Ever yours gratefully
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO: Harold Ober
Received April 23, 1932
ALS, 3 pp. Lilly Library
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Harold:
The Post story is mailed tomorrow reaches you Mon.
Here are a whole lot of points
(1.) Are you sure my letter reached Van Cortland Enerson? It was a reference to a story idea of his I wanted to buy, + its rather important
(2.) My alternative idea for the next is to revise Crazy Sunday, so if you have any advice send it
* * *
Nightmare1 will never, never sell for money, in any times. I note there are two Clayton Magazines called “Strange Tales” + “Astounding Stories.” Would either of them pay $250.00? Their rates are 2 cents a word + up.
* * *
Last + most important.
Will you write a letter to the Collector of Internal Revenue, St Paul, Minn (but send it to McNiell Seymore, Pioneer Bldg. St Paul) embodying the following points.
(1.) Who you are—long time in business ect.
(2.) Surprise at hearing that my earnings from Post ect were not accepted as earned income.
(3.) That you had never considered me a free lance author but that on the contrary my sales were arranged long in advance and that it has been understood for years among editors that my stories were written specificly for the Post by definate arrangement and that I was what is known as a “Post Author”.
(4.) Moreover that they conform to Post specifications as to length and avoidance of certain themes so that for instance they could not have been published in Liberty which insisted on stories not over 5000 words, + would have been inacceptable to womens magazines since they were told from the male angle. That when I contracted with another magazine such as College Humor the stories were different in tone + theme, half as long, signed in conjunction with my wife. That the Post made it plain that they wanted to be offered all my work of the kind agreed apon; that they always specified that no work of mine should appear in several competing magazines. That during the years 1929 and 1930 no story of mine was rejected by the Post (The first was in February 1931, but as that year isn’t in question don’t mention it)
(5.) That had not the possibility you have just been informed of (i.e. of treating short story money as unearned income under G.C.M. 236) come as a completely new attitude all the magazines would assurredly have substituted written contracts in such cases as this where the author is in fact the employee of the magazine, and should his story appear in rival journals the arrangment would be broken. It is as much a contract as a telephone conversation between two brokers. And And no story order would be accepted even from a non-competing magazine without discussing it with the Post.
That’s a hell of a lot to ask. Can you Send it off as soon as possible. It means a lot of money to me, as I’ll explain when I see you. (Otherwise I get a reduction for having worked in Europe + paid taxes there—but this only applies to earned income)
In Haste
Ever Yours
Scott
Also that letters + conversation were almost always substituted for contracts when arranging for short stories—the contrary being true as to play + picture contracts where the buyer is often a less stable party.
TO: Gertrude Stein
TLS, 1 p. Yale University
Hotel Rennert stationery.
Baltimore, Maryland
April 28, 1932.
Dear Gertrude Stien:
You were so nice to think of me so far off and send me your book.1 Whenever I sit down to write I think of the line that you drew for me and told me that my next book should be that thick. So many of your memorable remarks come often to my head, and they seem to survive in a way that very little current wisdom does.
I read the book, of course, immediately, and was half through it for the second time (learning a lot as we all do from you) when my plans were upset by my wife’s illness, and by an accident it was consigned to temporary storage.
I hope to be in Europe this summer and to see you. I have never seen nearly as much of you as I would like.
Yours always, admiringly and cordially,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Miss Gertrude Stien,
c/o Shakespearre & Co. Librarie,
Pres de la Theatre de l’ odeon, Paris.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
c. April 30, 1932
ALS, 3 pp. Princeton University
Personal and Confidential from F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hotel Rennert
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Max:
I was shocked to hear of your daughter’s illness. If it is anything mental I can deeply sympathize for there is nothing so “terrifying + mysterious”, as you say. I am somewhat of an amateur expert on the subject + if at any time things don’t go well let us meet in New York and talk about it. I mean there were times Zelda’s illness when I needed a layman’s advice. If she is in good hands do not make the criminal mistake of trying to hurry things, for reasons of family affection or family pride.
Zelda’s novel is now good, improved in every way. It is new. She has largely eliminated the speakeasy-nights-and-our-trip-to-Paris atmosphere. You’ll like it. It should reach you in ten days. I am too close to it to judge it but it may be even better than I think. But I must urge you two things
(1.) If you like it please don’t wire her congratulations, and please keep whatever praise you may see fit to give on the staid side—I mean, as you naturally would, rather than yield to a tendency one has with invalids to be extra nice to cheer them up. This seems a nuance but it is rather important at present to the doctors that Zelda does not feel that the acceptance (always granted you like it) means immediate fame and money. I’m afraid all our critical tendencies in the last decade got bullish; we discovered one Hemmingway to a dozen Callaghans and Caldwells (I think the latter is a washout) + probably created a lot of spoiled geniuses who might have been good workmen. Not that I regret it—if the last five years uncovered Ernest, Tom Wolfe + Faulkner it would have been worth while, but I’m not certain enough of Zelda’s present stability of character to expose her to any superlatives. If she has a success coming she must associate it with work done in a workmanlike manner for its own sake, + part of it done fatigued and uninspired, and part of it done when even to remember the original inspiration and impetus is a psychological trick. She is not twenty-one and she is not strong, and she must not try to follow the pattern of my trail which is of course blazed distinctly on her mind.
