Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (582 page)

I’ve seen Jim Boyd and we’ve had several meals together. He’s an awfully nice fellow.

I am still hesitating about sending this letter because I know what a lot more important things you have in your mind and how busy you are at this season, but I am sending it on the off- chance that it
might
have been a sample jacket and that something might be done. -

Ever yours,

Scott

P.S. I was glad that Tom got nice reviews in Time and The New Yorker and that they gave him space in proportion to the time and effort that went into his volume. I’m going to give it a more thorough reading next week.

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

March 11,
1935

Dear Max:

The second annoyance to you in two days - pretty soon I’m going to be your most popular author. (By the way, we had sort of a Scribner congeries here last night. Jim Boyd and Elizabeth came to supper and George Calverton dropped in afterwards. Your name came up frequently and you would have probably wriggled more than at Wolfe’s dedication. To prolong this parenthesis unduly I am sorry I mentioned Tom’s book. I hope to God I won’t be set up as the opposition for there are fine things in it, and I loved reading it, and I am delighted that it’s a wow, and it may be a bridge for something finer. I simply feel a certain disappointment which I would, on no account, want Tom to know about, for, responding as he does to criticism, I know it would make us life-long enemies and we might do untold needless damage to each other, so please be careful how you quote me. This is in view of Calverton’s saying he heard from you that I didn’t like it It has become increasingly plain to me that the very excellent organization of a long book or the finest perceptions and judgment in time of revision do not go well with liquor. A short story can be written on a bottle, but for a novel you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the whole pattern in your head and ruthlessly sacrifice the sideshows as Ernest did in A Farewell to Arms. If a mind is slowed up ever so little it lives in the individual part of a book rather than in a book as a whole; memory is dulled. I would give anything if I hadn’t had to write Part III of
Tender
Is
the
Night entirely on stimulant. If I had one more crack at it cold sober I believe it might have made a great difference. Even Ernest commented on sections that were needlessly included and as an artist he is as near as I know for a final reference. Of course, having struggled with Tom Wolfe as you did all this is old hat to you. I will conclude this enormous parenthesis with the news that Elizabeth has gone to Middleburg to help Mrs White open up her newly acquired house.)

This letter is a case of the tail (the parenthesis) wagging the dog. Here is the dog. A man named John S. Martens writes me wanting to translate
Tender Is the Night
or
This Side of Paradise
or
The Great Gatsby
into Norwegian. He has written Scribners and met the same blank wall of silence that has greeted me about all publishing of my books in other countries. I am quite willing to handle continental rights directly but I cannot do it when I do not know even the name of the publisher of my books, having never had copies of them or any information on that subject. Isn’t there somebody in your office who is especially delegated to seeing to such things? It is really important to me and if I should write a book that had an international appeal it would be of great advantage to have a foothold with translators and publishers in those countries. All I want from you is the status of
The Great Gatsby
in Scandinavia, Germany, etc., and a word as to whether I shall go ahead and make arrangements myself for the future in that regard.

I’d be glad to get a dozen or so copies of Taps at
Reveille
as soon as available.

Ever yours,

Scott

P.S. I haven’t had a drink for almost six weeks and haven’t had the faintest temptation as yet. Feel fine in spite of the fact that business affairs and Zelda’s health have never been worse.

1307
Park Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

April 15, 1935

Dear Max:

You don’t say anything about
Taps
so I gather it hasn’t caught on at all. I hope at least it will pay for itself and its corrections. There was a swell review in
The Nation;
did you see it?

I went away for another week but history didn’t repeat itself and the trip was rather a waste. Thanks for the message from Ernest. I’d like to see him too and I always think of my friendship with him as being one of the high spots of life. But I still believe that such things have a mortality, perhaps in reaction to their very excessive life, and that we will never again see very much of each other. I appreciate what he said about
Tender Is the Night.

Things happen all the time which make me think that it is not destined to die quite as easily as the boys-in-a-hurry prophesied. However, I made many mistakes about it from its delay onward, the biggest of which was to refuse the Literary Guild subsidy.

Haven’t seen Beth since I got back and am calling her up today to see if she’s here. I am waiting eagerly for a first installment of Ernest’s book. When are you coming South? Zelda, after a terrible crisis, is somewhat better. I am, of course, on the wagon as always, but life moves at an uninspiring gait and there is less progress than I could wish on the medieval series - all in all an annoying situation as these should be my most productive years. I’ve simply got to arrange something for this summer that will bring me to life again, but what it should be is by no means apparent.

About 1929 I wrote a story called ‘Outside the Cabinet Maker’s,’ which ran in the Century Magazine. I either lost it here or else sent it to you with the first batch of selected stories for
Taps
and it was not returned. Will you (a) see if you’ve got it? or (b) tell me what and where the Century Company is now and whom I should address to get a copy of the magazine?

I’ve had a swell portrait painted at practically no charge and next time I come to New York I am going to spend a morning tearing out of your files all those preposterous masks with which you have been libeling me for the last decade.

Just found another whole paragraph in
Taps,
top of page 384, which appears in
Tender Is the
Night. I’d carefully elided it and written the paragraph beneath it to replace it, but the proofreaders slipped and put them both in.

