A Life in Letters
Page 35
You know that the merest discussion of ideas [three words omitted by the editor] would mean that they were public property. You know also as in the case of radio, (Columbia) that they want a sample. Now how on earth you can both sell the idea that I can do this job, that is, write a 5,000 word story with cash in advance, and yet be sure that the plot won’t leak out, I don’t know. That seems to be your problem. You remember that I lost the whole month of October on that false radio come-on where they were obviously kidding. Isn’t there some way to determine whether these people are kidding or not? This man has, in a sense, come to me and I think the idea ought to be caught and trapped right now because as you may well imagine I have little energy to dissipate.
A list of suggestions follows:
First I enclose something which I wish you would read last because it has nothing to do with the present offer, but it is something that I wrote gratuitously for a Russian dancer some years ago. Please consider that last and featuring, as it does, a male dancer rather than a female, it would certainly not fit Spessivtzewa’s requirements. The other ideas which follow are the basis of a moving picture while that was for an actual ballet.
1. Zleda’s awful experience of trying a difficult art too late in life to culminate with the irony that just before she cracked up she had been hoping to get little “bits” in Diaghelief’s1 ballet and that people kept coming to the studio who she thought were emissaries of his and who turned out to be from the Folies Bergere and who thought they might make her into an American shimmy dancer. This was about like a person hoping to lead the Philadelphia Symphony being asked to be assistant conductor of Ben Bernie’s band.
Please don’t have anybody read Zelda’s book because it is a bad book! But by glancing over it yourself you will see that it contains all the material that a tragedy should have, though she was incapable as a writer of realizing where tragedy lay as she was incapable of facing it as a person. Of course the tragic ending of Zelda’s story need not be repeated in the picture. One could concede to the picture people the fact that the girl might become a popular dancer in the Folies Bergere. One could conceive of a pathetic ending a la Hepburn in which because of her idealism she went on being a fifth rate “figurine” in ballets all over Europe—this to be balanced by a compensatory love story which would make up for her the failure of her work. This would seem to me to be much the best treatment of this story.
2. This idea has to do with an episode of some memoirs of Pavlova. It begins with a little girl briefly glimpsed and dancing in the Imperial ballet before the war. A scene later in Paris at the height of the flurry over the ballet and stranded finally with a ballet company in either Australia or Brazil for lack of funds. The climax would hinge on the catastrophe of the death of Diaghelief. The sorrow of it that Zelda felt, as did many others, who seemed to feel also that the ballet was ended; the old Imperial school was dead and now Diaghelief who had personally kept it alive in Paris had gone to his grave. There seemed to them no future and I know how strong that feeling was among the ballet people in ’31 and ’31, a sort of utter despair, a sense that they had once been under patronage of the Czar and later of an entrepreneur and that now nobody was taking care of them. They are like children to a ridiculous extent and have less practical ideas than the wildest musician imaginable. This story would end up in New York or in Hollywood, the ballet having a new renaissance under an American growing delight in that particular art as is practically true with Masine’s1 ballet in New York and with Trudy Schoop’s2 successful little trek around the country. That’s idea number 2.
The third idea is more difficult in its selling aspects. In 1920 I tried to sell to D. W. Griffith the idea that people were so interested in Hollywood that there was money in a picture about that and romance in the studio. He was immediately contemptuous of it, but of course, a year later Merton of the Movies mopped up the country. The movies seem willing always to romanticize anything from a radio broadcasting room to a newspaper office as far as the entertainment world is concerned, but are so shy about themselves that another picture can be got out of Hollywood, which is certainly one of the most romantic cities in the world. A sort of mental paralysis came over them. Do you remember how the Hearst publicity men killed my story “Crazy Sunday” for Cosmopolitan. That was in case someone should get hurt, that it might offend Norma Shearer, Thalberg, John Gilbert or Marion Davies,3 etc. etc. As a matter of fact I had mixed up those characters so thoroughly that there was no character who could have been identified except possibly King Vidor and he would have been very amused by the story.
