Affectionately
Your Mother, Mrs. Shakespeare
Concieted Ass! says Bob.
And I don’t blame you for saying so, neither do I blame anybody much for anything. The only lesson to be learned from life is that there’s no lesson to be learned from life.
Have you read Main Street?1 Its a great book. Had a letter from Sinclaire Lewis telling me we must not expect our books to sell in St. Paul. I expect my new one, just completed, “The Beautiful and Damned” to be barred from the St. Paul library—by the wives of Mr. Frost and Mr. Rietsky—and Mr. Severance.
Don Stuart2 vowing he can stand business no longer has come to N.Y. to take up writing. He’s a knock-out, I think.
But really Bob, fond as I am of you, I do think that was a silly letter to write me.
Come on east + look us up when you do.
Faithfully
F Scott Fitzg—
TO: Edmund Wilson
July 1921
ALS, 6 pp. Yale University
Hotel Cecil stationery. London
Dear Bunny:
Of course I’m wild with jealousy! Do you think you can indecently parade this obscene success3 before my envious desposition, with equanaminity, you are mistaken.
God damn the continent of Europe. It is of merely antiquarian interest. Rome is only a few years behind Tyre + Babylon. The negroid streak creeps northward to defile the nordic race. Already the Italians have the souls of blackamoors. Raise the bars of immigration and permit only Scandinavians, Teutons, Anglo Saxons + Celts to enter. France made me sick. It’s silly pose as the thing the world has to save. I think its a shame that England + America didn’t let Germany conquor Europe. Its the only thing that would have saved the fleet of tottering old wrecks. My reactions were all philistine, anti-socialistic, provincial + racially snobbish. I believe at last in the white man’s burden. We are as far above the modern frenchman as he is above the negro. Even in art! Italy has no one. When Antole France dies French literature will be a silly jealous rehashing of technical quarrels. They’re thru + done. You may have spoken in jest about N.Y. as the capitol of culture but in 25 years it will be just as London is now. Culture follows money + all the refinements of aesthetescism can’t stave off its change of seat (Christ! what a metaphor). We will be the Romans in the next generation as the English are now.
Alec1 sent me your article. I read it half a dozen times and think it is magnificent. I can’t tell you how I hate you. I don’t hate Don Stuart half as much (tho I find that I am suddenly + curiously irritated by him) because I don’t really dread him. But you! Keep out of my sight. I want no more of your articles!
Enclosed is 2 francs with which you will please find a french slave to make me a typed copy of your letter from Mencken. Send here at once, if it please you. I will destroy it on reading it. Please! I’d do as much for you. I haven’t gotten hold of a bookman.
Paradise is out here. Of 20 reviews about half are mildly favorable, a quarter of them imply that I’ve read “Sinister Street once too often” + the other five (including the Times) damn it summarily as artificial. I doubt if it sells 1,500 copies.
Menckens 1st series of Predjudices is attracting wide attention here. Wonderful review in the Times.
I’m delighted to hear about The Undertaker.2 Alec wrote describing how John “goes to see Mrs. Knopf and rubs himself against her passionately hoping for early fall publication.” Edna3 has no doubt told you how we scoured Paris for you. Idiot! The American Express mail dept has my adress. Why didn’t you register. We came back to Paris especially to see you. Needless to say our idea of a year in Italy was well shattered + we sail for America on the 9th + thence to The “Sahara of Bozart” (Montgomery) for life.
With envious curses + hopes of an immediate responce
F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of Flappers +
Philosophers [juvenile])
TO: Maxwell Perkins
ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University
Dellwood, White Bear Lake
Minn, Aug 25th 1921
Dear Mr. Perkins—
Excuse the pencil but I’m feeling rather tired and discouraged with life tonight and I havn’t the energy to use ink—ink the ineffable destroyer of thought, that fades an emotion into that slatternly thing, a written down mental excretion. What ill-spelled rot!
