Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (572 page)

I can not disassociate a man from his work. That..  are going to tell us mere superficial ‘craftsmen’ like Hergesheimer, Wharton, Tarkington, and me about the Great Beautiful Appreciation they have of the Great Beautiful Life of the Manure Widder rather turns my stomach. The real people like Gertrude Stein (with whom I’ve talked) and Conrad (see his essay on James) have a respect for people whose materials may not touch theirs at a
single point.
But the fourth-rate and highly derivative people like Tom are loud in their outcry against any subject matter that doesn’t come out of the old, old bag which their betters have used and thrown away.

For example there is an impression among the thoughtless (including Tom) that Sherwood Anderson is a man of profound ideas who is ‘handicapped by his inarticulateness.’ As a matter of fact Anderson is a man of practically no ideas - but
he is one of the very
best
and finest
writers in
the
English
language today.
God, he can write! Tom could never get such rhythms in his life as there are on the pages of Winesburg, Ohio. Simple! The words on the lips of critics make me hilarious: Anderson’s style is about as simple as an engine room full of dynamos. But Tom flatters himself that he can sit down for five months and by dressing up a few heart throbs in overalls produce literature.

It amazes me, Max, to see you with your discernment and your fine intelligence fall for that whole complicated fake. Your chief critical flaw is to confuse mere earnestness with artistic sincerity. On two of Ring’s jackets have been statements that he never wrote a dishonest word (maybe it’s one jacket). But Ring and many of the very greatest artists have written thousands of words in plays, poems and novels which weren’t even faintly sincere or earnest and were yet
artistically sincere.
The latter term is not a synonym for plodding earnestness. Zola did not say the last word about literature nor the first.

I append all the data on my fall book, and in closing I apologize for seeming impassioned about Tom and his work when neither the man or what he writes has ever been personally inimical to me. He is simply the scapegoat for the mood Rascoe has put me in and, the I mean every word of it, I probably wouldn’t have wasted all this paper on a book that won’t sell and will be dead in a month, and an imitative school that will be dead by its own weight in a year or so, if the news about Liveright hadn’t come on top of the Rascoe review and ruined my disposition. Good luck to
Drummond.
 I’m sure one or two critics will mistake it for profound stuff - maybe even Mencken, who has a weakness in that direction. But I think you should look closer.

With best wishes as always, Max,

Your friend,

Scott

DATA ON NEW FITZGERALD BOOK

Title: All the
Sad Young Men
(9 Short Stories)

Print list of previous books as before with addition of this title under ‘Stories.’ Binding uniform with others. Jacket plain, as you suggest, with text instead of picture. Dedication: To Ring and Ellis Lardner.

The stories (now under revision) will reach you by July 15th. No proofs need be sent over here.

It will be fully up to the other collections and will contain only one of those
Post
stories that people were so snooty about. You have read only one of the stories (‘Absolution’) - all the others were so good that I had difficulty in selling them, except two.

They are, in approximate order to be used in book:

1. — The Rich Boy (just finished - serious story 13,000 words and very good)

2. — ‘Absolution’ (from
Mercury
) — 6,500 words

of English prose now writing in America.... What other writer has shown such unexpected developments, such versatility, changes of pace,’ etc., etc., etc. I think that, toned down as you see fit, is the general line. Don’t say ‘Fitzgerald has done it!’ and then in the next sentence that I am an artist. People who are interested in artists aren’t interested in people who have ‘done it.’ Both are O.K. but don’t belong in the same ad. This is an author’s quibble. All authors have one quibble.

However, you have always done well by me (except for Black’s memorable excretion in the Alumni Weekly, do you remember - ‘Make it a Fitzgerald Christmas!’) and I leave it to you. If 100,000 copies are not sold I shall shift to Mitchell Kennerley.

By the way what has become of Black? I hear he has written a very original and profound novel. It is said to be about an inarticulate farmer and his struggles with the ‘soil’ and his sexual waverings between his inarticulate wife and an inarticulate sheep. He finally chooses his old pioneering grandmother as the most inarticulate of all but finds her in bed with none other than our old friend THE HIRED MAN CHRISTY.

