I looked up Hemminway. He is taking me to see Gertrude Stein tomorrow. This city is full of Americans—most of them former friends—whom we spend most of our time dodging, not because we don’t want to see them but because Zelda’s only just well and I’ve got to work; and they seem to be incapable of any sort of conversation not composed of semi-malicious gossip about New York courtesy celebrities. I’ve gotten to like France. We’ve taken a swell apartment until January. I’m filled with disgust for Americans in general after two weeks sight of the ones in Paris—these preposterous, pushing women and girls who assume that you have any personal interest in them, who have all (so they say) read James Joyce and who simply adore Mencken. I suppose we’re no worse than anyone, only contact with other races brings out all our worse qualities. If I had anything to do with creating the manners of the contemporary American girl I certainly made a botch of the job.
I’d love to see you. God. I could give you’some laughs. There’s no news except that Zelda and I think we’re pretty good, as usual, only more so.
Scott
Thanks again for your cheering letter.
TO JOHN PEALE BISHOP
[Postmarked, August 9,1925]
Rue de Tilsitt
Paris, France
Dear John:
Thank you for your most pleasant, full, discerning and helpful letter about The Great Gatsby. It is about the only criticism that the book has had which has been intelligable, save a letter from Mrs. Wharton. I shall only ponder, or rather I have pondered, what you say about accuracy—I’m afraid I haven’t quite reached the ruthless artistry which would let me cut out an exquisite bit that had no place in the context. I can cut out the almost exquisite, the adequate, even the brilliant—but a true accuracy is, as you say, still in the offing. Also you are right about Gatsby being blurred and patchy. I never at any one time saw him clear myself—for he started out as one man I knew and then changed into myself—the amalgam was never complete in my mind.
Your novel sounds fascinating and I’m crazy to see it. I’m beginning a new novel next month on the Riviera. I understand that MacLeish is there, among other people (at Antibes where we are going). Paris has been a mad-house this spring and, as you can imagine, we were in the thick of it. I don’t know when we’re coming back—maybe never. We’ll be here till Jan. (except for a month in Antibes), and then we go Nice for the Spring, with Oxford for next summer. Love to Margaret and many thanks for the kind letter.
Scott
TO JOHN PEALE BISHOP
[1925]
Dear Sir:
The enclosed explains itself.* Meanwhile I went to Antibes and liked Archie MacLeish enormously. Also his poem, though it seems strange to like anything so outrageously derivative. T. S. of P. was an original in comparison.
I’m crazy to see your novel. I’m starting a new one myself. There was no one at Antibes this summer except me, Zelda, the Valentinos, the Murphy’s, Mistinguet, Rex Ingram, Dos Passos, Alice Terry, the MacLeishes, Charles Bracket, Maude Kahn, Esther Murphy, Marguerite Ñamara, E. Phillips Openheim, Mannes the violinist, Floyd Dell, Max and Chrystal Eastman, ex-Premier Orlando, Etienne de Beaumont—just a real place to rough it and escape from all the world. But we had a great time. I don’t know when we’re coming home—
The Hemminways are coming to dinner so I close with best wishes
Scott
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Probably spring, 1928]
“Ellerslie”
Edgemoor, Delaware
Dear Bunny: . . .
All is prepared for February 25th. The stomach pumps are polished and set out in rows, stale old enthusiasms are being burnished with that zeal peculiar only to the Brittish Tommy. My God, how we felt when the long slaughter of Paschendale had begun. Why were the generals all so old? Why were the Fabian society discriminated against when positions on the general staff went to Dukes and sons of profiteers. Agitators were actually hooted at in Hyde Park and Anglican divines actually didn’t become humanitarian internationalists over night. What is Briton coming to— where is Milton, Cromwell, Oates, Monk? Where are Shaftsbury, Athelstane, Thomas a Becket, Margot Asquith, Iris March. Where are Blackstone, Touchstone, Clapham-Hopewellton, Stoke-Poges? Somewhere back at G.H.Q. handsome men with grey whiskers murmured “We will charge them with the cavalry” and meanwhile boys from Bovril and the black country sat shivering in the lagoons at Ypres writing memoirs for liberal novels about the war. What about the tanks? Why did not Douglas Haig or Sir John French (the big smarties) (Look what they did to General Mercer) invent tanks the day the war broke out, like Sir Phillip Gibbs the weeping baronet, did or would, had he thought of it.