About the novel—which after my letters I should think you’d be so bored with you’d wish it had never existed: I’d like very much if it came out in England simultaneously with America. You have the rights to it have you not? If you do not intend to place it would you be willing to turn them over to me on the same 10% basis as Paradise. So I could place it either with Collins1 or thru Reynolds?
Hope you’re enjoying New Hampshire—you probably are. I’m having a hell of a time because I’ve loafed for 5 months + I want to get to work. Loafing puts me in this particularly obnoxious and abominable gloom. My 3d novel, if I ever write another, will I am sure be black as death with gloom. I should like to sit down with 1/2 dozen chosen companions + drink myself to death but I am sick alike of life, liquor and literature. If it wasn’t for Zelda I think I’d dissapear out of sight for three years. Ship as a sailor or something + get hard—I’m sick of the flabby semi-intellectual softness in which I flounder with my generation.
Scott Fitz
TO: Edmund Wilson
Postmarked November 25, 1921
ALS, 5pp. Yale University
626 Goodrich Ave.
St. Paul, Minn.
Dear Bunny—
Thank you for your congratulations.2 I’m glad the damn thing’s over. Zelda came through without a scratch + I have awarded her the croix-deguerre with palm. Speaking of France, the great general with the suggestive name is in town today.
I agree with you about Mencken—Weaver + Dell3 are both something awful. I like some of John’s critisism but Christ! he is utterly dishonest. Why does he tell us how rotten he thinks Mooncalf is and then give it a “polite bow” in his column. Likewise he told me personally that my “book just missed being a great book” + how I was the most hopeful ect ect + then damned me with faint praise in two papers six months before I’m published. I am sat with a condescending bow “halfway between the posts of Compton Mckenzie and Booth Tarkington.” So much for that!
I have almost completely rewritten my book. Do you remember you told me that in my midnight symposium scene I had sort of set the stage for a play that never came off—in other words when they all began to talk none of them had anything important to say. I’ve interpolated some recent ideas of my own and (possibly) of others. See enclosure at end of letter.
Having desposed of myself I turn to you. I am glad you + Ted Paramore1 are together. I was never crazy over the oboist nor the accepter of invitations and I imagine they must have been small consolation to live with. I like Ted immensely. He is a little too much the successful Eli to live comfortably in his mind’s bed-chamber but I like him immensely.
What in hell does this mean? My controll must have dictated it. His name is Mr. Ikki and he is an Alaskan orange-grower.
Nathan2 and me have become reconciled by letter. If the baby is ugly she can retire into the shelter of her full name Frances Scott.
I hear strange stories about you and your private life. Are they all true? What are you going to do? Free lance? I’m delighted about the undertaker’s garland. Why not have a preface by that famous undertaker in New York. Say justa blurb on the cover. He might do it if he had a sense of humor
St. Paul is dull as hell. Have written two good short stories + three cheap ones.
I liked Three Soldiers3 immensely + reviewed it for the St. Paul Daily News. I am tired of modern novels + have just finished Paine’s biography of Clemens.4 It’s excellent. Do let me see if if you do me for the Bookman. Isn’t The Triumph of the Egg5 a wonderful title. I liked both John’s + Don’s6 articles in Smart Set. I am lonesome for N.Y. May get there next fall + may go to England to live. Yours in this hell-
hole of life & time,
the world.
F Scott Fitz—
TO: Harold Ober
c. November-December 1921
ALS, 1 p. Lilly Library
626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul
Dear Mr. Ober:
Am enclosing The Diamond in the Sky1 cut to 15,000 words from the original 20,000—from 87 pages to 66. I don’t feel that I can cut it any farther without ruining the story. I think this much cutting has improved it.
If the better priced markets won’t have it I suggest Scribners or even Smart Set tho I doubt if they’d pay more than $200. or $250. or possibly $300 for it as a novellette.
