TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
September 29, 1933.
Dear Max:
Since talking to you and getting your letter another angle has come up. Ober tells me that Burton1 of Cosmopolitan is very interested in the novel and if he took it would, in Ober’s opinion, pay between $30,00 and $40,000 for it. Now against that there are the following factors:
1. The fact that though Burton professes great lust for my work the one case in which I wrote a story specifically for him, that movie story that you turned down and that Mencken published,2 he showed that he really can’t put his taste into action; in that case the Hearst policy man smeared it.
2. The tremendous pleasure I would get from appearing in Scribners.
3. The spring publication.
4. My old standby, the Post, would not be too pleased to have my work running serially all spring and summer in the Cosmopolitan.
On the other hand, the reasons why it must be considered are between thirty and forty thousand, and all of them backed by the credit of the U.S. Treasury. It is a purely hypothetical sum I admit and certainly no serial is worth it, yet if Willie Hearst1 is still pouring gold back into the desert in the manner of 1929 would I be stupid not to take some or would I be stupid not to take some? My own opinion is that if the thing is offered to Burton, he will read it, be enthusiastic, and immediately an Obstacle will appear. On the other hand, should I even offer it to them? Should I give him a copy on the same day I give you a copy asking an answer from him within three days? Would the fact that he refused it diminish your interest in the book or influence it? Or, even, considering my relations with you would it be a dirty trick to show it to him at all? What worries me is the possibility of being condemned to go back to the Saturday Evening Post grind at the exact moment when the book is finished. I suppose I could and probably will need a damn good month’s rest outdoors or traveling before I can even do that.
Can you give me any estimate as to how much I could expect from you as to payment for the serial and how much of that will be in actual cash? It seems terrible to ask you this when it is not even decided yet whether or not you want it; but what I want to do is to see if I can not offer it at all to Burton; I wish to God I had never talked to Harold about it and got these upsetting commercial ideas in my head.
I am taking care of the picture matter. I certainly would like to be on your cover and stare down Greta Garbo on the news stands. I figure now that it should reach you, at the latest, on the 25th, though I am trying for the 23rd.
Ring’s death was a terrible blow. Have written a short appreciation of him for the New Republic.2
Please answer.
Ever yours,
Scott
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 4 pp. Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
October 19, 1933.
Dear Max:
All goes well here. The first two chapters are in shape and am starting the third one this afternoon. So the first section comprising about 26,000 words will be mailed to you Friday night or Saturday morning.
Naturally I was delighted by your gesture of coming up two thousand. I hope to God results will show in the circulation of the magazine and I have an idea they will. Negotiations with Cosmopolitan were of course stopped and Ober is sure that getting the release from Liberty is merely a matter of form which he is attending to. I think I will need the money a little quicker than by the month, say $1000 on delivery of the first section and then the other 3 $1000s every fortnight after that. This may not be necessary but the first $2000 will. As you know, I now owe Ober two or three thousand and he should be reimbursed so he can advance me more to carry me through the second section and a Post story. Naturally, payments on the serial should be made to him.
I am saying this now and will remind you later. My idea is that the book form of the novel should be set up from the corrected proof of the serial,—in that I will reinsert the excisions which I am making for the serial.
If you have any way of getting French or Swiss railroad posters it would be well for you to try to. Now as to the blurbs: I think there should not be too many; I am sending you nine.1
“The Great Gatsby is undoubtedly a work of art.”
London Times
______________
As to T. S. Eliot: what he said was in a letter to me—that he’d read it several times, it had interested and excited him more than any novel he had seen, either English or American, for a number of years, and he also said that it seemed to him that it was the first step forward in the American novel since Henry James.
I know him slightly but I would not dare ask him for an endorsement. If it can be managed in any way without getting a rebuff, even some more qualified statement would be the next best thing to an endorsement by Joyce or Gertrude Stein.
Of course I think blurbs have gotten to be pretty much the bunk, but maybe that is a writer’s point of view and the lay reader does not understand the back-scratching that is at the root of most of them. However, I leave it in your hands. Don’t quote all of these unless you think it is advisable.
We can talk over the matter of Gatsby in the Modern Library after your announcement has appeared.
Again thanks for the boost in price and remember the title is a secret to the last.
Ever your friend,
Scott Fitzgerald
I should say to be careful in saying it’s my first book in seven years not to imply that it contains seven years work. People would expect too much in bulk + scope.
This novel, my 4th, completes my story of the boom years. It might be wise to accentuate the fact that it does not deal with the depression. Don’t accentuate that it deals with Americans abroad—there’s been too much trash under that banner.
No exclamatory “At last, the long awaited ect.” That merely creates the “Oh yeah” mood in people.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
October 20, 1933.
