Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)
Page 454
If this comes out at the proper end of the horn as the note I intended to blow when I blew, it reduces itself to the following propositions:
1. — That Scribner’s is much better equipped now to handle fiction, travel, etc., than to handle politics.
2. — That, unless you have some big axe to grind, politics are of only transitory interest.
3. — That traditionalism is, in this case, a policy to which one can fairly attach the odium of archaism, because just as an author’s main purpose is ‘to make you see,’ so a magazine’s principal purpose is to be read.
4. — Perhaps I am the proverbial fool rushing in, and if it so appears to you simply forget the whole suggestion. However, I have a hunch that within a year somebody will adopt such a policy. And may I reiterate that the idea was suggested orginally by a policy which you have already inaugurated, and that this is simply a radical urge to hasten it toward what I think is an inevitable outcome, an effort to meet the entertainment business on its own predetermined grounds.
Ever yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
March 4, 1934
Dear Max:
Confirming our conversation on the phone this morning, I wish you could get some word to the printers that they should not interfere with my use of italics. If I had made a mess of a type face, that would be another matter. I know exactly what I am doing, and I want to use italics for emphasis, and not waste them on the newspaper convention laid down by Mr Munsey in 1858. Of course, always you have been damned nice in having your printers follow my specifications, but in this case, and under the very pressing conditions under which we are working, it worries me that the book galleys came back with exactly the same queries that the magazine galleys had. Could you tip them the wink some way so that they would please follow my copy exactly as they used to, as this is my last chance at the book? Whoever has been in charge of it must be very patient because I know at the ninth revision that the very sight of any part of it fills me with nausea. However, I have to go on in this particular case while they don’t, and so are liable to get careless.
Going over the other points, I hope both (1) that the review copies will go out in plenty of time, and (2) that they will get the version of the novel as it will be published because there is no doubt that each revision makes a tremendous difference in the impression that the book will leave. After all, Max, I am a plodder. One time I had a talk with Ernest Hemingway, and I told him, against all the logic that was then current, that I was the tortoise and he was the hare, and that’s the truth of the matter, that everything that I have ever attained has been through long and persistent struggle while it is Ernest who has a touch of genius which enables him to bring off extraordinary things with facility. I have no facility. I have a facility for being cheap, if I wanted to indulge that. I can do cheap things. I changed Clark Gable’s act at the moving picture theatre here the other day. I can do that kind of thing as quickly as anybody but when I decided to be a serious man, I tried to struggle over every point until I have made myself into a slow-moving behemoth (if that is the correct spelling), and so there I am for the rest of my life. Anyhow, these points of proofreading, etc., are of tremendous importance to me, and you can charge it all to my account, and I will realize all the work you have had on it.
As I told you on the phone, I enjoyed Marjorie Rawlings’ praise, but it was somewhat qualified by her calling my people trivial people. Other stuff has drifted in from writers from all over America, some of it by telegram, which has been complimentary.
Now, about advertising. Again I want to tell you my theory that everybody is absolutely dead on ballyhoo of any kind, and for your advertising department to take up any interest that the intellectuals have so far shown toward the book, and exploit that, would be absolutely disastrous. The reputation of a book must grow from within upward, must be a natural growth. I don’t think there is a comparison between this book and The Great Gatsby as a seller. The Great Gatsby had against it its length and its purely masculine interest. This book, on the contrary, is a woman’s book. I think, given a decent chance, it will make its own way insofar as fiction is selling under present conditions.
Excuse me if this letter has a dogmatic ring. I have lived so long within the circle of this book and with these characters that often it seems to me that the real world does not exist but that only these characters exist, and, however pretentious that remark sounds (and my God, that I should have to be pretentious about my work), it is an absolute fact - so much so that their glees and woes are just exactly as important to me as what happens in life.
Zelda is better. There is even a chance of her getting up for the exhibition of her paintings at Easter, but nothing certain. Do you still think that idea of piling the accumulated manuscript in the window is a valid one? My instinct does not quite solve the problem. What do you think? Would it seem a little phony?
With best wishes,
Scott
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
March 5,1934
Dear Max:
The stout arrived this morning and I am sampling it for lunch. I think I’d better have my photograph taken first for if I become as swollen as you intend my thousands and thousands of younger admirers will just leave the sinking ship.
By the way, when you and Louise left here did you, by any chance, take with you 12 spoons, 12 forks, 12 knives (fish), 12
knives (dinner), 1 silver salver, 1 revolver, 1 platinum and diamond wrist-watch? I don’t like to accuse anybody of anything but there is a very curious coincidence. I may say if it’s all sent back within the week I shall take no further steps in the matter. We assure you, sir, that we returned the wrong trousers and we are having our agent look into the matter. With a business as large as ours and trousers as small as yours such things will happen.