Let me repeat that this is the most difficult idea to sell but in some ways the most interesting of the three. A Russian ballet dancer finds herself in the extra line in Hollywood; they pick her out of the crowd for her good looks, gave her bits of one kind or another but always on some other basis than the fact that she is a ballet dancer. This treatment of the general subject would have to close with a crash, at least I haven’t thought any further than that. It would turn entirely on the essential tonal background of the adventures of Europeans who develop their metier in a Yiddish world (only you don’t use that word except in Germany) that would be interesting to the people in the same rococo sense that the demand for pictures about places like Shanghai and the Trans-Siberian Railroad have in the American people. Combined with it is the always fascinating Hollywood story.
I’ve spent the morning writing this letter because I am naturally disappointed about the Post’s not liking the Gwen story and must rest and go to work this afternoon to try to raise some money somehow though I don’t know where to turn.
Scott
TO: Sara Murphy
March 30, 1936
ALS, 2 pp. Honoria Murphy Donnelly
Dearest Sara (and Gerald too, if he’s not in London)
I want news of you. The winter has presented too many problems here for me to come north, even as far as New York + my last word of you was by kindness of Archie—and not too encouraging.
If you read the little trilogy I wrote for Esquire you know I went through a sort of “dark night of the soul” last autumn, and again and again my thoughts reverted to you and Gerald, and I reminded myself that nothing had happened to me with the awful suddenness of your tragedy of a year ago,1 nothing so utterly conclusive and irreparable. I saw your face, Sara, as I saw it a year ago this month, and Gerald’s face last fall when I met him in the Ritz Bar, and I felt very close to you—and correspondingly detached from Ernest, who has managed to escape the great thunderbolts, and Nora Flinn whom the Gods haven’t even shot at with much seriousness. She would probably deny that and she helped me over one black week when I thought this was probably as good a time to quit as any, but as I said to her the love of life is essentially as incommunicable as grief.
I am moving Zelda to a sanitarium in Ashville—she is no better, though the suicidal cloud was lifted—I thought over your Christian Science idea + finally decided to try it but the practitioner I hit on wanted to begin with “absent treatments,” which seemed about as effectual to me as the candles my mother keeps constantly burning to bring me back to Holy Church—so I abandoned it. Especially as Zelda now claims to be in direct contact with Christ, William the Conqueror, Mary Stuart, Appollo and all the stock paraphanalea of insane asylum jokes. Of course it isn’t a bit funny but after the awful strangulation episode of last spring I sometimes take refuge in an unsmiling irony about the present exterior phases of her illness. For what she has really suffered there is never a sober night that I do not pay a stark tribute of an hour to in the darkness. In an odd way, perhaps incredible to you, she was always my child (it was not reciprocal as it often is in marriages), my child in a sense that Scotty isn’t, because I’ve brought Scotty up hard as nails (Perhaps that’s fatuous, but I think I have.) Outside of the realm of what you called Zelda’s “terribly dangerous secret thoughts” I was her great reality, often the only liason agent who could make the world tangible to her—
&
nbsp; The only way to show me you forgive this great outpouring is to write me about yourselves. Some night when you’re not too tired, take yourself a glass of sherry and write me as lovely and revealing letter as you did before. Willy-nilly we are still in the midst of life and all true correspondence is nessessarily sporadic but a letter from you or Gerald always pulls at something awfully deep in me. I want the best news, but in any case I want to know
With Dearest Affection to You All
Scott
Cambridge Arms Appts. Baltimore Md
TO: Harold Ober
Received May 9, 1936
ALS, 3 pp. Collection of Douglas Wyman
Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Harold:
Here’s for The Pictorial. (3d draft, 3d correction.) Every single story since Phillipe I in the Spring of 1934 two years ago I’ve had to write over. Save the 1st Mccalls + The Fortune Telling.
