The Sheila Variations

Happy birthday - to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Happy birthday to F. Scott Fitzgerald who was born today in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota!

Fitzgerald was one of those writers I liked right away, even though I read most of his stuff when I was 15, and was forced to for school. I clicked with his books, for some reason. I credit a lot of that to my 10th grade teacher, Mr. Crothers. His love of The Great Gatsby permeated his lectures, and his enthusiasm inspired the class. I really "got" it. I remember the book as being much much longer - which is so funny. I recently re-read it, and was shocked at how short it really is.

I already had a fascination with flappers (ahem. Obviously.) Not sure where the fascination came from. I think it might have had something to do with seeing Bugsy Malone on TV when I was about 12. Member that movie? Jodie Foster and Scott Baio as little kid gangsters and gangster molls? Driving cars with their feet like the Flintstones? I absolutely loved that movie, and I loved Jodie Foster's spit curls, and her costumes ... I remember, too, in junior high I did a whole paper on the 1920s for history class. I remember including photographs of flappers, and photographs of the cars they had ... I would insert stuff like this through the text:

I knew all about prohibition, I knew the music ... Oh, and I just remembered a couple other reasons why the whole "jazz age" thing fascinated me long before I encountered Fitzgerald: one of my favorite books growing up was Cheaper by the Dozen, hahaha, just thinking about that book makes me laugh. My cousin Susan and I loved that book, and we read it together. We would play with our Fisher Price little people (or "peeps", in the O'Malley lexicon) and we would make them be the Gilbreth family. 12 little kids, and a mother and father. Most of the book was, of course, about the crazy time-saving schemes that Gilbreth would test out on his family (actually, not so crazy - Gilbreth and Henry Ford were real innovators in this area) - making the kids wash dishes, timing them, and then figuring out ways to cut off seconds from the process. The last couple of chapters in the book take place in the 20s, when the older kids are now teenagers, and the whole jazz age flapper scene was starting to kick in. The older girls would have to sneak out of the house to go meet their boyfriends, the father was losing his mind, and the whole thing just sounded so hilarious and exciting to me. Especially the whole fashion part of it ... the skirts getting shorter, the cars pulling up in front of the house with Ivy League guys driving, waiting for the girls ... I loved it.

And lastly - when I was about 11, I remember my parents taking me to see a production of The Boyfriend up at the local university and I was literally swept away by it. The costumes, the music, the craziness ... I loved the charleston. I loved the whole fantasy of that era.

So when Great Gatsby came along, I was ready to just LIVE in the pages of that book.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (or - Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald) was born in St. Paul Minnesota in 1896. He went to Princeton, and afterwards joined the army. Somewhere in here, he sold his first story ... and when he was only 23 years old he wrote and published his first novel: This Side of Paradise. It was a smash hit - and was one of those zeitgeist books: it described the moment in time that everyone was experiencing (or, a certain set of people, let's say that) ... It was one of those books that is eloquent about cultural and social changes AS they are happening. Fitzgerald was immediately seen as the voice of that era, and that generation. The jazz age kicking in. Fitzgerald was the poster child. It didn't hurt that he was so handsome.

People projected their own desires onto him, their ideals for who they wanted to be. He was glamorous, urbane, free of societal conventions ... He lived the life others wanted to live.

And yet, listen to this quote from him: "What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."

That is courage. That kind of honesty. So inspiring to me.

In 1922, he wrote in a letter to Maxwell Perkins at Scribners: "I want to write something new -- something extraordinary and simple & intricately patterned."

Such a young man. Such a broad and deep vision.

Around this time, he married Zelda Sayre.

She was the yin to his yang, she was the perfect partner in crime for that particular decade ... she did not give a damn. She was the Clara Bow for the literary set. She was who they were talking about when they talked about "jazz babies". The original flapper.

Look at their wedding portrait. I just love it.

They had their wedding reception at Chumley's, a former speakeasy and literary hangout at 86 Bedford Street, which is still there. I first met Bill McCabe and Emily Jones at Chumley's. It's the same now as it was then: no signage, nothing to say it's there. You have to know where it is. 86 Bedford, baby! 86 those plates, and let's get the hell out of here.