Thank you for depositing the money for me. I am concieving a play which is to make my fortune
Sincerely
F Scott Fitzgerald
TO: Edmund Wilson
January 1922
ALS, 7 pp. Yale University
626 Goodrich Ave.
St. Paul, Minn
Dear Bunny—
Needless to say I have never read anything with quite the uncanny facination with which I read your article.2 It is, of course, the only intelligible and intelligent thing of any length which has been written about me and my stuff—and like every thing you write it seems to me pretty generally true. I am guilty of its every stricture and I take an extraordinary delight in its considered approbation. I don’t see how I could possibly be offended at anything in it—on the contrary it pleases me more to be compared to “standards out of time”, than to merely the usual scapegoats of contemporary critisism. Of course I’m going to carp at it a little but merely to conform to convention. I like it, I think its an unpredjudiced diagnosis and I am considerably in your debt for the interest which impelled you to write it.
Now as to the liquor thing—its true, but nevertheless I’m going to ask you take it out. It leaves a loophole through which I can be attacked and discredited by every moralist who reads the article. Wasn’t it Bernard Shaw who said that you’ve either got to be conventional in your work or in your private life or get into trouble? Anyway the legend about my liquoring is terribly widespread and this thing would hurt me more than you could imagine—both in my contact with the people with whom I’m thrown—relatives + respectable friends—and, what is much more important, financially.
So I’m asking you to cut:
1. “when sober” on page one. I have indicated it. If you want to substitute “when not unduly celebrating” or some innuendo no more definite than that, all right.
2. From “This quotation indicates. . .” to “. . . sets down the facts” would be awfully bad for me. I’d much rather have you cut it or at least leave out the personal implication if you must indicate that my characters drink. As a matter of fact I have never written a line of any kind while I was under the glow of so much as a single cocktail + tho my parties have been many its been their spectacularity rather than their frequency which has built up the usual “dope-fiend” story. Judge + Mrs. Sayre would be crazy! and they never miss The Bookman.
Now your three influences, St. Paul, Irish (incidently, though it doesn’t matter, I’m not Irish on Father’s side—that’s where Francis Scott Key comes in) and liquor are all important I grant. But I feel less hesitancy asking you to remove the liquor because your catalogue is not complete anyhow—the most enormous influence on me in the four + 1/2 yrs since I met her has been the complete fine and full hearted selfishness and chill-mindedness of Zelda.
Both Zelda and I roared over the Anthony-Maury incident.1 You’ve improved mine (which was to have Muriel go blind) by 100%—we were utterly convulsed.
But Bunny, and this I hate to ask you, please take out the soldier incident.2 I am afraid of it. It will not only utterly spoil the effect of the incident in the book but will give rise to the most unpleasant series of events imaginable. Ever since Three Soldiers, the New York Times has been itching for a chance to get at the critics of the war. If they got hold of this I would be assailed with the most violent vituperation in the press of the entire country (and you know what the press can do, how they can present an incident to make a man upholding an unpopular cause into the likeness of a monster—vide Upton Sinclair3). And, by God, they would! Besides the incident is not correct. I didn’t apologize. I told the Col. about it very proudly. I wasn’t sorry for months afterwards and then it was only a novelist’s remorse.
So for God’s sake cut that paragraph. I’d be wild if it appeared! And it would without doubt do me serious harm.
I note from the quotation from Head and Shoulders + from reference to Bernice that you have plowed through Flappers for which conscientious labor I thank you. When the strain has abated I will send you two exquisite stories in what Professor Lemuel Ozuk in his definative biography will call my “second” or “neo-flapper” manner.
But one more carp before I close. Gloria and Anthony are representative. They are two of the great army of the rootless who float around New York. There must be thousands. Still I didn’t bring it out.
With these two cuts, Bunny, the article ought to be in my favor. At any rate I enjoyed it enormously and shall try to reciprocate in some way on The Undertaker’s Garland though I doubt whether you’d trust it to my palsied hands for review. Don’t change the Irish thing—its much better as it is—besides the quotation hints at the whiskey motif.
