I’m awfully sorry you’ve had the flue. We arrive east on the 9th. I enjoy your book page in Vanity Fair and think it is excellent—
The baby is beautiful.
As Ever
Scott
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Probably written in the spring of 1922]
626 Goodrich Ave.
St. Paul, Minn.
Dear Bunny:
From your silence I deduce that either you decided that the play* was not in shape to offer to the Guild or that they refused it.
I have now finished the revision. I am forwarding one copy to Harris &, if you think the Guild would be interested, will forward them the other. Your play should be well along by now. Could you manage to send me a carbon?
I’m working like a dog on some movies at present. I was sorry our meetings in New York were so fragmentary. My original plan was to contrive to have long discourses with you but that interminable party began and I couldn’t seem to get sober enough to be able to tolerate being sober. In fact the whole trip was largely a failure.
My compliments to Mary Blair, Ted Paramour and whomsoever else of the elect may cross your path.
We have no plans for the summer.
Scott Fitz—
TO EDMUND WILSON
June 25th, 1922
Dear Bunny:
Thank you for giving the play to Craven—and again for your interest in it in general. I’m afraid I think you over-estimate it—because I have just been fixing up Mr. Icky* for my fall book and it does not seem very good to me. I am about to start a revision of the play—also to find a name. I’ll send it to Hopkins next. So far it has only been to Miller, Harris & the Theatre Guild. I’d give anything if Craven would play that part. I wrote it, as the text says, with him in mind. I agree with you that Anna Christie was vastly overestimated. . . .
Am going to write another play whatever becomes of this one. The Beautiful & Damned has had a very satisfactory but not inspiring sale. We thought it’d go far beyond Paradise but it hasn’t. It was a dire mistake to serialize it. Three Soldiers and Cytherea took the edge off it by the time it was published. . . .
Did you like The Diamond as Big as the Ritz or did you read it. It’s in my new book anyhow…
I have Ullyses from the Brick Row Bookshop & am starting it. I wish it was layed in America—there is something about middle-class Ireland that depresses me inordinately— I mean gives me a sort of hollow, cheerless pain. Half of my ancestors came from just such an Irish strata or perhaps a lower one. The book makes me feel appallingly naked. Expect to go either South or to New York in October for the Winter.
Ever thine,
F. Scott Fitz
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Postmarked August 1, 1922]
The Yatch Club
White Bear Lake, Minn.
Dear Bunny:
Just a line to tell you I’ve finished my play & am sending it to Nathan to give to Hopkins or Selwyn. It is now a wonder. I’m going to ask you to destroy the 2 copies you have as it makes me sort of nervous to have them out. This is silly but so long as a play is in an actors office and is unpublished as my play at Cravens I feel lines from it will soon begin to appear on B’way…
Write me any gossip if you have time. No news or plans have I.
Thine
Fitz
TO EDMUND WILSON
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hack Writer and Plagiarist
St. Paul Minnesota*
[Postmarked August 5, 1922]
Dear Bunny:
Fitzgerald howled over Quintilian.† He is glad it was reprinted as he couldn’t get the Double Dealer and feared he had missed it. It’s excellent especially the line about Nero and the one about Dr. Bishop.
The play with an absolutely new second act has gone to Nathan who is giving it to Hopkins or Selwynn. Thank you for taking it to Ames & Elkins. I’m rather glad now that none of them took it as I’d have been tempted to let them do it—and my new version is much better. Please do not bother to return the 2 mss. you have as its a lot of trouble. I have copies of them & no use for them. Destruction will save the same purpose—it only worries me to have them knocking around.
I read sprigs of the old oak that grew from the marriage of Mencken & Margaret Anderson (Christ! What a metaphor!) and is known as the younger genitals. It bored me. I didn’t read yours—but * * * * is getting worse than Frank Harris with his elaborate explanations and whitewashings of himself. There’s no easier way for a clever writer to become a bore. It turns the gentle art of making enemies into the East Aurora Craft of making people indifferent . . . in the stunned pause that preceded this epigram Fitzgerald bolted his aspic and went to a sailor’s den.
“See here,” he said, “I want some new way of using the great Conradian vitality, the legend that the sea exists without Polish eyes to see it. Masefield has spread it on iambics and downed it; O’Niell has sprinkled it on Broadway; McFee has added an evenrude motor—”
But I could think of no new art form in which to fit him. So I decided to end the letter. The little woman, my best pal and I may add, my severest critic, asked to be remembered.
* * *
cribbed from Harry Leon Wilson
* * *
Would you like to see the new play? Or are you fed up for awhile. Perhaps we better wait till it appears. I think I’ll try to serialize it in Scribners—would you?
Scott F.
Am undecided about Ullyses application to me—which is as near as I ever come to forming an impersonal judgement.
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Postmarked August 28,1922]
The Yatch Club
White Bear Lake
Minnesota
Dear Bunny—
The Garland arrived and I have re-read it. Your preface is perfect—my only regret is that it wasn’t published when it was written almost two years ago. The Soldier of course I read for about the fifth time. I think it’s about the best short war story yet—but I object violently to “pitched forward” in the lunch-putting anecdote. The man would have said “fell down” or “sorta sank down.” Also I was delighted as usual by the Efficiency Expert. Your poems I like less than your prose—The Lake I do not particularly care for. I like the Centaur and the Epilogue best—but all your poetry seems to flow from some source outside or before the romantic movement even when its intent is most lyrical.
