, in debt as I was to the tune of about $12,000 on finishing Tender, I should have to devote the summer and most of the fall to getting out of it. My plan was to do my regular work in the daytime and do one story every night, but as it works out, after a good day’s work I am so exhausted that I drag out the work on a story to two hours when it should be done in one and go to bed so tired and wrought up, toss around sleepless, and am good for nothing next morning except dictating letters, signing checks, tending to business matters, etc. - but to work up a creative mood there is nothing doing until about four o’clock in the afternoon. Part of this is because of ill health. It would not have seemed so difficult to me ten years, or even five years ago, but now just one more straw would break the camel’s back.

I have about half a dozen of these done but I am determined this time to send them in only in the proper order and not add further confusion either in my own mind or that of the printer’s. The trouble began when I sent you two stories to be set up which were nowhere near each other in the book. If I told a story about a boy of sixteen years old and sixty pages on the reader came upon a story of the same boy at thirteen it would make no sense to him and look like careless presentation, and which, as you know, I dislike nothing more.

As you may have seen I took out ‘A New Leaf and put in ‘Her Last Case.’ You didn’t tell me whether or not you read it or liked it.

I know you have the sense that I have loafed lately but that is absolutely not so. I have drunk too much and that is certainly slowing me up. On the other hand, without drink I do not know whether I could have survived this time. In actual work since I finished the last proof of the novel in the middle of March, eight months ago, I have written and sold three stories for the Post, written another which was refused, written two and a half stories for the
Redbook,
rewritten three articles of Zelda’s for
Esquire
and one original for them to get emergency money, collaborated on a 10,000-word treatment of
Tender Is the
Night, which was no go, written an 8ooo-word story for Gracie Allen, which was also no go, and made about five false starts on stories which went from 1000 to 5000 words, and a preface to the Modern Library edition of
The Great Gatsby,
which equalizes very well what I have done in other years. I am good for just about one good story a month or two articles. I took no vacation this summer except three or four one-night trips to Virginia and two business trips to New York, each of which lasted about four or five days. Of course this is no excuse for not making more money, because in harder times you’ve got to work harder, but as it happens I am in a condition at the moment where to work extra hard means inevitably that I am laid up for a compensatory time either here or in the hospital. All I can say is that I will try to do two or three of these all at once after finishing each piece of work, and as I am now working at the rate of a story each ten days for the
Redbook
series I should finish up the ten I have left to do in about one hundred days and deliver the last of them in mid-February. Perhaps if things break better it may be a month sooner.

Thanks immensely for the Henry fames which I thought was wonderful and which is difficult reading as it must have been to write, and for ‘At Sea.’

The London press on my book has been spotty but The
London Times
gave it a good review as did G. B. Stem in The Daily Telegraph, and so did
The Manchester Guardian
and The
Spectator,
and those I guess are the four most important ones in England and I got a column in each of them. A letter says that it hasn’t reached a thousand copies yet.

I hope you’ll be down here soon. It was rather melancholy to think of ‘Welbourne’ being closed for the winter but the last time I saw Elizabeth she seemed quite reconciled at visiting here and there, though such a prospect would drive me nuts. Hope you have sent off the carbon of the Table of Contents.

Best ever,

Scott

1307
Park Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

November
26,
1934

Dear Max:

The real thing that decided me about ‘Her Last Case’ was that it was a
place
story and just before seeing it in
published form
I ran across Thomas Wolfe’s ‘The House of the Far and Lost and I thought there was no chance of competing with him on the same subject, when he had brought off such a triumph. There would inevitably have been invidious comparisons. If my story had anything to redeem it, except atmosphere, I would not hesitate to include it but most of it depends on a mixture of hysteria and sentiment - anyhow, I did not decide without some thought.

I think by this time you will have read and liked ‘The Fiend’ which, spare and meager as it may be, has, I believe, a haunting quality. At least the tale in itself had enough poignancy to haunt me long enough, to keep in my skull for six years. Whether I’ve given it the right treatment, or disparaged it by too much peeling away of accessories, I can’t say. That’s one reason that I asked you to set it up, because maybe I am not too clear about it myself and maybe I can do something with the proof if it seems advisable.

I throw out most of the stuff in me with delight that it is gone. That statement might be interesting to “consider in relation with Ernest’s article in last month’s E
squire;
an unexpressed idea is often a torment, even though its expression is liable to leave an almost crazy gap in the continuity of one’s thoughts. And it would have been absolutely impossible for me to have stretched ‘The Rich Boy’ into anything bigger than a novelette.

