Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (591 page)

I wish to God I could join you and Bunny on your junket but I am simply swamped by the hangover of the book and with domestic affairs so I don’t think I will see Princeton before June, and, believe me, I regret it very much because there is much more that I want to talk to you about than literature.

Scribners writes that they are sending me your book which I think I have read almost entire in its scattered form but which I will pursue again with deep pleasure.

With best regards to Mrs Gauss and admiration for your beautiful red-headed progeny, I am

Ever yours, (even in red crayon, the only thing available)

Scott Fitzg —

1307 Park Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

September
7, 1934

Dear Dean Gauss:

This is a wild idea of mine, conditioned by the fact that my physician thinks I am in a solitary rut and that I ought to have outside interests. Well, outside interests generally mean for me women, liquor or some form of exhibitionism. The third seems to be most practical at the present moment, wherefore I would like to give a series of lectures at Princeton, say eight, on the actual business of creating fiction. There would be no charge and I would consider it a favor if I were allowed to do this in a University lecture hall. (Incidentally, to safeguard you from my elaborate reputation, I would pledge my word to do no drinking in Princeton save what might be served at your table if you should provide me with luncheon before one of these attempts.)

The lectures I’ve not planned but they would be, in general, the history of say:

1.What Constitutes the Creative Temperament 1. — What Creative Material Is.

2. — Its Organization.

And so forth and so on.

This would be absolutely first-hand stuff and there might be a barrier to crash in regard to the English Department, and if you don’t think this is the time to do it don’t hesitate to let me know frankly. So many bogus characters have shown up in Princeton trying to preach what they have never been able to practice, that I think even if I reach only half a dozen incipient talents the thing might be worthwhile from the scholastic point of view, and will be selfishly worthwhile to me -I would like to time these lectures so that they would come on the afternoon or eve of athletic events that I would like to see.

You will know best how to sound out the powers-that-be in the English Department. I have a hunch that Gerould rather likes me and I like Root whether he likes me or not....

This is an arrow in the dark. I feel I never knew so much about my stuff as I now know, about the technique concerned, and I can’t think of anywhere I would like to disseminate this egotistic feeling more than at Princeton. This all might come to something, you know I Hope you had a fine summer abroad. With my respects to Mrs Gauss.

Ever yours,

F. Scott Fitzg

P.S. Naturally, after my wretched performance at the Cottage Club you might be cynical about my ability to handle an audience, but my suggestion is that the first lecture should be announced as a single, and
if
there is further demand we could go from thence to thither.

1307
Park Avenue

Baltimore,

Maryland

September 26,
1934

Dear Dean Gauss:

I know about The Club’ and they asked me last year to come and lecture. What I have against that is that it is sponsored by undergraduates which detracts from speaking under the authoritative aegis of the University, and second, because my plan was a series of lectures and not one that I could develop in a single evening. Also they were meant to be pretty serious stuff, that is, written out rather than spoken from notes, straight lectures rather than preceptorials. However, if the powers-that-be feel it inadvisable I can only yield the point and postpone the idea until a more favorable year.

Glad you enjoyed your rest abroad and escaped Miriam Hopkins’ jumping out of the second-story window onto your shoulders. But I suppose you’ve been kidded to death about that already and I know you took it with your usual sense of humor.

Best wishes always,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hotel Stafford

Baltimore,

Maryland

September
30, 1935

Dear Dean Gauss:

This is an imposition coming at the very beginning of the term when I know you are busy, so if you can grant this favor please do it at your leisure. As you know my daughter was brought up in France and I have conscientiously labored to keep her bilingual. This is now reduced to fortnightly conversations with a French woman and to supplement this I wanted some work in grammar - I mean advanced grammar. She is rather widely read in French (Hugo, Dumas, Molière, etc., and the classic poets) and I’d like to have for her some junior and senior French examination papers which I can have administered to her here. Is it within your power to have a sheaf of old ones dug up for me, or can you tell me where I can find some?