All three last Phillipe stories, Her last case, New Types, the Esquimo, the Image on the Heart, 1st Gwen, 2nd Gwen, 3d Gwen + now 4th Gwen.
Eleven stories! It simply doubles my work + keeps me in my room all the time so save when I was 1st sick last summer there is no break ever—ones finished I plan to rest, its no good so I must revise it so there’s no rest for debts press + I start another. This business of debt is awful. It has made me lose confidence to an appalling extent. I used to write for myself—now I write for editors because I never have time to really think what I do like or find anything to like. Its like a man drawing out water in drops because he’s too thirsty to wait for the well to fill. Oh, for one lucky break.
I sent off those Paramount things some days ago. Maybe they went to Paramount—I cant seem to remember. I can find out I think Do they want to use The Gold Hat as a title. I thought of calling Gatsby that at first.
Well, now I need two hundred pretty badly. So badly that there are collecting agencies at the door every day—rent unpaid, school unpaid, sanitarum unpaid + not a vestige of credit left in Baltimore.
I havn’t had even a glass of beer for a month + shall try it again for a few months as I did last year + see if that’ll help my morale, but I havn’t much faith. There seems to be too much to contend with to get any piece of mind. Where there were once two or three things there are now dozens. It will take a windfall
All well, everyone has troubles now. Except the rich, damn them.
Ever Yours
Scott
Please tell me about the money. I will start another Post story tomorrow. No more Gwen at present.
P. S. This story is really all smoothed out at last. I wish the Post had seen it this way, but I was sick in bed last wk. + not at my best. However I wouldn’t want to try them again.
Just got word that I am being sued for debt by Zelda’s last sanitarium. Could you make it 300 instead of two hundred It is impossible to write or even exist under these circumstances. I have even used the loan companies.
P.S One last thing. I realize that I am at the end of my rescources physically + financially. After getting rid of this house next month + storing furniture I am cutting expenses to the bone, taking Scotty to Carolina instead of camp + going to a boarding house for the summer, I have got to do that and get a sense of proportion and give her one. The doctors tell me at this rate of work I wont last two years, Zelda + I did that twice when I was making more than I am now + had less expenses.
This way I work all day + worry all night.
This copy looks mixed but it really isn’t. Its only my hand sticks to the paper its so hot here. But put someone very careful on it to unravel the bad pages
TO: Bennett Cerf
Wire. Columbia University
BALTIMORE MD 402A 1936 MAY 16 AM 5 17
WOULD YOU CONSIDER PUBLISHING TENDER IS THE NIGHT IN THE MODERN LIBRARY1 IF I MADE CERTAIN CHANGES TOWARD THE END WHICH I SEE NOW ARE ESSENTIAL COMMA IT WOULD MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE SPLIT UP OF THE TWO PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS STOP OR DO YOU THINK THAT ONCE PUBLISHED A BOOK IS FOREVER CRYSTALIZED PLEASE ANSWER CAMBRIDGE ARMS CHARLES STREET BALTIMORE MARYLAND
SCOTT FITZGERALD.
TO: Adelaide Neall
RTLS, 2 pp.—with holograph last line and postscript. Historical Society of Pennsylvania
The Cambridge Arms,
Baltimore, Maryland,
June 5, 1936.
Dear Miss Neale:
I appreciated your interest yesterday. I think that if one cares about a metiér (sp.) it is almost necessary to learn it over again every few years. Somewhere about the middle of “Tender is the Night” I seemed to have lost my touch on the short story—by touch I mean the exact balance, how much plot, how much character, how much background you can crowd into a limited number of words. It is a nice adjustment and essentially depends upon the enthusiasm with which you approach a given subject. In the last two years I’ve only too often realized that many of my stories were built rather than written.
Still and however, one is limited by one’s experience and I’ve decided to go with the series of medical stories1 hoping to unearth something new—and as a beginning have decided to rewrite this story with the original as a skeleton.