So Fitzgerald and Zelda married. They lived their relationship in public. They created personae, they acted parts, they showed up at places looking amazing, they relished in their own publicity. They kept massive scrapbooks of their clippings from the gossip pages. They were partners in all of this. Partners in self-promotion and self-absorption.

Here's a page from their scrapbook:

Zelda and Scott were like the Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie of their day. Exhibitionists, putting their own craziness on display, loving and living to shock others, having massive crockery-throwing fights in public, also having clutching make-out sessions in public ... It all was about being famous. But underneath all of that, there was this kindred spirit thing happening. You can't be in love with someone who NEEDS to be famous and not have the same need yourself. Or, you can, but it'll go bust. The two of them were in sync in those first years - it was like they were the same person.

Neither of them was ever the one to say, "Okay. Time for bed now." They were a couple with no brakes.

They would have drinks at the Plaza Hotel, and she would dance on the table. She would leap into fountains, fully dressed. She bucked convention. Just for the hell of it. She was the life of the party (while it lasted). She was wild. Just wild. F. Scott Fitzgerald was inspired by her, she was definitely a muse of some kind. He would read her diaries, he hoarded the letters she wrote to him, he was completely wrapped up in her glow. Zelda is a fascinating (and ultimately tragic) character in her own right. A girl who was completely unprepared to do anything useful in her life - pampered and indulged by her family who thought she was nuts, and also trouble, she basically set her sights on New York. She had the misfortune of marrying a man seen as the bright literary light of his generation - a misfortune because she had literary aspirations as well (uhm, echoes of Courtney Love?). Here is a small sketch she wrote about Montgomery Alabama, where she grew up. It is obvious she can write. Not like her husband, but she can definitely write.

There exists in Montgomery a time and quality that appertains to nowhere else. It began about half past six on an early summer night, with the flicker and sputter of the corner street lights going on, and it lasted until the great incandescent globes were black inside with moths and beetles and the children were called into bed from the dusty streets ... The drug stores are bright at night with the organdie balloons of girls' dresses under the big electric fans. Automobiles stand along the curbs in front of open frame houses at dusk, and sounds of supper being prepared drift through the soft splotches of darkness to the young world that moves every evening out of doors. Telephones ring, and the lacy blackness under the trees disgorges young girls in white and pink, leaping over the squares of warm light toward the tinkling sound with an expectancy that people have only in places where any event is a pleasant one. Nothing seems ever to happen.

There's a nice descriptive romantic quality there. She had talent. Only she had no discipline. None. F. Scott Fitzgerald, while an insane partier, a heavy drinker, a guy who stayed out all night every night, had great discipline. He worked at his craft. He worked hard at writing. He was always writing, and honing, and editing. Maybe he was hungover, but his writing was his JOB. Zelda had none of that. She couldn't focus her energies. She was threatened by his success. She wanted a piece of that pie for herself. She also ended up resenting how he used her and her thoughts and sometimes even her words to become a success.

But ... well, we all know what ended up happening to Zelda. I don't know her diagnosis - but judging from some of her episodes, it had to be pretty bad. This was not a case of clinical depression. It was psychosis. While they lived in Paris, she got it into her head that she needed to be a ballerina. She began to study. She became obsessed. Soon, she was dancing for 6, 7, 8 hours a day. But she was in her early 30s by this point ... way too old to be a prima ballerina. But Zelda didn't care. Apparently, too, she was a terrible dancer. Friends who visited the couple in Paris told stories (in letters, and later, to biographers) of arriving for their visit, and Zelda would greet them at the door in a tutu and ballet shoes. She would dance for them. Awfully. These stories are excruciatingly painful to read. Look at her wedding portrait. Her young wild face, those tiger eyes. It's just sad to think of her end. It really is. It must have been unbearable.

Who knows where the madness came from, or if the wildness of her behavior in her youth (jumping in fountains, etc.) were early warning signs - things people ignored and forgave her for, because she was young and free. Who knows. I read a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald last year and it was heart-wrenching. I actually had a hard time finishing it. She had a deadly fear of fire, she was like a horse in that respect - it terrified her - and how did she die? She died in a fire that broke out in the mental institution - she was on a locked ward, she couldn't get out, and the institution burned to the ground. It must have been shrieking agony. It must have been unspeakable.