This is an odd request coming from such a wretched linguistic scholar as I was.

With best wishes to you always and with high hopes of seeing you sometime this fall,

Ever yours,

Scott Fitzg

To Harold Ober

599
Summit
Avenue

St Paul,

Minnesota

January 8,

1920

Dear Mr Ober:

You could have knocked me over with a feather when you told me you had sold ‘Myra’ - I never was so heartily sick of a story before I finished it as I was of that one.

Enclosed is a new version of ‘Barbara,’ called ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ to distinguish it from Mary Rinehart’s ‘Bab’ stories in the Post. I think I’ve managed to inject a snappy climax into it. Now this story went to several magazines this summer - Scribner’s, Woman’s Home
Companion
and the Post - but it was in an entirely different,
absolutely unrecognizable
form, single-spaced and none of ‘em kept it more than three days except
Scribner’s,
who wrote a personal letter on it. Is there any money in collections of short stories? This Post money comes in very handy - my idea is to go South - probably New Orleans - and write my second novel. Now my novels, at least my first one, are not like my short stories at all, they are rather cynical and pessimistic - and therefore I doubt if as a whole they’d stand much chance of being published serially in any of the uplift magazines at least until my first novel and those Post stories appear and I get some sort of a reputation.

Now I published three incidents of my first novel in Smart Set last summer and my idea in the new one is to sell such parts as might go as units separately to different magazines, as I write them, because it’ll take ten weeks to write it and I don’t want to run out of money. There will be one long thing which might make a novelette for the Post called
The Diary of a
Popular
Girl,
half a dozen cynical incidents that might do for
Smart Set
and perhaps a story or two for Scribner’s or Harper’s. How about it - do you think this is a wise plan - or do you think a story like C. G. Norris’
Salt
or Cabell’s
Jurgen
or Dreiser’s
Jennie Gerhardt
would have one chance in a million to be sold serially? I’m asking you for an opinion about this beforehand because it will have an influence on my plans.

Hoping to hear from you I am,

Sincerely

F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. The excellent story I told you of probably won’t be along for two or three weeks. I’m stuck in the middle of it.

Salies de Bearn God
knows
where

Received March
15,1926

Dear Ober:

This is one of the lousiest stories I’ve ever written. Just
terrible!
I lost interest in the middle (by the way the last part is typed triple-space because I thought I could fix it - but I couldn’t).

PIease -
and I mean this - don’t offer it to the Post. I think that as things are now it would be
wretched
policy. Nor to the
Red- book.
It hasn’t
one redeeming touch
of my usual spirit in it. I was desperate to begin a story and invented a business plot - the kind I can’t handle. I’d rather have $1000 for it from some obscure place than twice that and have it seen. I
feel very
strongly about
this!

Am writing two of the best stories I’ve ever done in my life.

As ever,

Scott Fitz —

Villa St Louis
Juan-les-Pins Alpes
Maritime
France

Received June
3, 1926

Dear Ober:

Well, it’s rather melancholy to hear that the run was over. However as it was something of a
succès d’estime
and put in my pocket seventeen or eighteen thousand without a stroke of work on my part I should be, and am, well content.

A thousand thanks for your courtesy to my father. You went out of your way to be nice to him and he wrote me a most pleased and enthusiastic letter. He misses me, I think, and at his age such an outing as that was an exceptional pleasure. I am, as usual, deeply in your debt, and now for a most pleasant and personal reason. His own life after a rather brilliant start back in the seventies has been a ‘failure’ - he’s lived always in mother’s shadow and he takes an immense vicarious pleasure in any success of mine. Thank you.

Yours always,

Scott Fitzgerald

No stories sent since ‘Your Way and Mine’

10
rue
Pergolèse
Paris, France

Received
November 16, 1929

Dear Harold:

Sorry this has been so delayed. I had another called The Bamaby Family’ that I worked on to the point of madness and may yet finish, but simply lost interest. The enclosed (I mean to say separate package) is heavy but, I think, good. Is it too heavy?