This is just a sample of what you will get on the 25th of Feb. There will be small but select company, coals, blankets, “something for the inner man.”
Please don’t say you can’t come the 25th but would like to come the 29th. We never receive people the 29th. It is the anniversary of the 2nd Council of Nicea when our Blessed Lord, our Blessed Lord, our Blessed Lord, our Blessed Lord—
It always gets stuck in that place. Put on “Old Man River” or something of Louis Bromfields.
Pray gravity to move your bowels. Its little we get done for us in this world. Answer.
Scott
Enjoyed your Wilson article enormously. Not so Thompson affair.*
TO JOHN PEALE BISHOP
[Probably January
or February, 1929]
% Guaranty Trust
Dear John:
My depression over the badness of the novel† as novel had just about sunk me, when I began the novellette‡—John, it’s like two different men writing. The novellette is one of the best war things I’ve ever read—right up with the very best of Crane and Bierce—intelligent, beautifully organized and written—oh, it moved me and delighted me—the Charlestown country, the night in town, the old lady—tut most of all, in the position I was in at 4 this afternoon when I was in agony about the novel, the really fine dramatic handling of the old lady—and—silver episode and the butchering scene. The preparation for the latter was adroit and delicate and just enough.
Now, to be practical— Scribner’s Magazine will, I’m sure, publish the novellette, if you wish, and pay you from 250-400 therefore. This price is a guess but probably accurate. I’d be glad to act as your amateur agent in the case. It is almost impossible without a big popular name to sell a twopart story to any higher priced magazine than that, as I know from my experience with Diamond Big as the Ritz, Rich Boy, ect. Advise me as to whether I may go ahead—of course authority confined only to American serial rights.
The novel is just something you’ve learned from and profited by. It has occasional spurts—like the conversations frequently of Brakespeare, but it is terribly tepid—I refrain—rather I don’t refrain but here set down certain facts which you are undoubtedly quite as aware of as I am.* . . .
I’m taking you for a beating, but do you remember your letters to me about Gatsby. I suffered, but I got something like I did out of your friendly tutelage in English poetry.
A big person can make a much bigger mess than a little person and your impressive stature converted a lot of pottery into pebbles during the three years or so you were in the works. Luckily the pottery was never very dear to you. Novels are not written, or at least begun with the idea of making an ultimate philosophical system—you tried to atone for your lack of confidence by a lack of humility before the form.
The main thing is: no one in our language possibly excepting Wilder has your talent for “the world,” your culture and acuteness of social criticism as upheld by the story. There the approach (2nd and 3rd person ect) is considered, full scope in choice of subject for your special talents (descriptive power, sense of “le pays,” ramifications of your special virtues such as loyalty, concealement of the sensuality that is your bete noire to such an extent that you can no longer see it black, like me in my drunkeness.
Anyhow the story is ma
rvellous. Don’t be mad at this letter. I have the horrors tonight and perhaps am taking it out on you. Write me when I could see you here in Paris in the afternoon between 2.30 and 6.30 and talk—and name a day and a café at your convenience—I have no dates save on Sunday, so any day will suit me. Meanwhile I will make one more stab at your novel to see if I can think of anyway by a miracle of cutting it could be made presentable. But I fear there’s neither honor nor money in it for you
Your old and Always
Affectionate Friend
Scott
Excuse Christ-like tone of letter. Began tippling at page 2 and am now positively holy (like Dostoevsky’s non-stinking monk)
TO JOHN PEALE BISHOP
[Received May 5, 1931]
Grand Hôtel de la Paix
Lausanne
Dear John:
Read Many Thousands over again (2nd time) and like it enormously. I think it hangs together as a book too. I like the first story—I think its damn good. I’d never read it before. Death and Young Desire doesn’t come off—as for instance the handling of the same theme in The Story of St. Michele. Why I don’t know. My favorite is The Cellar—I am still fascinated by the Conradean missing man—that’s real fiction. Bones seems even better in the respect-inspiring light thrown by Bunny’s opinion. I’m taking it to Zelda tomorrow.