(2.) Don’t discuss contract with her until I have talked to you.
Ring’s last story in the Post was pathetic, a shade of himself, but I’m glad they ran it first and I hope it’ll stir up his professional pride to repeat.
Beginning the article for you on Monday. You can count on it for the end of next week.
Now very important.
(1.) I must have a royalty report for 1931 for my income tax—they insist.
(2.) I borrowed $600 in 1931. $500 of this was redeemed by my article. The other hundred should show in royalty report.
Since Gatsby was not placed with Grosset or Burt I’d like to have it in the Modern Library. This is my own idea + have had no approach but imagine I can negotiate it. Once they are interested would of course turn negotiations over to you. But I feel, should you put obstacles in the way you would be doing me a great harm and injustice. Gatsby is constantly mentioned among memorable books but the man who asks for it in a store on the basis of such mention does not ask twice. Booksellers do not keep such an item in stock + there is a whole new generation who cannot obtain it. This has been on my mind for two years and I must insist that you you give me an answer that doesn’t keep me awake nights wondering why it possibly benefited the Scribners to have me represented in such an impersonal short story collection as that of The Modern Library by a weak story + Ring ect by none at all. That “they wo
uld almost all have been Scribner authors” was a most curious perversion of what should have been a matter of pride into an attitude of dog-in-the-manger.
Excuse that outburst, Max. Please write, answering all questions. Tell Louise I liked her story + hope she’s better. Things go all right with me now. What news of Ernest? And his book?
Ever Your Friend
Scott
TO: Maxwell Perkins
c. May 14, 1932
ALS, 3 pp. Princeton University
Hotel Rennert stationery. Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Max:
Here is Zelda’s novel. It is a good novel now, perhaps a very good novel—I am too close to it to tell. It has the faults + virtues of a first novel. It is more the expression of a powerful personality, like Look Homeward Angel than the work of a finished artist like Ernest Hemmingway. It should interest the many thousands interested in dancing. It is about something + absolutely new, + should sell.
Now, about its reception. If you refuse it, which I don’t think you will, all communication should come through me. If you accept it write her directly and I withdraw all restraints on whatever meed of praise you may see fit to give. The strain of writing it was bad for her but it had to be written—she needed relaxation afterwards and I was afraid that praise might encourage the incipient egomania the doctors noticed, but she has taken such a sane common sense view lately (at first she refused to revise—then she revised completely, added on her own suggestion + has changed what was a rather flashy and self-justifying “true confessions” that wasn’t worthy of her into an honest piece of work. She can do more with the galley but I cant ask her to do more now.)—but now praise will do her good within reason. But she musn’t write anything more on the personal side for six months or so until she is stronger.
Now a second thing, more important than you think. You havn’t been in the publishing business over twenty years without noticing the streaks of smallness in very large personalities. Ernest told me once he would “never publish a book in the same season with me”, meaning it would lead to ill-feeling. I advise you, if he is in New York, (and always granting you like Zelda’s book) do not praise it, or even talk about it to him! The finer the thing he has written, the more he’ll expect your entire allegiance to it as this is one of the few pleasures, rich + full + new, he’ll get out of it. I know this, + I think you do too + probably there’s no use warning you. There is no possible conflict between the books but there has always been a subtle struggle between Ernest + Zelda, + any apposition might have curiously grave consequences—curious, that is, to un-jealous men like you and me.
One more thing. Please, in your letter to Zelda (if of acceptance) do not mention contracts or terms. I will take it up immediately on hearing from you.
Thanks about the Modern Library. I don’t know exactly what I shall do. Five years have rolled away from me and I can’t decide exactly who I am, if anyone.
Tell me if anything further happens in the family matter—actually I am such a blend of the scientific + the laymans attitude on such subjects that I could be more help than anyone you could think of. I could come to New York, + intend to soon anyhow.
Ever your Friend
Scott
TO: Dr. Thomas Rennie1
CC of retyped letter, 4 pp.