Ever yours,

Scott

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

April 17,1935

Dear Max:

Reading Tom Wolfe’s story in the current
Modern
Monthly makes me wish he was the sort of person you could talk to about his stuff. It has all his faults and virtues. It seems to me that with any sense of humor he could see the Dreiserian absurdities of how the circus people ate the cod, bass, mackerel, halibut, clams and oysters of the New England coast, the terrapin of Maryland, the fat beeves, porks and cereals of the middle west,’ etc., etc., down to ‘the pink meated lobsters that grope their way along the sea-floors of America.’ And then (after one of his fine paragraphs which sounds a note to be expanded later) he remarks that they leave nothing behind except ‘the droppings of the camel and the elephant in Illinois.’ A few pages further on his redundance ruined some paragraphs (see the last complete paragraph on page 103) that might have been gorgeous. I sympathize with his use of repetition, of Joyce-like words, endless metaphor, but I wish he could have seen the disgust in Edmund Wilson’s face when I once tried to interpolate part of a rhymed sonnet in the middle of a novel, disguised as prose. How he can put side by side such a mess as ‘With chitterling tricker fast-fluttering skirrs of sound the palmy honied birderies came’ and such fine phrases as ‘tongue- trilling chirrs, plum-bellied smoothness, sweet lucidity’ I don’t know. He who has such infinite power of suggestion and delicacy has absolutely no right to glut people on whole meals of caviar. I hope to Christ he isn’t taking all these emasculated paeans to his vitality very seriously. I’d hate to see such an exquisite talent turn into one of those muscle-bound and useless giants seen in a circus. Athletes have got to learn their games; they shouldn’t just be content to tense their muscles, and if they do they suddenly find when called upon to bring off a necessary effect they are simply liable to hurl the shot into the crowd and not break any records at all. The metaphor is mixed but I think you will understand what I mean, and that he would too - save for his tendency to almost feminine horror if he thinks anyone is going to lay hands on his precious talent. I think his lack of humility is his most difficult characteristic, a lack oddly enough which I associate only with second or third rate writers. He was badly taught by bad teachers and now he hates learning.

There is another side of him that I find myself doubting, but this is something that no one could ever teach or tell him. His lack of feeling other people’s passions, the lyrical value of Eugene Gant’s love affair with the universe - is that going to last through a whole saga? God, I wish he could discipline himself and really plan a novel.

I wrote you the other day and the only other point of this letter is that I’ve now made a careful plan of the medieval novel as a whole (tentatively called
Philippe, Count of Darkness - confidential)
including the planning of the parts which I can sell and the parts which I can’t. I think you could publish it either late in the spring of ‘36 or early in the fall of the same year. This depends entirely on how the money question goes this year. It will run to about 90,000 words and will be a novel in every sense with the episodes unrecognizable as such. That is my only plan. I wish I had these great masses of manuscripts stored away like Wolfe and Hemingway but this goose is beginning to be pretty thoroughly plucked I am afraid.

A young man has dramatized
Tender Is the
Night and I am hoping something may come of it. I may be in New York for a day and a night within the next fortnight.

Ever yours,

Scott

Later - went to N.Y. as you know, but one day only. Didn’t think I would like Cape that day. Sorry you and Nora Flynn didn’t meet. No news here -I think Beth is leaving soon.

1307
Park
Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

May
11,1935

Dear Max:

It was fine seeing you but I was in a scrappy mood about Tom Wolfe. I simply cannot see the sign of achievement there yet, but I see that you are very close to the book and you don’t particularly relish such an attitude.

I am closing the house and going away somewhere for a couple of months and will send you an address when I get one.

Did you ever find that copy of ‘Outside the Cabinet-Maker’s?’

I’d like to see Ernest but it seems a long way and I would not like to see him except under the most favorable of circumstances because I don’t think I am the pleasantest company of late. Zelda is in very bad condition and my own mood always somehow reflects it.

Katy Dos Passos was here and in
her
version the bullet bounced off the side of the boat, but I suppose when Ernest’s legend approaches the Bunyan type it will have bounced off the moon, so it is much the same thing.

Had a nice letter from Jim Boyd agreeing with me about Clara but not about the weak writing at the end. I am quite likely to see him this summer.

Ever yours,

Scott

Hotel
Stafford

Baltimore,

Maryland circa June 25,1935

Dear Max:

I feel I owe you a word of explanation: first, as to the health business. I was given what amounted to a death sentence about 3 months ago. It was just before I last saw you - which was why, I think, I got into that silly quarrel with you about Tom Wolfe that I’ve regretted ever since. I was a good deal dismayed and probably jealous, so forget all I said that night. You know I’ve always thought there was plenty of room in America for more than one good writer, and you’ll admit it wasn’t like me.

Anyhow what upset me most was that it came just two months after the liquor question was in hand at last - and I was quite reconciled, simply cross and upset at the arbitrary change of plan. (I never felt emotional about it until a fortnight ago when I learned that the Great Scene wasn’t coming off. It seemed such a shame after such good rehearsals that one grew suddenly sentimental and sorry for oneself.)

Second. Came up to Baltimore for five days to see Zelda who seems hopeless and send Scottie to camp. I had 24 hours with nothing to do and went to N.Y. to see a woman I’m very fond of - if s a long peculiar story.... one of a curious series of relationships that run through a man’s life. Anyhow she’d given up the weekend at the last minute to meet me and it was impossible to leave her to see you.

Putting Scottie on train in 10 minutes. In haste,

Always yours,

Scott

I wish Struthers Burt would decide on a name -1 call him everything but Katherine!

1 East
34th Street
Baltimore,

Maryland

March
17, 1936

Dear Max:

A kid named Vincent McHugh has written me asking me to recommend him to you. Ordinarily I would not do such things any more but he has been a sort of unknown protégé of mine for some time. He has published a book called Sing Before
Breakfast
which I thought was a remarkable book and showed a very definite temperament. I’m not promising you that he is as strong a personality as Ernest or Caldwell or Cantwell or the men that I have previously recommended, but I do wish you would get hold of this earlier book Sing
Before Breakfast
published by Simon and Schuster in 1933 and consider that as much as what he has to offer at the moment in making your decision.