Ever your Friend
Scott
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Probably February 1933]
La Paix (My God!)
Towson Md.
Dear Bunny:
Your letter with the head of Vladimir Ulianov* just received. Please come here the night of the inauguration & stay at least the next day. I want to know with what resignation you look forward to your rôle of Lunatcharsky & whether you decided you had nothing further worth saying in prose fiction or whether there was nothing further to say. Perhaps I should draw the answer to the last question from Axel’s Castle yet I remember stories of yours that anticipated so much that was later said that it seemed a pity. (Not that I don’t admire your recent stuff—particularly I liked Hull House.)
We had a most unfortunate meeting. I came to New York to get drunk . . . and I shouldn’t have looked up you and Ernest in such a humor of impotent desperation. I assume full responsibility for all unpleasantness—with Ernest I seem to have reached a state where when we drink together I half bait, half truckle to him. . . . Anyhow, plenty of egotism for the moment.
Dos was here, & we had a nice evening—we never quite understand each other & perhaps that’s the best basis for an enduring friendship. Alec came up to see me at the Plaza the day I left (still in awful shape but not conspicuously so). He told me to my amazement that you had explained the fundamentals of Leninism, even Marxism the night before, & Dos tells me that it was only recently made plain thru the same agency to the New Republic. I little thought when I left politics to you & your gang in 1920 you would devote your time to cutting up Wilson’s shroud into blinders! Back to Mallarmé!
—Which reminds me that T. S. Eliot and I had an afternoon & evening together last week. I read him some of his poems and he seemed to think they were pretty good. I liked him fine. . . .
However come in March. Don’t know what time the inauguration takes place but you find out & tell us the approximate time of your arrival here. Find out in advance for we may go to it too & we might all get lost in the shuffle.
Always Your Friend
Scott. . .
TO EDMUND WILSON
[Postmarked March 12,1934]
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Bunny:
Despite your intention of mild criticism* in our conversation, I felt more elated than otherwise—if the characters got real enough so that you disagreed with what I chose for their manifest destiny the main purpose was accomplished (by the way, your notion that Dick should have faded out as a shyster alienist was in my original design, but I thot of him, in reconsideration, as an “homme epuisé,” not only an “homme manqué.” I thought that, since his choice of a profession had accidentally wrecked him, he might plausibly have walked out on the profession itself.)
Any attempt by an author to explain away a partial failure in a work is of course doomed to absurdity—yet I could wish that you, and others, had read the book version rather than the mag. version which in spots was hastily put together. The last half for example has a much more polished facade now. Oddly enough several people have felt that the surface of the first chapters was too ornate. One man even advised me to “coarsen the texture,” as being remote from the speed of the main narrative!
In any case when it appears I hope you’ll find time to look it over again. Such irrevelancies as * * * *’s nosedive and Dick’s affair in Ohnsbruck are out, together with the scene of calling on the retired bootlegger at Beaulieu, & innumerable minor details. I have driven the Scribner proofreaders half nuts but I think I’ve made it incomparably smoother.
Zelda’s pictures go on display in a few weeks & I’ll be meeting her in N. Y. for a day at least. Wouldn’t it be a good time for a reunion?
It was good seeing you & good to think that our squabble, or whatever it was, is ironed out.