With best wishes to all of you and many thanks for your personal interest in the prospected series
F Scott Fitzgerald
(On re-reading this, it sounds somewhat stilted but I trust you’ll understand that I dont mind critisism a bit—the critics are always wrong (including you!) but they are always right in the sense that they make one re-examine one’s artistic conscience.
F.S.F.
TO: Ernest Hemingway
July 16, 1936
ALS, 1 p. John F. Kennedy Library
Asheville, North Carolina
Dear Ernest:
Please lay off me in print.1 If I choose to write de profundis sometimes it doesn’t mean I want friends praying aloud over my corpse. No doubt you meant it kindly but it cost me a night’s sleep. And when you incorporate it (the story) in a book would you mind cutting my name?2
It’s a fine story—one of your best—even though the “Poor Scott Fitzgerald ect” rather spoiled it for me
Ever Your Friend
Scott
Riches have never facinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.
TO: John O’Hara
TL, 2 pp. Princeton University
Grove Park Inn
Asheville, N.C.
July 25, 1936
Dear John:
Your letter got side-tracked in moving and has just turned up. Possibly I may have answered it before and if I did everything I said was true and if what I say now contradicts everything I said before that is all true too. Before I tell you how to write your new novel let me tell you about affairs here.
There are no affairs here.
We will now turn to your new novel. You quoted in your letter a very cryptic passage from the wonderful advice that I give to people. It sounds exactly like the advice that Ernest and I used to throw back and forth at each other, none of which ever had any effect—the only effect I ever had on Ernest was to get him in a receptive mood and say let’s cut everything that goes before this. The the pieces got mislaid and he caould never find the part that I said to cut out. And so he published it without that and later we agreed that it was a very wise cut. This is not literally true and I don’t want it established as part of the Hemingway Legend, but it’s just about as far as one writer can go in helping another. Years later when Ernest was writing Farewell to Arms he was in doubt about the ending and marketed around to half a dozen people for their advice. I worked like hell on the idea and only succeeded in evolving a philosophy in his mind utterly contrary to everything that he thought an ending should be and later convinced me that he was right and made me end Tender Is the Night on a fade away instead of a staccato. Didn’t we talk about this once before—I seem to see your large ear in the way of my voice.
There is some element that can as well as not be expressed by the dietitian
’s word roughage or up-stream by which you can judge yourself as a novelist or as a personality (the fact recently quated by Middleton Murray)1 that John Keats felt that creative talent is essentially without character is empiric: the acceptance of disorganization is another matter because it eventually implies a lesion of vitality. I have just written a long letter to an admirer or mourner as to why I do not believe in Psychoanalysis for the disintegration of that thing, that judgment, the extinction of that light is much more to be dreaded than any material loss.
We are creatures bounding from each other’s shoulders, feeling already the feet of new creatures upon our backs bounding again toward an invisible and illusory trapeze (at present played by the short winded Saroyans).2 If the calf no longer flexes the bound will not be so high. In any case the outstretched arms will never reach that swinging thing because when life has been well lived one can make an adjustment and become the second man in the pyramid. It is when life has been ill lived one is the third man; the first man always falls to his death, a fact that has haunted Ernest all his life.
This is all rather poor metaphysics expressed in ineffectual images, Again and again in my books I have tried to imagize my regret that I have never been as good as I intended to be (and you must know that what I mean by good is the modern don’t-hurt-a-hair-of-anybody’s-head-and-kill-a-hundred-thousand-people-if-necessary—in other words a personal conscience and meaning by the personal conscience yourself stripped in white midnight before your own God).
To take off with my whole weight (Charlie MacArthur continually urges me) if my suggestion about the bucolic background for a novel makes any sense it is embraced in the paragraph you requoted to me. I certainly think you should undertake something more ambitious and I know to my own sorrow that to contemplate and project a long work is often an excuse for laziness. But let me pass along a suggestion: