Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (611 page)

- — You
have got to be good.

-
—
Your sense of superiority depends upon the picture of yourself as being good, of being large and generous and all-comprehending, and just and brave and all-forgiving. But if you are not good, if you don’t preserve a sense of comparative values, those qualities turn against you - and your love is a mess and your courage is a slaughter.

TO LAURA GUTHRIE

Hotel Stafford

Baltimore,

Maryland

September
23, 1935

Dear Laura:

The news from the West is pretty terrible -I have seen plenty of people disappointed in love, from old maids who thought they had lost their only chance, to — who tried to kill herself when — threw her over - but I never saw a girl t who
had so much
take it all so hard. She knew from the beginning there would be nothing more, so it could scarcely be classed even as a
disappointment -
merely one of these semi-tragic facts that must be faced. It’s very strange and sad. I have nothing from her except the wire.

For myself all goes well. I woke up on the train after a fine sleep, came to the hotel and went to work with Mrs Owens before noon. We discussed all the ‘ifs’ and will decide nothing before a week. Scottie arrived like a sun goddess at 3 o’clock, all radiant and glowing. We had a happy evening walking and walking the dark streets. The next morning she was invited to visit in the country for the weekend and I continued my picking up of loose ends, first Zelda - she was fine, almost herself, has only one nurse now and has no more intention of doing away with herself. It was wonderful to sit with her head on my shoulder for hours and feel as I always have even now, closer to her than to any other human being. This is not a denial of other emotions - oh, you understand.

I have stopped all connections with M. Barleycorn. The eczema is almost gone but not quite. Baltimore is warm but pleasant. I love it more than I thought - it is so rich with memories - it is nice to look up the street and see the statue of my great uncle and to know Poe is buried here and that many ancestors of mine have walked in the old town by the bay. I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite. And I wouldn’t mind a bit if in a few years Zelda and I could snuggle up to-

gether under a stone in some old graveyard here. That is really a happy thought and not melancholy at all.

Scott

TO JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

Baltimore,

Maryland

Probably Fall, 1935

Dear Joe:

You talked to someone who didn’t like this book - I don’t know who, or why they didn’t. But I could tell in the Stafford Bar that afternoon when you said that it was ‘almost impossible to write a book about an actress’ that you hadn’t read it thru because the actress fades out of it in the first third and is only a catalytic agent.

Sometime will you open it at the middle, perhaps at page 155, and read on for five or ten minutes -? If it were not for my sincere admiration for your judgment I would forego this plea. You were not the only one repelled by the apparent triviality of the opening - I would like this favorite among my books to have another chance in the crystal light of your taste.

Ever yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Page 155-et
seq.

TO JULIAN STREET

Cambridge Arms Apartments 1 East 34th StreetBaltimore,

Maryland

February
24, 1936

Dear Mr Street:

That was an awfully nice letter. Like the other it has made me think that you are indeed a friend even though we have seldom met. There is a third article which completes the trilogy of depression Of course now that things seem a little brighter, or at least the intensity of that despair is fading, I can see that the writing of them was a sort of catharsis but at the time of writing them what I said seemed absolutely real. And may I add that this is no claim to being completely out of the woods except that I would not be inclined to write that way again under the present circumstances. I see, too, that an unfriendly critic might damn the series as the whining of a spoilt baby, but in that case so is most poetry the complaints of the eternally youthful thing that persists in the writer and merely the fact that this is prose separates it from a great many of the mutterings of Shelley, Stephen Crane and Verlaine. I am not comparing this in quality with great poems of lamentation. I am simply saying that it is not essentially different in mood.

Thank you again for your letter. I wish we could meet sometime soon when I have fully emerged from this small abyss.

Ever yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO ARNOLD GINGRICH

The Cambridge
Arms

Baltimore,

Maryland

March
20, 1936

Dear Arnold: In my ‘Ant’ satire phrase

Lebanon School for the Blind
should be changed to

New
JerseySchool for Drug
Addicts.

It will be an easy change to make, easy to find in such a short piece. It seems important because the former seems in poor taste because of war blind, etc.

This is a good issue - fine piece by Ernest, and I enjoyed the Mex divorce. Haven’t got through the issue.

I get letters from all over (mostly from writers) about the ‘Crack-Up’ series: Alec Woollcott, Julian Street, G. B. Stem, Nancy Hoyt, James Boyd, etc., and from old friends, and naturally am rather touched. What the general response is is more questionable but there have been many of those too.

I will have another piece along shortly but I know there’s no hurry and I’m doing a ballet story or trying to for Goldwyn and Miriam Hopkins. Let me know when you want it.

Ever yours,

Scott Fitz

Please don’t forget this change in
‘Ants.’

TO ASA BUSHNELL

The Cambridge Arms

Baltimore,

Maryland

April 27, 1936

Dear Asa:

Is this a crazy idea? Perhaps architects will laugh at it but a recent editorial in an
Alumni
News asked for suggestions. My idea is to have as a building for the library a reproduction of what was torn down to make way for the present library. This part of the library would be above ground, and a series of subterranean galleries covered with glass brick radiating therefrom would house the books.

These galleries would (according to the type of book they carried, scientific, cultural, etc.) shoot in the direction of some convenient hall; for example, the gallery served with scientific books would lead toward the laboratories, that with religious books toward the Chapel reading room, etc.

The idea of a sort of subway, served (as I should envisage it) by electric trucks, and passing a series of alcoves, lit overhead by skylights paralleling the present walks, or by the aforementioned glass brick, is certainly revolutionary. But it would keep the library in the center of the campus. It would solve so many prob-

lems, and without violating any of the strategical plan for future Princeton architectural development.What do you think?

Ever yours,

Scott

TO MRS CLIFTON SPRAGUE

The Cambridge
Artns

Baltimore,

Maryland

June,
1936

Dear Annabel:

It has been a rather terrible day and tomorrow promises to be no better, but after that I’m going to - got to - put Mother out of my mind for a day or so. I’ll summarize what happened.

It was sad taking her from the hotel, the only home she knew for fifteen years, to die - and to go thru her things. The slippers and corset she was married in, Louisa’s dolls in tissue paper, old letters and souvenirs, and collected scrap paper, and diaries that began and got nowhere, all her prides and sorrows and disappointments all come to nothing, and her lugged away like so much useless flesh the world had got thru with -

Mother and I never had anything in common except a relentless stubborn quality, but when I saw all this it turned me inside out realizing how unhappy her temperament made her and how she clung, to the end, to all things that would remind her of moments of snatched happiness. So I couldn’t bear to throw out anything, even that rug, and it all goes to storage......

TO ROBERT R. DUNN

Grove
Park Inn

Asheville,

North Carolina

Probably Summer,
1936

Dear Bob:

This is sheer impulse for no close friend ever passed so completely and abruptly out of my life as you did - except by death. Our whole adult life till now has passed without a single communication, unless I count a few chance encounters with your father fifteen years ago.

Is your mother living? Are you married? Has life been kind or bitter to you? I assume you know something about me from happening on my stuff here and there, but I know nothing about you. I remember a talk with Norma Talmadge (not Nash!) where your name figured, and meeting a fraternity brother of your ‘delegation’ on a bout between Naples and Marseille (name forgotten) - and I sometimes dream of you. In the dream you’re always very snooty and high-hat Life’s too short for you not to answer this. If your mother lives, give her my eternal homage, unqualified by the fact that she was always skeptical of me. She was one of the most fascinating women I ever knew.

Your old friend,

Scott

TO BENNETT CERF

Grove
Park Inn Asheville,  North Carolina

July 23, 1936

Dear Bennett:

Temporarily I am no longer a Baltimorean, so I am afraid we will not be able to talk personally unless you are this far South. From your letter I guess that you are a little cagey about shooting at
Tender Is the
Night at the moment and I have no idea how many of a Modern Library edition of a book is necessary to sell to make it pay its way.

I have an idea that even among your clientele the actual bulk of a book, the weight of it in the hand, has something to do with buyer psychology. That is, that you would do better with, say, Willa Cather’s My Antonia than you would with Lost
lady.
All the first Modern Library books were small. Your tendency toward the giant size shows that you are alive to this psychological trait in the potential buyer.

To that extent you might have luck with
Tender
Is
the
Night. As you may know,
Tender Is the
Night hung around between sixth and twelfth best seller through its publishing season (spring of ‘34) which was a terrible one, while
The Great Gatsby,
which was a light little volume barely touching 50,000 words, was a rank commercial failure and was only on best seller lists its first week during a fine season (the spring of 1925). As a succès d’estime
Gatsby
outshone
This Side of Paradise
and
Beautiful and Damned
but I do not believe its sale to this day, outside your Modem Library edition, has passed 25,000 copies in America. Of course the Continental sales in German, French and Scandinavian have added a great deal to that.

Since actual distribution of Tender Is the Night was small in
spite of
its place on the best-selling list, it might be a much better bet than The
Great Gatsby
and there is always recurrent interest in
This Side of Paradise
(a calling, indeed, by this time).

I would like to have another book on your list, not from vanity (take a bow, Mr Cerf), but simply because I think that two books would be stronger than one in building up a permanent interest among those whose destiny leads them to accept my observation as part of their cosmology. Do let me hear from you.

Ever yours,

Scott

TO JOHN O’HARA

Grove Park Inn

Asheville,

North Carolina

July 25, 1936

Dear John:

Your letter got side-tracked in moving and has just turned up. Possibly I may have answered it before and, if I did, everything I said was true, and if what I say now contradicts everything I said before that is all true too. Before I tell you how to write your new novel let me tell you about affairs here.

There are no affairs here.

We will now turn to your new novel. You quoted in your letter a very cryptic passage from the wonderful advice that I give to people. It sounds exactly like the advice that Ernest and I used to throw back and forth at each other, none of which ever had any effect - the only effect I ever had on Ernest was to get him in a receptive mood and say let’s cut everything that goes before this. Then the pieces got mislaid and he could never find the part that I said to cut out. And so he published it without that and later we agreed that it was a very wise cut. This is not literally true and I don’t want it established as part of the Hemingway legend, but it’s just about as far as one writer can go in helping another. Years later when Ernest was writing Farewell to Arms he was in doubt about the ending and marketed around to half a dozen people for their advice. I worked like hell on the idea and only succeeded in evolving a philosophy in his mind utterly contrary to everything that he thought an ending should be, and it later convinced me that he was right and made me end
Tender Is the
Night on a fade-away instead of a staccato. Didn’t we talk about this once before - I seem to see your large ear in the way of my voice.

There is some element that can as well as not be expressed by the dietician’s word ‘roughage’ or up-stream by which you can judge yourelf as a novelist or as a personality - the fact recently quoted by Middleton Murray that John Keats felt that creative talent is essentially without character, is empiric: the acceptance of disorganization is another matter because it eventually implies a lesion of vitality. I have just written a long letter to an admirer or mourner as to why I do not believe in Psychoanalysis, for the disintegration of that thing, that judgment, the extinction of that light is much more to be dreaded than any material loss.