Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (578 page)

Ober is advancing me the money to go through with it (it will probably not need more than $2000 though he has promised to go as far as $4000) and in return I am giving him 10% of the serial rights. I plan to raise the money to repay him (if I have not already paid him by
Post
stories) by asking a further advance on the book royalties or on my next book which might be an omnibus collection of short stories or those two long serial stories about young people that I published some time ago in the Post as the Basil stories and the Josephine stories - this to be published in the fall.

You are the only person who knows how near the novel is to being finished. PI
ease don’t say a word to anyone.

4. — How will you give a month’s advance notice of the story - slip a band on the jacket of the December issue? I want to talk to you about advertising when I see you in late October so please don’t put even the publicity man at any work yet. As to the photographs I have a snapshot negative of the three of us with a surfboard, which enlarges to a nice 6 x 10 glossy suitable for rotogravures, and also have a fine double profile of Zelda and me in regular cabinet photograph size and have just gotten figures from the photographer. He wants $18.00 for twelve, $24.00 for twenty-four and $35.00 for fifty and says he does not sell the plates, though I imagine he could be prevailed upon if we give him a ‘take it or leave it’ offer. How many would you need? These two photographs are modem. I don’t want any of the old ones sent out and I don’t want any horrors to be dug up out of newspaper morgues.

Tell me how many you would need to cover all the press? Would it be cheaper if I sat when I came up there - the trouble is that in only one out of any three pictures is my pan of any interest.

5. — My plan, and I think it is very important, is to prevail upon the Modern Library, even with a subsidy, to bring out
Gatsby
a few weeks after the book publication of this novel. Please don’t say that anybody would possibly have the psychology of saying to themselves ‘one of his is in the Modern Library, therefore I will not buy another,’ or that the two books could be confused. The people who buy the Modern Library are not at all the people who buy the new books. Gatsby - in its present form, not actually available in sight to book buyers - will only get a scattering sale as a result of the success of this book. I feel that every time your business department has taken a short-sighted view of our community of interest in this matter, which is my reputation, there has been no profit on your part and something less than that on mine. As, for example, a novel of Ernest’s in the Modern Library and no novel of mine, a good short story of Ernest’s in their collection of the Great
Modern Short Stories
and a purely commercial story of mine. I want to do this almost as much as I want to publish this novel and will cooperate to the extent of sharing the cost.

There will be other points when I see you in October, but I will be greatly reassured to have some sort of idea about these points so that I can make my plans accordingly. I will let you know two or three days in advance when you may expect me.

One last point: unlike Ernest I am perfectly agreeable to making any necessary cuts for
serial
publication but naturally insist that I shall do them myself.

You can imagine the pride with which I will enter your office a month from now.
Please do not have a band as I do not care for music.

Ever yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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 Burton of
Cosmopolitan
is very interested in the novel and if he took it would, in Ober’s opinion, pay between $30,000 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, 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 Scribner’s.

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 Hearst 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 but I 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.

Please answer.

Ever yours,

Scott

La Paix,
Rodgers’
Forge
Towson,
Maryland

October
7, 1933

Dear Max:

I had already thought of your point and talked to John Lardner about it. My idea was that Gilbert Seldes could do it and was the ideal man for the job; also my idea was that the articles that Ring wrote over that series of time could be made into a sort of Ring’s history of the world. Whoever edits it should make it into a unit as far as possible. (Naturally I am not referring to the achieved facts of the stories.) I think that a big book of nonsense could be got up based on all the writings, apart from fiction, that Ring did, from his early newspaper days until the present. I have already taken it up with Seldes and John Lardner (the latter of whom is still under the spell of his father’s obsequies and will probably not get around to any action for a week or so) that it must be
edited.
When I say edited, I mean edited; if you want to have a volume of Ring’s that would properly represent him you should commission such a man as Gilbert to go through everything which is not fiction and make a sort of story out of it. Pay him high, 35 to 45% of the total royalties, and publish the book as a standard book of nonsense; no thin little volume as the Story of
a Wonder- man
(though what meat was in that should be used) but a real monument of American nonsense.

Any collection of Benchley, Corey Ford or Thurber would be merely a selection of incidents, in my opinion, while this collection of Ring’s could be made the story of a whole period, not up to the present, for toward the end he was a sick man and did not record very well; but during the period in which Ring functioned rationally he got everything that was going and that might be of interest to many people.

Why not get in touch with Gilbert and talk it over, showing him this letter, or else telling him the equivalent of the opinions here expressed? I know what I could do with the material and have faith in the hypothetical result, but it is simply impossible for me to undertake such work under present circumstances. This publication, mind you, would have to be utterly unlike the hasty compilations of Ring’s nonsense that you have put out - it would have to be a new dealing with it; it would take an intelligent ap- preciator’s whole time for a month to put it out in any other form than that would do harm to his reputation. My idea is that this nonsense cannot be spotted like Lear’s nonsense but must be organized like Lewis Carroll’s nonsense. All of it that is still funny (except the parts that were merely timely) should be included, but it must be
made consecutive -
well, consult with Gilbert and see if he has anything to suggest; this is the best I can offer.

Ever yours,

Scott

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 J3000 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 re-insert 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.....

‘The Great Gatsby
is undoubtedly a work of art.’

The 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 fames.

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.