I like all of John’s except the play which strikes me as being obvious and Resurrection which despite its excellent idea & title & some spots of good writing is pale and without any particular vitality.
Due to you, I suppose, I had a wire from Langner. I referred him to Geo. Nathan.
Many thinks for the book. Would you like me to review it? If so suggest a paper or magazine and I’ll be glad to.
Thine
F. Scott Fitz.
The format of the book is most attractive. I grow envious every time I see a Knopf binding.
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Postmarked October 7,1924]
Villa Marie, Valescure,
St. Raphael, France
Dear Bunny:
The above will tell you where we are as you proclaim yourself unable to find it on the map.* We enjoyed your letter enormously, collossally, stupendously. It was epochal, acrocryptical, categorical. I have begun life anew since getting it and Zelda has gone into a nunnery on the Pelleponesus. . . .
The news about the play is grand & the ballet too. I gather from your letter that O’Niell & Mary had a great success. But you are wrong about Ring’s book.† My title was the best possible. You are always wrong—but always with the most correct possible reasons. (This statement is merely acrocrytical, hypothetical, diabolical, metaphorical). . . .
I had a short curious note from the latter‡ yesterday, calling me to account for my Mercury story. § At first I couldn’t understand this communication after seven blessedly silent years—behold: he was a Catholic. I had broken his heart. . . .
>
I will give you now the Fitz touch without which this letter would fail to conform to your conception of my character.
Sinclair Lewis sold his new novel to the Designer for $50,000 (950,000.00 francs)—I never did like that fellow. (I do really).
My book is wonderful,║ so is the air & the sea. I have got my health back—I no longer cough and itch and roll from one side of the bed to the other all night and have a hollow ache in my stomach after two cups of black coffee. I really worked hard as hell last winter—but it was all trash and it nearly broke my heart as well as my iron constitution.
Write to me of all data, gossip, event, accident, scandal, sensation, deterioration, new reputation—and of yourself.
Our love
Scott
TO JOHN PEALE BISHOP
[Winter of 1924-25]
I am quite drunk
I am told that this is Capri;
though as I remember Capri was quieter
Dear John:
As the literary wits might say, your letter received and contents quoted. Let us have more of the same—I think it showed a great deal of power and the last scene—the dinner at the young Bishops—was handled with admirable restraint. I am glad that at last Americans are producing letters of their own. The climax was wonderful and the exquisite irony of the “sincerely yours” has only been equalled in the work of those two masters Flaubert and Ferber. . . .
I will now have two copies of Westcott’s Apple as in despair I ordered one—a regular orchard. I shall give one to Brooks whom I like. Do you know Brooks? He’s just a fellow here…
Excuse the delay. I have been working on the envelope. . . .
That was a caller. His name was Musselini, I think, and he says he is in politics here. And besides I have lost my pen so I will have to continue in pencil* . . . It turned up— I was writing with it all the time and hadn’t noticed. That is because I am full of my new work, a historical play based on the life of Woodrow Wilson.
Act I At Princeton
Woodrow seen teaching philosophy. Enter Pyne. Quarrel scene—Wilson refuses to recognize clubs. Enter woman with Bastard from Trenton. Pyne reenters with glee club and trustees. Noise outside “We have won—Princeton 12-Lafayette 3.” Cheers. Football team enter and group around Wilson. Old Nassau. Curtain.
Act. II. Gubernatorial Mansion at Patterson
Wilson seen signing papers. Tasker Bliss and Marc Connelly come in with proposition to let bosses get control. “I have important papers to sign—and none of them legalize corruption.” Triangle Club begins to sing outside window. . . . Enter women with Bastard from Trenton. President continues to sign papers. Enter Mrs. Gait, John Grier Hibben, Al Jolsen and Grantland Rice. Song “The call to Larger Duty.” Tableau. Coughdrop.
Act III. (Optional)
The Battle front 1918
Act IV.
The peace congress. Clemenceau, Wilson and Jolsen at table. . . . The junior prom committee comes in through the skylight. Clemenceau: “We want the Sarre.” Wilson: “No, sarre, I won’t hear of it.” Laughter. . . . Enter Marylyn Miller, Gilbert Seldes and Irish Meusel. Tasker Bliss falls into cuspidor.
Oh Christ! I’m sobering up! Write me the opinion you may be pleased to form of my chef d’oevre and others opinion. Please! I think its great but because it deals with much debauched materials, quick-deciders like Rasco may mistake it for Chambers. To me its fascinating. I never get tired of it. . . .
Zelda’s been sick in bed for five weeks, poor child, and is only now looking up. No news except I now get 2000 a story and they grow worse and worse and my ambition is to get where I need write no more but only novels. Is Lewis’ book any good. I imagine that mine is infinitely better— what else is well-reviewed this spring? Maybe my book* is rotten but I don’t think so.
