Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)
Page 453
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 foyce 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 and scope.
This novel, my fourth, 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, etc.’ That merely creates the ‘Oh yeah’ mood in people.
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
Xmas, 1933
Dear Fritz: —
Section III (Chapters VI to IX inclusive) is being typed and goes off special delivery Wednesday evening. I was foolish to have come South as there was inevitable Xmas confusion and I only got through by working all night and all the night before. It began by being 40,000 words but I judge it will turn out between 24,000 and 29,0000 after all.
While it is not weak it is perhaps a let-down from the two love affairs of Sections I and II. This was a hurried business and I intend to do the polishing on the proof. The month I lost in Bermuda was damn costly.
Now give me a real date and not a precautionary one for Section IV so I can make my plans with some rationality. You have nothing to fear - at the worst you could publish that section as it stands.
If this doesn’t arrive too late ‘beyed’ is better Deep South for ‘bird’ than either ‘bed’ or ‘buhd.’ As for the ‘Ah guess, etc.’ - better change the one dialect line to ‘I reckon’ and let it go at that.
I appreciate your interest which I feel is in the piece as well as in the magazine. Don’t hesitate to pass on any comments but I’d rather get them in bulk than piecemeal. I’ll probably have rewritten the whole thing by spring. Very best of Xmas greetings and tell Max only shame has prevented me thanking him for the extra loan.
Scott Fitzgerald
The psychiatrist at Hopkins says that not only is the medical stuff in II accurate but it seems the only good thing ever written on psychiatry and the - oh what the hell. Anyhow, that part’s O.K.
My mother wasn’t interested so it must have some merit.
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
January 13, 1934
Dear Max:
What do you think of the idea of using twenty-four of those woodcuts, 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.
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 conditioned by not wanting it to be exorbitantly 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 Minutemen, but there isn’t, so I prefer to stick to my undistinguished green uniform - I mean even to the point of the gilt 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 succès 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 readers 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 fingernails 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?
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? 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.
If I do not hold these two characters to the end of the book it might as well never 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 ‘nd 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 pers
on 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 Davis 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 Oppenheim and a whole generation of writers and its very mention invokes a feeling of unreality and unsubstantially. 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 manufactures.
I find that revising in this case is pulling up the weakest section of the book and then the next weakest, etc. First Section III was the weakest and Section IV the strongest, so I bucked up III; then IV was the weakest and is still, but when I have fixed that Section I will be the weakest. The section that has best held up is Section II.
I was tremendously impressed with South Moon Under * until I read her prize short story, ‘Gal Young Un.’ I suddenly saw the face of Ethan Frome peering out from under a palmetto hat. The heroine is even called Matt in tribute to the power of the subconscious. Well, well, well, I often think of Picasso’s remark ‘You do it first, then other people can come along and do it pretty and get off with a big proportion of the spoils. When you do it first you can’t do it pretty.’ So I guess Miss Rawlings is just another writer after all, just when I was prepared to welcome her to the class of 1896 with Ernest, Dos Passos and myself.
Please wire about the inclusion of the Cannes episode, and don’t sidetrack these advertising points.
Ever yours,
Scott
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
February 7, 1934
Dear Max:
The fear of being dependent again on The Saturday Evening Post promoted this idea and led me to a consideration of publishing in general; and, from that, the notion developed in the half- baked way that I told you. I began by thinking of the publishing devices of the early 18th century, with special reference to Dickens’ Household Words.
Now, just as Scribner’s Magazine has changed its character several times between being primarily a fiction magazine, or primarily an open forum, so there is no reason in its tradition why it should not consider a radical step. I do not underestimate the value of the present Scribner’s in the humanitarian way, but nowadays ventures must be self-sustaining, and competing journals can also muster the same quantity and quality of uneasy liberal thinking - viz. Harper’s and Atlantic Monthly. This innova- tionary policy has, of course, been exemplified in your regime, not only by encouraging the short novels, or novelettes, but also in this new departure about long novels. Pursuing this policy to its logical end, I am inclined to think that sooner or later you will be faced with the decision of choosing (temporarily at least) between being a magazine of fiction or being a magazine of opinion, and that the opinion eventually must be yours. I am Communist enough to distrust the idea of an ‘open forum,’ which usually means a forum in which a Roman citizen can appear and talk as much as he wants within the range of Roman opinion - in despite of the apparent radicalism of your publishing John Strachey.