CHRISTY HAD DONE IT!

In 1962 Fitzgerald’s famous letter to Perkins was sold at auction at Chrystie’s (not old man Christy’s) for £7,000.

14 rue de
Tilsitt

Paris, France

circa
July
1, 1925

Dear
Max:

This is another one of those letters with a thousand details in them, so I’ll number the details and thus feel I’m getting them out of the way.

(1) Will you have an account (bi-yearly statement) sent me as soon as you can? I don’t know how much I owe you but it must be between 3 and 4 thousand dollars. I want to see how much chance All the
Sad
Young Men has of making up this difference. Thanks many times for the $700.00. It will enable me to go ahead next month with Our Type t which is getting shaped up both on paper and in my head. I’d rather not tell about it just yet.

(2) — Is Gatsby to be published in England? I’m awfully anxious to have it published there. If Collins won’t have it, can’t you try JonathanCape? Do let me know about this.

(3) — Will you tell me the figures on Ring’s books? Also on
Through the
Wheat. I re-read the latter the other day and think it’s marvelous. Together with The Enormous Room and, I think, Gatsby, it’s much the best thing that has come out of American fiction since the war. I exclude Anderson because since reading Three
Lives
and his silly autobiography my feeling about him has entirely changed. He is a short story writer only.

(4) — I spent $48.00 having a sketch of me done by Ivan Opfer. It was lousy and he says he’ll try another. If it’s no good I’ll send a photo. The stories for the book leave here day after tomorrow.

(5) — I think the number of Americans in Europe has hurt the market.
Gatsby
is the last principal book of mine that I want to publish in the spring. I believe that from now on fall will be much the best season.

(6) — I’m sorry about that burst at Tom

Boyd. But I am among those who suffer from the preoccupation of literary America with the drab as subject matter. Seldes points this out in a great review of
Gatsby
for the London
Criterion.
Also he says, ‘Fitzgerald has certainly the best chance at present of becoming our finest artist in fiction.’ Quite a bit from Gilbert who only likes Ring, Edith Wharton, Joyce and Charlie Chaplin. Please get Meyer to put it on the cover of the new book and delete the man who says I ‘deserve the huzzas of those who want to further a worthy American Literature.’ Perhaps I deserve their huzzas but I’d rather they’d express their appreciation in some less boisterous way.

(7) — T’m sending back the questionnaire.

(8) — I suppose that by now Gatsby is over 18,000.I hope to God it reaches 20,000. It sounds so much better. Shane Leslie thought it was fine.

No news, Max. I was drinking hard in May but for the last month I’ve been working like a dog. I still think Count Orgel’s
Ball
by Radiguet would sell like wildfire. If I had the time I’d translate it myself.

Scott

14 rue de Tilsitt

Paris,

France
circa
October 6,
1925

Dear Max:

Your letter of September 28th doesn’t answer my question about Gatsby in England. Is there some reason why Chatto & Windus can’t publish in the spring? - And if they believe in it so little that they’ll defer it a year and a half wouldn’t they be willing to hand it over to Cape? I hate to be a crabby old woman about this, Max, but it means a lot to me.
Gatsby
is just the sort of book which the English say that Americans can’t write, which they praise Hergesheimer for
almost
writing; I know half a dozen influential people there who will go to bat for it right now and it seems to me that it should have a chance. I am further confused when your letter says ‘Chatto & Windus and other publishers admired it but they thought it too American in its scene to be understood in England.’ Does that mean Chatto & Windus aren’t going to publish it? I’m disgruntled and up-in-the-air about the whole thing.

Isn’t Hemingway’s book fine? Did you read the last story?

I’m having Reynolds send you 6 tickets to the opening of
Gatsby if
it gets to New York. Distribute them as you like and if you want more let him know.