What are you writing? Please tell me something about your novel. And if I like the idea maybe I’ll make it into a short story for the Post to appear just before your novel and steal the thunder. Who’s going to do it? Bebé Daniels? She’s a wow!
How was Townsend’s first picture. Good reviews? What’s Alec doing? And Ludlow? And Bunny? Did you read Ernest Boyd’s account of what I might ironicly call our “private” life in his “Portraits?” Did you like it? I rather did.
Scott
I am quite drunk again and enclose a postage stamp.
TO JOHN PEALE BISHOP
[Winter of 1924-25]
American Express Co.
Rome, Italy.
Dear John:
Your letter was perfect. It told us everything we wanted to know and the same day I read your article (very nice too) in Van. Fair about cherching the past. But you disappointed me with the quality of some of it (the news)—for instance that Bunny’s play failed and that you and Margaret find life dull and depressing there. We want to come back but we want to come back with money saved and so far we haven’t saved any—tho I’m one novel ahead and book of pretty good (seven) short stories. I’ve done about 10 pieces of horrible junk in the last year tho that I can never republish or bear to look at—cheap and without the spontaneity of my first work. But the novel I’m sure of. It’s marvellous.
We’re just back from Capri where I sat up (tell Bunny) half the night talking to my old idol Compton Mackenzie. Perhaps you met him. I found him cordial, attractive and pleasantly mundane. You get no sense from him that he feels his work has gone to pieces. He’s not pompous about his present output. I think he’s just tired. The war wrecked him as it did Wells and many of that generation.
To show how well you guessed the gossip I wanted we were wondering where the * * * *s got the money for Havana, whether the Film Guild finally collapsed (Christ! You should have seen their last two pictures.) But I don’t doubt that * * * * and * * * * will talk themselves into the cabinet eventually. I’d do it myself if I could but I’m too much of an egoist and not enough of a diplomat ever to succeed in the movies. You must begin by placing the tongue flat against the posteriors of such worthys as * * * * and * * * * and commence a slow caressing movement. Say what they may of Cruze—Famous Players is the product of two great ideas Demille and Gloria Swanson and it stands or falls not by their “conference methods” but on those two and the stock pictures that imitate them. The Cruze winnings are usually lost on such expensive experiments as * * * *.
Is Dos Passos novel any good? And what’s become of Cummings work. I haven’t read Some Do Not but Zelda was crazy about it. I glanced through it and kept wondering why it was written backward. At first I thought they’d sewn the cover on upside down. Well—these people will collaborate with Conrad.
Do you still think Dos Passos is a genius? My faith in him is somehow weakened. There’s so little time for faith these days.
* * * * * * * * is a damned attractive woman and while the husbands a haberdasher he’s at least a Groton haberdasher (he went there, I mean, to school)…
The Wescott book will be eagerly devoured. A personable young man of that name from Atlantic introduced himself to me after the failure of the Vegetable. I wonder if he’s the same. At any rate your Wescott, so Harrison Rhodes tells me, is coming here to Rome.
I’ve given up Nathan’s books. I liked the 4th series of Prejudices. Is Lewis new book any good. Hergesheimers was awful. He’s all done…
The cheerfulest things in my life are first Zelda and second the hope that my book has something extraordinary about it. I want to be extravagantly admired again. Zelda and I sometimes indulge in terrible four day rows that always start with a drinking party but we’re still enormously in love and about the only truly happily married people I know.
Our Very Best to Margaret
Please write!
Scott
(OVER)
In the Villa d’Este at Tivoli [Como] all that ran in my brain was:
“An alley of dark cypresses
Hides an enrondured pool of light
And there the young musicians come
With instruments for he
r delight
. . . . . . . . . .locks are bowed
Over dim lutes that sigh aloud
Or else with heads thrown back they tease
Reverberate echoes from the drum
The still folds etc”
It was wonderful that when you wrote that you’d never seen Italy—or, by God, now that I think of it, never lived in the 15th century.
But then I wrote T. S. of P. without having been to Oxford.
TO EDMUND WILSON
[1925]
14 Rue de Tillsit
Paris, France
Dear Bunny:
Thanks for your letter about the book. I was awfully happy that you liked it and that you approved of the design. The worst fault in it, I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe. However the lack is so astutely concealed by the retrospect of Gatsby’s past and by blankets of excellent prose that no one has noticed it— though everyone has felt the lack and called it by another name. Mencken said (in a most enthusiastic letter received today) that the only fault was that the central story was trivial and a sort of anecdote (that is because he has forgotten his admiration for Conrad and adjusted himself to the sprawling novel) and I felt that what he really missed was the lack of any emotional backbone at the very height of it.
Without making any invidious comparisons between Class A and Class C, if my novel is an anecdote so is The Brothers Karamazoff. From one angle the latter could be reduced into a detective story. However the letters from you and Mencken have compensated me for the fact that of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about and for the even more depressing fact that it was in comparison with the others a financial failure (after I’d turned down fifteen thousand for the serial rights!) I wonder what Rosenfeld thought of it.
The Crack-Up Page 23