By and large I see the problems that confront you, yet I wonder whether you or I, or any of us, can really print a synthesis of opinions in the air as a policy; and in the same breath, I reiterate that in all common sense this tack will sooner or later amount to a compromise that, like all compromises, will have neither force nor vitality. The other idea, on the contrary, has the following advantages: from the editorial point of view it would give you the opportunity of going into a specialization that, substituted for the somewhat vague economic views (and here I refer to the whole staff of Scribners publishing house, from Charles to the printer’s devil, indeed, to all of us insofar as we are associated with you, with the accumulated taste embodied in the publishing house), would be a line for which you are perhaps better equipped than anybody in America.
A second argument in favor of the idea is that you have at your disposal almost anybody that you want. When you say, as you did the other night, that you cannot count on writers delivering on time, God knows I understand, but you have so many good young writers, and I am counting on the idea attracting so many others who otherwise cannot publish except in book form. I think your difficulties, once the idea was launched, would be on the contrary, a question of deciding betwixt good things offered.
My idea, as I told you, would be a cover, which would say, for example: first part of Hemingway, second part of Fleming, third part of Fitzgerald, fourth part of Wolfe. You would be dealing with two or three established authors and perhaps one newcomer that you happened to like, and the money that you paid out would serve to keep those people going. In these days any author would rather have a modest fee for his serial than not to serialize at all. In a sense, they would develop a feeling that they were partners in a corporate enterprise and I think that I can speak for many of us when I say that we would welcome the idea of a forum which is as open for long fiction as it is for the most casual opinionated shreds of political opinion.
A fourth point: while I don’t know the mechanics of the magazine’s make-up, this policy should not preclude the inclusion of a certain number of opinionated articles upon public affairs, used almost as editorials. From your experience you must have seen that out of half a dozen articles in Scribner’s, or for that matter in any other quality magazine, about six a year have the value of what the Victorians would call essays and the rest is mere timely journalism, moribund almost with its appearance; after a few months how many of such articles are of more literary or humanitarian importance than the spreads in Hearst’s Sunday supplement? And, practically, if the consumer can get The New York Sunday Times Book Review and Magazine Section what distinction can he make between that and a quality magazine except for the name and the colored jacket?
As I mentioned last night, almost all the editorial magazine successes have depended on young men, if I can flatter you and Charles Scribner, me, Ernest, Tom Wolfe, as being young men. Crowninshield grows old and Ross comes up with The New Yorker; The Literary Digest grows old and Time comes along; Lorimer t who has been for a long time my bread (Scribner’s being considered the meat of my survival), is growing old, and then that bread will inevitably go stale.
It is not beyond the limits of imagination to suppose that this condition, in which only the choices of the Book-of-the-Month get across big, may be a permanent condition. It is conceivable that the local bookstore, except as represented by such as yours and Brentano’s, will become as obsolete as the silent picture. For one thing the chain-store buying and the job-lot-buying department stores seem to condemn the independent bookstores to the situation that they have reached in Baltimore where, considering the outlay involved, they can only be compared to the fallow antique shops. There is also the library question, which, in a socializing world, will become bigger and bigger.
In résumé, let me line up the el
ements for and against the idea.
Present procedure: dignified presentation of a, perhaps, good book with sale of 3000 copies, and not much profit to anybody.
Attitude toward the author’s surrendering dramatic and movie rights correct in the 90s when conditions were different but now archaic.
Futility of issuing books that, either from inefficiency in writing or being-over-the-heads-of-the-crowd, clutter up the remnant counter. Essentially this is not a service to writers as was the case in the past. Take, for example, my recommendation to you, rather half-hearted, of Woodward Boyd’s The Love Legend. Why the hell should she have the right to publish a poor book? As things tighten up I think that more harm is done by encouraging inefficient amateurs than would be done if they were compelled to go through a certain professional apprenticeship. The one man or woman aspirant out of a hundred who has some quality of genius is another matter, but those who show ‘promise’ had probably better be relegated immediately to doing other things in the world, or else working on their own guts for professional advancement, rather than be coddled along on the basis that they may eventually make a fortune for themselves and everybody concerned.
Therefore, a weariness in the reviewers, and, except for the presentation, no realistic cooperation.
Now to consider conditions as they are: there is, first, the selection by the book leagues, whether we like it or not; there is the reprinting of either quality stuff in the Modern Library or drug-
Store stuff in the reprint houses, with the publishers frankly taking a share in other rights, specifically including movie rights.
Now why shouldn’t incipient writers have to prove themselves? Why shouldn’t an issue of a book between boards be contingent upon the ability of the work to arouse interest? And isn’t a magazine-printing a cheaper and more advantageous test all around?