That statement was something that Ring got off; he never knew anything about composition, except as it concerned the shorter forms; that is why he always needed advice from us as to how to organize his material; it was his greatest fault - the fault of many men brought up in the school of journalism - while a novelist with his sempiternal sigh can cut a few breaths. It is a hell of a lot more difficult to build up a long groan than to develop a couple of short coughs!

Glad Ernest isn’t doing the Crusading story, now, because it would be an unfortunate competition.

Josephine goes along and I think I will be in the clear about her this week, and - as I told you - two or three of the others have already been done and just have to be glanced at.

Your suggestion to go to Key West is tempting as hell but I don’t know whether it would be advisable on either Ernest’s account or mine. We can talk about that later.

A short note from Beth acknowledged an invitation that I gave her to meet Gertrude Stein if she should be in the vicinity, and said that she had a long letter from you. Outside of that, life has gone along at what would seem to most people a monotonous routine: entertained Lovestone ‘the Opposition Communist Saturday and put him up for the night but haven’t quite made up my mind what I think of him.

Am so fascinated with the medieval series that my problem is making them into proper butcher’s cuts for monthly consumption. I have thought of the subject so long that an actual fertility of invention has become even a liability.

Ever yours,

Scott

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

December 18, 1934

Dear Max:

Tremendously obliged for the fifty dollars. The Redbook is stalling on these medieval stories, much to my disgust, and that is slowing up things and also it may put a crimp in the series so far as serialization is concerned. They have taken three and can’t seem to decide about the fourth, so temporarily I am going to return to the
Post
and make some larger money until that straightens out. This was the reason for the financial emergency.

Now I’ve got to blow up because an incident of this proof has upset my entire morning. You know how irascible I am when I am working and it increases with the years, but I have never seen a proofreader quite as dumb as the one who has looked over this second galley. In the first place I did not want a second galley and did not ask for it - these stories have been corrected once for myself, once for the Post and the third time on your first galleys and
that is all I can do.
I expected to have the page proofs made up from the corrected first galley and requested that not even these be sent to me. I first understand that it is an advantage to make no
more
corrections, then along comes a set of completely superfluous galleys marked with the most idiotic and disturbing queries.

Example: this proofreader calmly suggests that I correct certain mistakes of construction in the characters’ dialogue. My God, he must be the kind who would rewrite Ring Lardner, correcting his grammar, or fix up the speeches of Penrod to sound like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Who is it? Robert Bridges?

His second brilliant stroke of Victorian genius was to query all the split infinitives. If, on a fourth version, I choose to let them stand I am old enough to know what I am doing. On this proof I simply struck off the queries and am sending the rest back without looking at it. My worry is that I didn’t look at the Basil stories at all before returning them, and if he has corrected all Basil’s language, spoiling some of my jokes - well, it just gives me the feeling of wanting to send back the whole mass of first galleys and saying set it up.

Honestly, Max, I have worked like a dog on these galleys and it is costing me money to make these changes, and to have some cluck fool with them again is exasperating beyond measure. They should have gone right into page proof from my first galleys - I would a hundred times rather have half a dozen errors creep in than have half a dozen humorous points and carefully considered rhythms spoiled by some school marm. This may seem vehement but I tell you it will haunt me in my sleep until you write reassuring me that no such thing happened in the case of the Basil stories.

Again thanks for the money. It was a life-saver. There will be another story coming along tomorrow.

Ever yours,

Scott

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

March
9, 1935

Dear Max:

The book arrived. It was fine to see. I liked the get-up and thought it was an excellent blurb on the back, but -

- is it, alas, too late to do anything about the jacket? It is pretty God-awful and about six people have commented on it. I don’t know who Miss Doris Spiegal is but it’s rather discouraging to spend many hours trying to make the creatures in a book charming and then have someone who can’t draw as well as Scottie cover five square inches with daubs that make them look like morons. The first jacket was very much better.

This sounds ungrateful in view of the trouble my books have always been, but I do want to record the fact that of late I have been badly served by your art department. To take a perfectly good photograph and debauch it into a toothless old man on the back of
Tender
was not so good, but I do think a jacket like this has the absolute opposite effect of those fine attractive jackets that Hill and Held used to draw for my books. I always believed that eternal care about titles and presentation was a real element in their success.