I’m anxiously awaiting the figure on Gatsby (how many sold, I mean); also on Ring’s reprints as I feel sort of responsible to you on that idea. If he’d have a little pep and interest he might have devoted enough care to What
of
It? to make it sell as well as
The
Illiterate Digest.

Who has the American rights to Paul Morand’s Open AH Night and
Closed All
Night? Guy Chapman publishes them in England. They’re great - and would sell like wildfire. Isn’t Anderson’s new book lousy?+

As ever,

Scott

14 rue de Tilsitt

Paris,

France

circa
December
27, 1925

Dear Max:

I write to you from the depth of one of my unholy depressions. The book is wonderful - I honestly think that when it’s published I shall be the best American novelist (which isn’t saying a lot) but the end seems far away. When it’s finished I’m coming home for awhile anyhow though the thought revolts me as much as the thought of remaining in France. I wish I were twenty-two again with only my dramatic and feverishly enjoyed miseries. You remember I used to say I wanted to die at thirty - well, I’m now twenty-nine and the prospect is still welcome. My work is the only thing that makes me happy - except to be a little tight - and for those two indulgences I pay a big price in mental and physical hangovers.

I thank you for your newsy letter - by the way we got and hugely enjoved Louise’s beautiful book and I wrote and thanked her care of Scribners. I liked too your idea about
Representative Men
but it seems remote to me. Let me know if it comes to something and I’ll contribute.

That was a sweet slam from Ellen Mackey. Is it true that she and Irving Berlin have signed up to play a permanent engagement in Abie’s
Irish Rose
? I hope the short stories sell seven or eight thousand or so. Is Gatsby dead? You don’t mention it. Has it reached 25,000? I hardly dare to hope so. Also I deduce from your silence that Tom Boyd’s book was a flop. If so I hope he isn’t in financial difficulties. Also I gather from reviews that the penciled frown came a cropper. I wish Liveright would lose faith in Ernest. Through the whole year only the following American novels have seemed worth a damn to me:

The Spring Flight

Perennial Bachelor

In Our Time

The Great Gatsby

I thought the books by Lewis, Van Vechten,
Edith Wharton, Floyd Dell, Tom Boyd
and
Sherwood Anderson
were just
lousy!

And the ones by Willa
Cather
and Cyril
Hume
almost as bad.

Dos Passos and
Ruth Suckow
I haven’t yet read.

The press Anderson got on
Dark
Laughter filled me with a much brighter shade of hilarity. You notice it wasn’t from those of us who waited for the Winesburg stories one by one in the
Little
Review but by Harry Hansen, Stallings, etc., and the other boys who find a new genius once a week and at all cost follow the fashions.

It’s good you didn’t take my advice about looking up Gertrude Stein’s new book
(The
Making of Americans). It’s bigger than
Ulysses
and only the first parts, the parts published in the Transatlantic, are intelligible at all. It’s published privately here.

The best English books of the fall are
The Sailor’s
Return
by David Gamett and
No More Parades
by Ford Maddox Ford (a sequel to
Some Do Not
).

(Speaking of Gertrude Stein I hope you are keeping my precious
Three
Lives
safe for me.) Ring’s book sounds good. Send me a copy - also the wrap of mine.

I told Ober to send you half a dozen seats for the Gatsby opening to distribute to the Scribners as you think best. If you want more phone him.

No, Zelda’s not entirely well yet. We’re going south next month to Salies-les-Bains to see if we can cure her there. So
from the time of receiving this letter address
all mail to me
care of

The Guaranty Trust Co.

1 rue des
Italiens Paris,
France

Why was fack Wheeler kicked out of Liberty?

My novel should be finished next fall.

Tell me all the gossip that isn’t in The New Yorker or the World - isn’t there any regular dirt?

I called on Chatto & Windus in London last month and had a nice talk with Swinnerton, their reader. (It was he, it seems, who was strong for the book.) Saw Leslie  also and went on some very high-tone parties with Mountbattens and all that sort of thing.