In any case, Max, if the stout kills me I protected myself by a new clause in my will based on the old Maryland Poison Act - Md.362 XX: 1,47, Yours very truly,
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Bart)
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
June 26, 1934
Dear Max.
Am sending along Number 1 of the stories because I feel it’s going to be the devil to set up. There are two others all corrected, but the slow thing is to look through Tender Is the Night and see what phrases I took out of the stories. This is confused by the fact that there were so many revisions of Tender that I don’t know what I left in it and what I didn’t leave in it finally. I am going to have trouble with two of the stories you suggested. In ‘The Captured Shadow,’ I’ll have to make up a whole new ending which is almost like writing a new story. Secondly, the Josephine story, ‘A Nice Quiet Place,’ has some awfully phony stuff in the middle that I’ll have to find a substitute for. So can’t I send the stories in their original order, and have them set up separately, and then sandwich between them these last two if I can think of some way of fixing them in time?
Nothing new about the title.
By the time you get this, you will have gotten a begging telegram asking for a thousand dollars. How I ever got so deep in debt I don’t know unless it’s been this clinic business, because I’ve written regularly a story a month since finishing the last proof of Tender and they have been sold. I have also fixed up and sold some of Zelda’s little articles besides. Debt is an odd thing and it seems if you ever get started in it it is very difficult to get disentangled. I have put the movie possibilities of the novel out of mind for the present though the young man I told you about who went from here to the coast is still trying further treatments in hopes that they will buy it. My best chance now is that if Phyllis Bottome’s psychiatric story goes, they may all rush to buy whatever else is available in that line. Looks now as if I will be here until well into the summer, but I am going to try damn hard to get a month off
somewhere if I can get clear of debts and clear of the work to which I committed myself. I can well understand all your difficulties working in the office by day and with Tom Wolfe by night because until ten days ago, when I collapsed and took to my bed, I have been doing about the same thing. I am all right now and once I get this Post story off should be out of the worst.
Zelda does much better. Morrow read her stuff but turned down the plan.
Ever yours, Scott
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
July 30, 1934
Dear Max:
The bottom sort of fell out of things after you left. We sat around for a few hours and talked a lot about you. The only flaw in the evening was the fact that afterwards I didn’t seem to be able to sleep any better in Virginia than I did in Maryland, so, after reading an old account of Stuart’s battles for an hour or so, I got dressed in despair and spent the small hours of the morning prowling around the place, finally snatching two hours of sleep between seven and nine. The next day - it being our hostess’ custom to sleep late - Anne took me over to meet the fabled Harden, who was as interesting as promised by the discussion about him.
Returning to ‘Welbourne,’a whole slew of Virginians appeared and to my regret I didn’t have much more chance to talk to Elizabeth, because my conscience had begun to worry me and I decided to take the three o’clock bus back to Washington. However, one of the guests took dictation and I managed to have my joke about Grant and Lee taken down on paper. Then last night I had it faked up by the Sun here in Baltimore and I am going to send one to Elizabeth framed. Please return the one herewith enclosed for your inspection.
I thought Elizabeth Lemmon was charming.... The whole atmosphere of that countryside made me wonder about many things. It seems to me more detached than any place I have ever visited in the Union except a few remote towns in Alabama and Georgia during the war before the radio came. By the way, I had never ridden in a bus before and thought it was rather a horrible experience after the spacious grace of that house.
This morning before breakfast I read Tom Wolfe’s story in Scribners.I thought it was perfectly beautiful and it had a subtlety often absent from his work, an intense poetry rather akin to Ernest (though naturally you won’t tell Tom that because he wouldn’t take it as a compliment). What family resemblance there is between we three as writers is the attempt that crops up in our fiction from time to time to recapture the exact feel of a moment in time and space, exemplified by people rather than by things - that is, an attempt at what Wordsworth was trying to do rather than what Keats did with such magnificent ease, an attempt at a mature memory of a deep experience. Anyhow please congratulate him for me with all my heart.
This letter is dragging out. Hope you found Louise all right. A thousand thanks for taking me into that very novel and stimulating atmosphere. I had been in a hell of a rut.
Ever yours,
Scott
P.S. Here’s the money I owe you. I made it twelve instead of eleven because I had forgotten that expensive wine that I insisted upon ordering and which I drank most of, and anyhow twelve is a more symmetrical number than eleven.
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
August 24, 1934
Dear Max:
This is a sort of postscript to my letter of yesterday: I do think that you were doing specious reasoning in part of your letter. The fact that Ernest has let himself repeat here and there a phrase would be no possible justification for my doing the same. Each of us has his virtues and one of mine happens to be a great sense of exactitude about my work. He might be able to afford a lapse in that line where I wouldn’t be and after all I have got to be the final judge of what is appropriate in these cases. Max, to repeat for the third time, this is in no way a question of laziness. It is a question absolutely of self-preservation. It is not going to be a money book in any case and is not going to go very far toward reimbursing the money I still owe you, and so I think in view of everything that my suggestion of waiting until after Christmas is the best.