Dear Max:
Made not only the changes agreed upon but also cut out several other small indelicacies that I happened upon.1 I think this is now damn good.
How is this for an advertising approach:
“For several years the impression has prevailed that Scott Fitzgerald had abandoned the writing of novels and in the future would continue to write only popular short stories. His publishers knew different and they are very glad now to be able to present a book which is in line with his three other highly successful and highly esteemed novels, thus demonstrating that Scott Fitzgerald is anything but through as a serious novelist.”
I don’t mean necessarily these exact words but something on that general line, I mean something politic enough not to disparage the Post stories but saying quite definitely that this is a horse of another color.
If Dashiell2 likes this section of the book ask him to drop me a line. Am starting the revision of the second section Monday.
Ever your friend,
F Scott Fitzgerald
TO: Maxwell Perkins
Wire. Princeton University
The title note is in Perkins’s hand. The novel had been announced as Doctor Diver’s Holiday.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
November 13, 1933.
Dear Max:
I was too sanguine in estimating the natural divisions of the novel. As it turns out in the reworking the line up is as follows:
I. The first triangle story, which you have
(26,000 words)
II. Completion of that story, plus the throw-back to courtship of doctor and his wife (19,000 words)
III.
The doctor’s struggles with his problem, concluding with his debacle in Rome.
IV. The doctor’s decline after he has given up.
These two last parts are going to be long as hell, especially IV. Section III, as you may remember, includes the part about his journeying around Europe, which we agreed could be considerably cut, but Section IV could not be cut much without omission of such key incidents as would cripple the timing of the whole plan. That Section is liable to amount to as much as forty thousand words—could you handle it? Or must I divide it, and lose a month on spring publication?
By that time reader interest in the serial will be thoroughly aroused (or thoroughly killed) so I think the idea of the book publication should be paramount if you can arrange the material factor of such a long installment.
Ever yours
Scott Fitz——
P.S. By the way: where in hell is the proof? And will you have two struck off? This is important for Section II where the medical part begins, but how can I ask a doctor to judge fairly upon Section II unless he can read Section I?
TO: Egbert S. Oliver1
TLS, 2 pp. Original unlocated
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland,
January 7, 1934.
Dear Mr. Oliver:
The first help I ever had in writing in my life was from my father who read an utterly imitative Sherlock Holmes story of mine and pretended to like it.2
But after that I received the most invaluable aid from one Mr. C. N. B. Wheeler then headmaster of the St. Paul Academy now the St. Paul Country Day School in St. Paul, Minnesota. 2. From Mr. Hume, then co-headmaster of the Newman School and now headmaster of the Canterbury School. 3. From Courtland Van Winkle in freshman year at Princeton—now professor of literature at Yale (he gave us the book of Job to read and I don’t think any of our preceptorial group ever quite recovered from it.) After that comes a lapse. Most of the professors seemed to me old and uninspired, or perhaps it was just that I was getting under way in my own field.
I think this answers your question. This is also my permission to make full use of it with or without my name. Sorry I am unable from circumstances of time and pressure to go into it further.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 3 pp. Princeton University
1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Maryland,
January 13, 1934.
Dear Max:
What do you think of the idea of using twenty-four of those wood-cuts, which illustrate the serial, as head and tail pieces for chapters in the book or, alternatively, interspersing them through the novel? I think it is comparatively an innovation in recent fiction and might give the book a certain distinction. I’ve gotten very fond of the illustrations. Who the hell is the illustrator? If it is too expensive a process let me know, but since the cuts are already made I thought it might not be.1
Please do not send me any book galley for the present, just hold it there. I am already confused by the multiplicity of the irons I have in the fire and as far as possible would prefer to do the book galley in one or two long stretches.
I did not thank you over the phone for the further advance, which does not mean that I did not appreciate it, but only that I have so much to thank you for.
Tell Dashiell that I cannot promise not to make changes in Section III, but under no conditions will it be lengthened. Section IV is taking longer than I thought and it may be the middle of next week before you get it.
Ever Yours
Scott Fitz,—
P.S. 1. Will you ask Dashiell to strike off as many as half a dozen additional proofs because I have always a use for them in passing them around for technical advice. Again, this request is condition by not wanting it to be exhorbitantly expensive.
P.S. 2. Don’t forget my suggestion that the jacket flap should carry an implication that though the book starts in a lyrical way, heavy drama will presently develop.
P.S. 3. Any contract you suggest will probably be O.K. You might bring one with you when you come down, an event to which I look forward eagerly.
P.S. 4. Also remember that upon due consideration I would prefer the binding to be uniform with my other books. If these were prosperous times and there were any prospect of a superior reissue of my whole tribe I’d say “let it begin here” to quote the famous commander of the Minute men, but there isn’t, so I prefer to stick to my undistinguished green uniform—I mean even to the point of the guilt stampings being uniform to the others.