But for about 5 or 6 years, the two of them were on top of the world. They had youth in their favor.

The Great Gatsby was published in 1925. Fitzgerald worked his ass off on this book - and was pretty tormented throughout the process. He wrote, and re-wrote, and re-wrote - holding off his editor, Maxwell Perkins, as long as possible. It was a precious book to him, a deeply personal book, and he feared he had not succeeded.

Perkins' long letter back to Fitzgerald, after he finally received the manuscript, gives me chills. I won't print it in its entirety - it's too long - but it's an amazing insight into the book, and also ... into Fitzgerald the Writer. The guy had an innate gift, yes, but he also was this major craftsman.

Here are some excerpts from Perkins' initial letter:

I think you have every kind of right to be proud of this book. It is an extraordinary book, suggestive of all sorts of thoughts and moods. You adopted exactly the right method of telling it, that of employing a narrator who is more of a spectator than an actor: this puts the reader upon a point of observation on a higher level than that on which the characters stand and at a distance that gives perspective. In no other way could your irony have been so immensely effective, nor the reader have been enabled so strongly to feel at times the strangeness of human circumstance in a vast heedless universe. In the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg various readers will see different significances; but their presence gives a superb touch to the whole thing: great unblinking eyes, expressionless, looking down upon the human scene. It's magnificent!

I could go on praising the book and speculating on its various elements, and meanings, but points of criticism are more important now. I think you are right in feeling a certain slight sagging in chapters six and seven, and I don't know how to suggest a remedy. I hardly doubt that you will find one and I am only writing to say that I think it does need something to hold up here to the pace set, and ensuing.

He then goes on to list a couple of pages of specific criticisms. Beautiful to read. It's really just amazing literary analysis is what it is.

One of the criticisms is this:

The other point is also about Gatsby: his career must remain mysterious, of course. But in the end you make it pretty clear that his wealth came through his connection with Wolfstein. You also suggest this much earlier. Now almost all readers numerically are going to be puzzled by his having all this wealth and are going to feel entitled to an explanation. To give a distinct and definite one would be, of course, utterly absurd. It did occur to me though, that you might here and there interpolate some phrases, and possibly incidents, little touches of various kinds, that would suggest that he was in some active way mysteriously engaged. You do have him called on the telephone, but couldn't he be seen once or twice consulting at his parties with people of some sort of mysterious significance, from the political, the gambling, the sporting world, or whatever it mayb be. I know I am floundering, but that fact may help you to see what I mean ... I wish you were here so I could talk about it to you for then I know I could at least make you understand what I mean. What Gatsby did ought never to be definitely imparted, even if it could be. Whether he was an innocent tool in the hands of somebody else, or to what degree he was this, ought not to be explained. But if some sort of business activity of his were simply adumbrated, it would lend further probability to that part of the story.

After a couple more paragraphs, Perkins writes:

The general brilliant quality of the book makes me ashamed to make even these criticisms. The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the impression you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary. The manuscript is full of phrases which make a scene blaze with life. If one enjoyed a rapid railroad journey I would compare the number and vividness of pictures your living words suggest, to the living scenes disclosed in that way. It seems in reading a much shorter book than it is, but it carries the mind through a series of experiences that one would think woudl require a book of three times its length.

The presentation of Tom, his place, Daisy and Jordan, and the unfolding of their characters is unequalled so far as I know. The description of the valley of ashes adjacent to the lovely country, the conversation and the action in Myrtle's apartment, the marvelous catalogue of those who come to Gatsby's house -- these are such things as make a man famous. And all these things, the whole pathetic episode, you have given a place in time and space, for with the help of T.J. Eckleburg and by an occasional glance at the sky, or the sea, or the city, you have imparted a sort of sense of eternity. You once told me you were not a natural writer -- my God! You have plainly mastered the craft, of course; but you needed far more than craftsmanship for this.

Now that's the kind of letter you want from your editor.