With affection always,
Scott Fitzgerald
TO EDMUND WILSON
September 7, 1934
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland,
Dear Bunny:
I’ve had a big reaction from your last two articles in the New Republic* In spite of the fact that we always approach material in different ways there is some fast-guessing quality that, for me, links us now in the work of the intellect. Always the overtone and the understatement.
It was fun when we all believed the same things. It was more fun to think that we were all going to die together or live together, and none of us anticipated this great loneliness, where one has dedicated his remnants to imaginative fiction and another his slowly dissolving trunk to the Human Idea. Nevertheless the stress that you put upon this in your New Republic article—of forces never still, of rivers never ending, of clouds shifting their prophecies at evening, afternoon or morning—this sense of things has kept our courses loosely parallel, even when our references to data have been so disparate as to throw us miles apart.
The purport of this letter is to agree passionately with an idea that you put forth in a discussion of Michelet: that conditions irretrievably change men and that what looks purple in a blue light looks, in another spectrum, like green and white bouncing snow. I want you to know that one among many readers is absolutely alert to the implications and substrata of meaning in this new work.
Ever affectionately yours,
Scott
TO BEATRICE DANCE [?]
September, 1936
I have never had so many things go wrong and with such defiant persistence. By an irony which quite fits into the picture, the legacy which I received from my mother’s death (after being too ill to go to her death bed or her funeral) is the luckiest event of some time. She was a defiant old woman, defiant in her love for me in spite of my neglect of her and it would have been quite within her character to have died that I might live.
Thank you for your wire today. People have received this Esquire article with mingled feelings—not a few of them think it was a terrific mistake to have written any of them from Crack-Up. On the other hand, I get innumerable “fan letters” and requests to republish them in the Reader’s Digest, and several anthologists’ requests, which I prudently refused.
My Hollywood deal (which, as it happened, I could not have gone through with because of my shoulder) was seriously compromised by their general tone. It seems to have implied to some people that I was a complete moral and artistic bankrupt.
Now—I come to some things I may have written you before. Did I tell you that I got the broken shoulder from diving from a fifteen-foot board, which would have seemed modest enough in the old days, and the shoulder broke before I hit the wa
ter—a phenomenon which has diverted the medicos hereabout to some extent; and that when it was almost well, I tripped over the raised platform of the bath room at four o’clock one morning when I was still surrounded by an extraordinary plaster cast and I lay on the floor for forty-five minutes before I could crawl to the telephone and get rescued by Mac. It was a hot night, and I was soaking wet in the cast so I caught cold on the tile floor of the bath room, and a form of arthritis called “miotosis” developed, which involved all of the joints on that side of the body, so back to the bed I went and I have been groaning and cursing without cessation until about three days ago, when the devil began to abandon me. During this time Mother died in the North and a dozen other things seemed to happen at once, so that it will take me several months to clear the wreckage of a completely wasted summer, productive of one mediocre short story and two or three shorts.
TO EDMUND WILSON
May 16, 1939
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
Dear Bunny:
News that you and Mary had a baby reached me rather late because I was out of California for several months. Hope he is now strong and crawling. Tell him if he grows up any bigger I shall be prepared to take him for a loop when he reaches the age of twenty-one at which time I shall be sixty-three. . . .
Believe me, Bunny, it meant more to me than it could possibly have meant to you to see you that evening. It seemed to renew old times learning about Franz Kafka and latter things that are going on in the world of poetry, because I am still the ignoramus that you and John Bishop wrote about at Princeton. Though my idea is now, to learn about a new life from Louis B. Mayer who promises to teach me all about things if he ever gets around to it.
Ever your devoted friend,
—————
TO GERALD MURPHY
TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX FILM CORPORATION
Studios
Beverly Hills, California
September 14, 1940
Dear Gerald:
I suppose anybody our age suspects what is emphasized—so let it go. But I was flat in bed from April to July last year with day and night nurses. Anyhow as you see from the letterhead I am now in official health.
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