Forever,
Benjamin Disraeli
I am consoled for asking you to cut the soldier and alcoholic paragraphs by the fact that if you hadn’t known me you couldn’t or wouldn’t have put them in. They have a critical value but are really personal gossip.
F. S. F.
I’m glad about the novellette in Smart Set. I am about to send them one. I am writing a comedy—or a burlesque or something. The “romantic stories” about you are none of my business. They will keep until I see you.
S.
Hersesassery—Quelque mot!
How do you like echolalia for “meaningless chatter?”
Glad you like the title motto—Zelda sends best—Remember me to Ted. Did he say I was “old woman with jewel?”1
TO: John Peale Bishop
February 1922
ALS, 3 pp. Princeton University
St. Paul, Minnesota
626 Goodrich Ave
Dear John:
I’ll tell you frankly what I’d rather you’d do.2 Tell specifically what you like about the book + don’t—the characters—Anthony, Gloria, Adam Patch, Maury, Bloeckman, Muriel Dick, Rachael, Tana ect ect ect. Exactly whether they’re good or bad, convincing or not. What you think of the style, too ornate (if so quote) good (also quote) rotten (also quote). What emotion (if any) the book gave you. What you think of its humor. What you think of its ideas. If ideas are bogus hold them up specifically and laugh at them. Is it boring or interesting. How interesting. What recent American books are more so. If you think my “Flash Back in Paradise” in Chap I is like the elevated moments of D. W. Griffith say so. Also do you think its imitative and of whom. What I’m angling for is a specific definate review. I’m tickled both that they’ve asked for such a lengthy thing and that your going to do. You cannot hurt my feelings about the book—tho I did resent in your Baltimore article1 being definately limited at 25 years old to a place between Mckenzie who wrote 21/2 good (but not wonderful) novels + then died—and Tarkington who if he has a great talent has the mind of a school boy. I mean, at my age they’d done nothing.
As I say I’m delighted that you’re going to do it and as you wrote asking me to suggest a general mode of attack I am telling you frankly what I would like. I’m so afraid of all the reviews being general + I devoted so much more care myself to the detail of the book than I did to thinking out the general sceme that I would appreciate a detailed review. If it is to be that length article it could scarcely be all general anyway
* * *
* * *
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: Harold Ober
ALS, 3 pp. Lilly Library
626 Goodrich Ave
St. Paul
Feb 5th, 1922
Dear Mr. Ober—
I have your letter of Jan 30th. There are several things I want to speak to you about
(1.) My play will be done in about 10 days—two weeks. It is a wonder, I think, and should make a great deal of money.
(2.) A well-known author who came through here last week said he thought The Metropolitan was on the verge of failure.2 As I understand they have finally paid you for my novel3 but have not paid for my last short story (though you have paid me for it—advanced it, I mean). If this is true do you think Benjamin Button should go to them until they have paid for Two for a Cent? I think that Benjamin Button, tho, like The Diamond in the Sky, satirical, would sell, because it does not “blaspheme” like the latter—which leads to my third point:
(3.) I should much prefer that The Diamond in the Sky be sent to Smart Set as soon as it can be re-typed with “Chap I” substituted for “I” ect. If Rascoe of Mccauls1 wouldn’t risk it then Bridges of Scribners wouldn’t. Besides he would hack it all to pieces—I once had reams of correspondence with him over a “God damn” in a story called The Cut Glass Bowl. Besides they would pay little more than Scribner—possibly four hundred or five hundred I should guess at most for a two part short story—while Smart Set, though they pay only $35-$80 for short stories, once gave me $200.00 for a novellette when I was unknown, and I feel sure they’d give me $250.00 now.
In short I realize I can’t get a real good price for the three weeks work that story represents—so I’d much rather get no price but reap the subtle, and nowadays oh-so-valuble dividend that comes from Mencken’s good graces. Besides, in the Smart Set it will be featured.
A Life in Letters Page 6