The Great Gatsby was not the phenom that This Side of Paradise was. Reviews were mixed. Only posterity would put Gatsby in the canon.

Zelda had her first breakdown in 1930. Fitzgerald's drinking problem went to another level. He was devastated by her illness, and he was devastated by what was obviously a slacking off in his success. It's tough when you become a mega-star at 23. Anything that follows is sure to be a letdown. Fitzgerald needed to support himself, so he started cranking out short stories for the big mags at the time ... stuff that paid the bills but left him feeling empty.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at 44, leaving an unfinished novel The Last Tycoon behind him.

Like I said, last year I re-read The Great Gatsby. It was like running into an old childhood friend. I'll re-post what I wrote about it back then, because it was fresh in my mind, and I was still on a high from the experience.

Happy birthday, Mr. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald ... and thanks for your books.

Re-visiting The Great Gatsby

I just picked up The Great Gatsby again and read it in three days. (It felt much much longer in high school.) I was shocked and moved by how much I had remembered. The huge eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleberg ... I remember the intense class discussion about what those eyes symbolize. The green light at the end of the dock, obviously. And there were parts that I actually remembered word for word, because of how, exactly, Mr. Crothers (my teacher) taught the book.

I remember the huge discussion about the following part of the book:

Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now -- isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once -- but I loved you too."

Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.

"You loved me too?" he repeated.

I remember Mr. Crothers pointing out that section to us, and talking about how that was the snap in Gatsby, that was the dream dying in Gatsby, that was the inner conflict of the entire book encapsulated in two sentences:

Gatsby's eyes opened and closed. "You loved me too?" he repeated.

Fitzgerald does not describe the snap. He does not have to. Fitzgerald does not talk about Gatsby's dream of Daisy, his fantasy of Daisy, at least not in that pivotal moment. All he does, all he does, is tell us that Gatsby's eyes opened and closed. And in that moment, a man's dream dies.

Phenomenal.

I would have missed that, in high school, if Mr. Crothers hadn't dwelt on it so specifically, and it all came back rushing back when I re-read it.

I might say that Mr. Crothers was the best teacher I have ever had. Period. He taught me how to write. Plain and simple. And you know how he taught me? I wrote a paper in his class. I got a D. My first D in my whole life. Panic ensued. Deep depression. Writer's block. I wrote another paper. I got a D+. Next paper: C-. Next paper: I got a straight C. It was a very proud moment. And with every paper, agonizingly, I got better and better and better. Until finally, light broke through, and I was able to construct a damn paper. I wrote consistently A-level papers in college directly because of what Mr. Crothers taught me.

This post is a ramble. Mr. Crothers, if he read this, would be thinking: "Sheila, where's the thesis statement??"

So here it is:

I had forgotten the stature of Fitzgerald's opus. I had forgotten how superb it was. Or: if I remembered it, it was in a taken-for-granted kind of way. Like: "Oh yeah, that's a great book. One of the best books of the 20th century. Whatever." I had forgotten the level of the accomplishment. I had forgotten how moving it is.

Reading it as an adult gave me a whole new perspective on it as well.

When I read it at age 15, I was completely on the side of Nick, the narrator: The relatively innocent and honest bystander, looking on at the decadence of Daisy and Jordan and Gatsby, trying not to judge (like he says on the first page of the book), and trying to come out of the situation unscathed. But by the end of the book, Nick is changed. And so are we, whether we like it or not.

But now, reading it as a grown woman, with a couple of failed love affairs in my rear view mirror, I found myself entering the story through the eyes of Gatsby. I could see myself in parts of him. It KILLED me. I understood Gatsby, suddenly. Carrying a torch for years, infusing everything with significance, poetry, choosing the dream-world over reality.

It is only NOW, after reading it from an adult perspective, that I can truly understand why the book is seen as such an epic human tragedy. An American tragedy.

Now I understand. Now I understand.

Those first pages are so extraordinary, so exquisitely written, they cannot be improved upon.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought -- frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that any intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction -- Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament" -- it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No -- Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Reading that makes me want to put down my pen forever.

So does the last sentence of the book:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Posted by sheila