Besides, it is not only the question of the repetitions but there are certain other stories in the collection that I couldn’t possibly think of letting go out in their current form. I fully realize that this may be a very serious inconvenience to you but for me to undertake anything like that at this moment would just mean sudden death and nothing less than that.
Ever yours,
Scott
P.S. I have just gotten a royalty report and don’t know whether the sum of my debit is on the red page or on the regular royalty report. Please have someone let me know.
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
October 17, 1934
Dear Max:
The mood of terrible depression and despair is not going to become a characteristic and I am ashamed and felt very yellow about it afterwards. But to deny that such moods come increasingly would be futile.
I took you at your word and went down to Welbourne for an afternoon to prance before Elizabeth and found her in her usual good form, and also Mary Rumsey. But the trouble about women is that when you need them most they are never in a receptive mood (not that both Elizabeth and Mary were not hospitable, it’s just the old story that when you feel like weeping on somebody’s shoulder you’re usually in such a state of mind and body that nobody wants you to weep on their shoulder).
The country was beautiful, however. Will write at length later. They missed you, and I added to their chagrin by telling them how I urged you to go down the night before.
Feel somewhat refreshed and am finishing my story today.
Ever yours, Scott
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
November 8, 1934
Dear Max:
In further reference to my telegram of Tuesday night: first, I am sending you the third story in its proper place ready to go into the book. The thing that worried me when I did it was whether the proof-reader is going to be able to release a lot of type, because, due to the fact that the end of one story and the beginning of another were run on one galley, he will have to scrap half the type in the galley and yet retain the other half - this because the stories were not set up in proper order. I know this is a terrible and costly mess and I take full responsibility; nevertheless, I did think the stories would be set up separately and getting at them is as if the chapters of a book were set up any which way, like, I, VII, II, V, III, VI, and it all has to be straightened out each time. As you know that is fatiguing work and can best be done when one is fresh, and is hard to do at night.
My big mistake was in thinking I could possibly deliver this collection for this fall. I should have known perfectly well that, in debt as I was to the tune of about $12,000 on finishing Tender, I should have to devote the summer and most of the fall to getting out of it. My plan was to do my regular work in the daytime and do one story every night, but as it works out, after a good day’s work I am so exhausted that I drag out the work on a story to two hours when it should be done in one and go to bed so tired and wrought up, toss around sleepless, and am good for nothing next morning except dictating letters, signing checks, tending to business matters, etc. - but to work up a creative mood there is nothing doing until about four o’clock in the afternoon. Part of this is because of ill health. It would not have seemed so difficult to me ten years, or even five years ago, but now just one more straw would break the camel’s back.
I have about half a dozen of these done but I am determined this time to send them in only in the proper order and not add further confusion either in my own mind or that of the printer’s. The trouble began when I sent you two stories to be set up which were nowhere near each other in the book. If I told a story about a boy of sixteen years old and sixty pages on the reader came upon a story of the same boy at thirteen it would make no sense to him and look like careless presentati
on, and which, as you know, I dislike nothing more.
As you may have seen I took out ‘A New Leaf and put in ‘Her Last Case.’ You didn’t tell me whether or not you read it or liked it.
I know you have the sense that I have loafed lately but that is absolutely not so. I have drunk too much and that is certainly slowing me up. On the other hand, without drink I do not know whether I could have survived this time. In actual work since I finished the last proof of the novel in the middle of March, eight months ago, I have written and sold three stories for the Post, written another which was refused, written two and a half stories for the Redbook, rewritten three articles of Zelda’s for Esquire and one original for them to get emergency money, collaborated on a 10,000-word treatment of Tender Is the Night, which was no go, written an 8ooo-word story for Gracie Allen, which was also no go, and made about five false starts on stories which went from 1000 to 5000 words, and a preface to the Modern Library edition of The Great Gatsby, which equalizes very well what I have done in other years. I am good for just about one good story a month or two articles. I took no vacation this summer except three or four one-night trips to Virginia and two business trips to New York, each of which lasted about four or five days. Of course this is no excuse for not making more money, because in harder times you’ve got to work harder, but as it happens I am in a condition at the moment where to work extra hard means inevitably that I am laid up for a compensatory time either here or in the hospital. All I can say is that I will try to do two or three of these all at once after finishing each piece of work, and as I am now working at the rate of a story each ten days for the Redbook series I should finish up the ten I have left to do in about one hundred days and deliver the last of them in mid-February. Perhaps if things break better it may be a month sooner.