P.S. 5. I don’t want to bore you by reiterating but I do think the matter of Gatsby in the Modern Library should be taken up as shortly as possible after the appearance of installment II.
P.S. 6. Am getting responses only from a few writers and from the movies. The novel will certainly have success d’estime but it may be slow in coming—alas, I may again have written a novel for novelists with little chance of its lining anybody’s pockets with gold. The thing is perhaps too crowded for story reachers to search it through for the story but it can’t be helped, there are times when you have to get every edge of your finger-nails on paper. Anyhow I think this serial publication will give it the best chance it can possibly have because it is a book that only gives its full effect on its second reading. Almost every part of it now has been revised and thought out from three to six times.
P.S. 7 What is the name of a functioning Press Clipping Bureau?
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
January 18, 1934
Dear Max:
You letter covers everything except the English publication. Since the old Chatto & Windus idea I came to practically an understanding with Cape, came to a real one with Knopf, which was broken when they dissolved their London house. What would you do about Faber & Faber? Advise me.1
Much as I value your advice, by which I profited in the revision of Gatsby, I can’t see cutting out the “shooting at the train-side.” It serves all sorts of subtle purposes and since I have decided that the plan of the book is best as originally conceived, the small paring away would be very little help and I think would do more harm than good. I intend to think over this question once more but at the moment I am satisfied with the book as it stands, as well as being pretty dead on it. I want to hear some reactions on Section II, but I like the slow approach, which I think has a psychological significance affecting not only the work in question, but also having a bearing on my career in general. Is that too damn egotistical an association?
Ever yours,
F. Scott Fitz——
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 4 pp. Princeton University
1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Maryland,
February 5, 1934.
Dear Max:
Isn’t there any mechanical means by which you can arrange to include the 1400 words of the arrest in Cannes?1 The more I think of it the more I think that it is absolutely necessary for the unity of the book and the effectiveness of the finale to show Dick in the dignified and responsible aspect toward the world and his neighbors that was implied so strongly in the first half of the book. It is all very well to say that this can be remedied in book publication but it has transpired that at least two dozen important writers and newspaper men are reading the book in the serial and will form their impressions from that. I have made cuts in Section IV—a good bit of the last scene between Dick and Tommy but also the proof has swollen somewhat in revision which counteracts that, nor can I reduce the 1250 words of that scene to 800. I am saying 1400 because I know there will be a slight expansion. Couldn’t you take out some short piece from the number? Surely it hasn’t crystallized at this early date. Even with this addition the installment is shorter than the others, as I promised Fritz.2
If I do not hold these two characters to the end of the book it might as well neve
r have been written. It is legitimate to ruin Dick but it is by no means legitimate to make him an ineffectual. In the proof I am pointing up the fact that his intention dominated all this last part but it is not enough and the foreshortening without the use of this scene, which was a part of the book structure from the first, does not contain enough of him for the reader to reconstruct his whole personality as viewed as a unit throughout—and the reason for this is my attempt to tell the last part entirely through Nicole’s eyes. I was even going to have her in on the Cannes episode but decided against it because of the necessity of seeing Dick alone.
My feeling about this was precipitated by the remarks of the young psychiatrist who is the only person who had read all the magazine proof and only the magazine proof. He felt a sharp lesion at the end which those who had read the whole novel did not feel.
While I am writing you I may as well cover some other points:
1. Please don’t forget the indentation of title and author on the front cover as in previous books. There are other Fitzgeralds writing and I would like my whole name on the outside of the book, and also I would prefer uniformity.
2. Would you please strike off at least three book proofs for me, all to be used for revisions such as medical, linguistic, etc? Also, I would like an extra galley of book proof Section IV when you have it, for Ober to pass on to Davis1 in order to supply the missing material.
3. In advertising the book some important points are: Please do not use the phrase “Riviera” or “gay resorts.” Not only does it sound like the triviality of which I am so often accused, but also the Riviera has been thoroughly exploited by E. Phillips Oppenheim2 and a whole generation of writers and its very mention invokes a feeling of unreality and unsubstantiality. So I think it would be best to watch this and reduce it only to the statement that the scenes of the book are laid in Europe. If it could be done, a suggestion that, after a romantic start, a serious story unfolds, would not be amiss; also it might be mentionable that for exigencies of serialization, a scene or two was cut. In general, as you know, I don’t approve of great ballyhoo advertisements, even of much quoted praise. The public is very, very, very weary of being sold bogus goods and this inevitably reacts on solider manufacturies.
A Life in Letters Page 28