Now to answer questions, etc.

(1) As to Hemingway. You (I speak of you personally, not the old firm) made a mistake not to help sell his stuff personally 2 years ago - if any success was more clearly prognosticated I don’t know it. I told him the present situation and I know from several remarks of his that he thought at first he was being approached by the same agents as mine - but he is being fought over a lot now and is confused and I think the wisest thing is to do nothing at present. If any offer for moving pictures of his books for $20,000 or more came to you however don’t hesitate to wire him as he’s not satisfied with present picture offers. Simply wire him Garritus - he knows quite well who you are, etc.
Please
don’t in any correspondence with him use my name - you see my relations with him are entirely friendly and not business and he’d merely lose confidence in me if he felt he was being hemmed in by any coalition. My guess is, and I’m not sure, that he is pretty much deferring definite action for the present on stories and serials but this may not be true by the time this reaches you and may not be at this moment.

(2) — I note cable formula and will save $25 or $50 a year thereby.

(3) —
Post
stories all available here - don’t send Post.

(4) — World offer seems small ($300). Will answer refusing it politely myself.

(5) — Of new authors this Richard Douglass  author of
The Innocent Voyage
(called High Wind in Bermuda) in England is much the best bet but a lot of editors may have thought of that. Maybe not though! Will try to keep you informed at the same time I usually do Scribners of anybody new I hear of as, if he interests me, I like to give him a chance for a hearing; but there’s nobody now - but may write about that later! America will from now on give about one-half its book-buying ear to serious people or at any rate to people who have a backing from the sophisticated minority.

(6) — New Yorker offers O.K. but uninteresting - as for Mrs —

 — (whoever she is) I will gladly modify my style and subject matter for her but she will have to give me her beautiful body first and I dare say the price is too high.

(7) — Did M
cCall’s
like the article ‘Girls Believe in Girls?’

(8) — Now I have two uninterrupted months on the novel and will do my best. There is no question of my not trying for the serial right and never has been.

(9) — About
The Woman’s Home Companion,
you know.

Yours ever in Masonry and Concubinage,

Scott Fitzg

4 rue H
erran
Paris,
 France

Received May,3.1930

Dear Harold: —

First, I will be mailing a new story about the 25th. Glad you liked ‘A Nice Quiet Place.’ Did you ask about the corrected proof of ‘First Blood?’ (Addenda of letter covers this.) - I do so want to have it. Glad you put up a kick about the illustrations - they were awful, with all the youthful suggestion of a G.A.R. congress.

Thanks for the statements. I’m about where I feared I was.

Zelda was delighted with your compliments about ‘The Millionaire’s Girl.’

Now - about the novel - the other night I read one great hunk of it to John Peale Bishop, and we both agreed that it would be ruinous to let Liberty start it uncompleted. Here’s a hypothetical possibility. Suppose (as may happen in such cases) they didn’t like the end and we quarreled about it - then what the hell! I’d have lost the Post, gained an enemy in Liberty - who would we turn to - Ray Long? Suppose Liberty didn’t like even the first part and went around saying it was rotten before it was even finished. I want to be in New York if possible when they accept it for there’s that element of cutting, never yet discussed - are they going to cut it? Are they going to cut my stories to 5000 words or not? Are they going to pay $3500 or $4000? At one time I was about to send four chapters out of eight done to you. Then I cut one of those chapters absolutely to pieces. I know you’re losing faith in me and Max too but God knows one has to rely in the end on one’s own judgment. I could have published four lousy, half- baked books in the last five years and people would have thought I was at least a worthy young man not drinking myself to pieces in the south seas - but I’d be dead as Michael Arlen, Bromfield, Tom Boyd, Callaghan and the others who think they can trick the world with the hurried and the second-rate. These Post stories in the
Post
are at least not any spot on me - they’re honest and if their
form
is stereotyped people know what to expect when they pick up the Post. The novel is another thing - if, after four years, I published the Basil Lee stories as a book I might as well get tickets for Hollywood immediately.