Alan Mason Chesney Medical
Archives, Johns Hopkins Hospital
“La Paix.” Towson, Maryland
LETTER FROM HUSBAND TO PHYSICIAN: October, 1932
The situation has reduced itself in my mind to a rather clear-cut struggle of egos between Zelda and myself. Last night, after a most affectionate day, a day in which at home, at the theatre, in the car, she would literally not move an inch from me nor talk of anything save how she loved me and admired me—a situation which I dread for it almost always precedes a reaction of some kind—after such a day, she suddenly announced in the evening what sounded to me like an ultimatum, a threat to go crazy. She wrote out some notes to Dr. Meyer, which as you will see are all aimed at rather vague persecuting forces and in which I am not named but am suggested.
I think I know what is underneath and it parallels what happened last February. Here it is:
As I told you, I got ahead at last financially in August and since then I have written 30,000 words on my novel. She knows this and one side of her is glad. She knows my plans, to break off presently for a week and then resume, completing the whole task, which is the fruit of four years of preparation and note taking and experiment in such time as I could afford to give to it. She knows it is serious and that it naturally rests to some degree upon my life.
Now for the last five years—the two and a half of ballet and the two and a half of sickness, she has come to regard me as the work horse and herself as the artist—the producer of the finer things such as painting, uncommercial literature, ballet, etc., such as I have not been able to mix with the damn Post story writing. Consciously she knows that her Literary work is founded upon mine and that she is still a long way from turning out work as the best of mine. Nevertheless she is damn well going to try and naturally I’ve helped and encouraged her. But regard this:
It is significant that last February her breakdown was associated with my outlining to her a frame for what was then a new approach to my work which was a story of our eight years in Europe. I read her a chapter. What did she do immediately on her arrival in the clinic but sit down and try to write it herself, including what she must have known was some of the best material in my notebook, stuff I had often discussed with her and that she knew I hadn’t touched for short stories because it belonged in a more important medium. Together with this were a great mass of my ideas, my remarks, comments on my failings, my personal habits, fragments of my style and bits of all my stock in trade. This was sent off to a publisher before I could see it. What happened you know—I protested vehemently and what was for me an unsatisfactory compromise, was reached—she cut out the most offensive of the material and on my advice worked up the best parts so that the book assumed a certain artistic coherence.
But the fundamental struggle continued, shown indirectly by her unwillingness to let me help her with her stories coupled with a study of my books so profound that she is saturated with them, whole fragments of my scenes and cadences come out in her work, which she admits. One is flattered—it is only when she aims to use the materials of our common life, the only fact material that I have (heaven knows there’s no possible harm in her using her own youth, her dancing, etc.) that she becomes a danger to my life and to us. She knows that my novel is almost entirely concerned with the Riviera and the two years we spent there, and I have continually asked her to keep away from it and she agrees in theory, yet she has just blandly completed a play about it, laid on the very beach where my novel begins. Her agitation to begin another novel increases in intensity—I know there will be whole sections of it that are simply muddy transcriptions of things in my current novel—things we both observed and have a right to, but that under the present circumstances I have all rights to. Imagine a painter trying to paint on canvasses each of which has a sketchy vulgarization, in his own manner, lined across it, by the companion within whose company he first observed the subject—at the painter’s expense.
Now Zelda is a fine person and she sees this. The arrangement is that I am to finish and publish my novel before she tries another extended piece of work. This is absolutely all right with me. But in her subconscious there is a deathly terror that I may make something very fine in the use of this material of “ours”, that I may preclude her making something very fine. She knows that her book is not an achieved artistic whole, but she wants to hurry through a lot more material in the same way—incidentally leaving me literally nothing.
The conflict is bothering her. The nearer I come to completion, that is to artistic satisfaction, and announce it to her, the more restless she becomes, though outwardly rejoicing. The fact that her undertaking a long piece of work of a deeply persona
l order would be a serious menace to her health is apparent to her. And it is an equal menace—this subconscious competing with me.
“Why can’t I sell my short stories?” she says.
“Because you’re not putting yourself in them. Do you think the Post pays me for nothing?”
(She wants to make money but she wants to save her good stuff for books so her stories are simply casually observed, unfelt phenomena, while mine are sections, debased, over-simplified, if you like, of my own soul. That is our bread and butter and her health and Scotty’s education).
And, I added, foolishly but truly, “Besides, a lot of visual emotion has been going into this current series of pictures, so that your description, that is your emotional description, not the merely casual observation, has suffered.”
Bang! She abandons pictures. She writes, writes, writes, and goes backward and has been going backward for over a fortnight.
The conflict is at the root of it. She feels that my success has got to be, otherwise we all collapse—she feels also that it is a menace to her. “Why should it be him—why shouldn’t it be me?” “I’m as good or better than he is.” If she thought she would again be permitted to write in a clinic, I believe she would have “conflicted” herself into one long ago and sat down at a big piece of direct self-justification.
A Life in Letters Page 25