Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography

by Jeffrey Meyers

  7. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 85; Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 34; Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 44.

  8. Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 205; Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 63; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 15–17.

  9. Quoted in Elizabeth Friskey, “Visiting the Golden Girl,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, 75 (October 8, 1974), 10–11; Letter from Ginevra King Pirie to Arthur Mizener, December 4, 1947, Princeton.

  10. Letter from Ginevra King Pirie to Henry Dan Piper, May 12, 1946, Southern Illinois University; Letters from Ginevra King Pirie to Arthur Mizener, November 7, 1947 and January 14, 1958, Princeton; Telephone conversation with Richard Lehan, February 19, 1992, based on his interviews with Ginevra King Pirie and her sister Marjorie Beldon.

  11. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 34; William Butler Yeats, “The Tower,” Collected Poems, Definitive Edition (New York, 1956), p. 195.

  12. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 184; Fitzgerald, “Basil and Cleopatra,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 59; Letter from Ginevra King Pirie to Henry Dan Piper, May 12, 1946, Southern Illinois University; Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, pp. 120, 9.

  13. Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, p. 171; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 482; The Romantic Egoists: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew Bruccoli, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith and Joan Kerr (New York, 1974), p. 29.

  14. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Handle With Care,” The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York, 1945), p. 76; Edmund Wilson, A Prelude (New York, 1967), p. 148.

  15. Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise; Fitzgerald, Ledger, p. 170; Glenway Wescott, in Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, p. 329.

  Chapter Three: The Army and Zelda

  1. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 55; Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 434, 471; Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower (New York, 1983), p. 61.

  2. Fitzgerald, “Who’s Who—and Why,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 84; Quoted in Living Authors, ed. Stanley Kunitz (New York, 1931), p. 128.

  3. Quoted in Roger Burlingame, Of Making Many Books (New York, 1946), p. 48; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 31.

  4. Letter from Devereux Josephs to Henry Dan Piper, May 1, 1947, Southern Illinois University; Quoted in Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 84; Alonzo Myers, “Lieutenant F. Scott Fitzgerald, United States Army,” Papers on Language and Literature, 1 (Spring 1965), 174, 171.

  5. Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, pp. 85, 70; Quoted in James Drawbell, An Autobiography (New York, 1963), p. 176.

  6. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 24 and Letter from Father Sigourney Fay to Fitzgerald, June 13, 1918, Princeton; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 20.

  7. Letter from Father Sigourney Fay to Fitzgerald, June 6, 1918, Princeton; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 29–30, 33.

  8. Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 394–395. For other sources on Fay, see The Catholic Encyclopedia and Its Makers (New York, 1917), pp. 56–57; the obituary in the Baltimore Catholic Review, January 18, 1919; “Monsignor Fay: In Memoriam,” Catholic University Bulletin (Washington, D.C., 1919), pp. 177–178; Barry, Impressions and Opinions, pp. 219, 245; Monsignor Edward Hawks, William McGarvey and the Open Pulpit (Philadelphia, 1935), pp. 101–102, 110, 117, 128–129, 132, 135, 138, 153, 161–163, 178; William Hayward, The C.S.S.S. [Companions of the Holy Savior]: The Quest and Goal of the Founder, the Right Reverend William McGarvey (Philadelphia, 1940), p. 327; New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967), 5:862; Dictionary of American Catholic Biography (Garden City, New York, 1984), pp. 178–179.

  9. Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace,” Flappers and Philosophers (New York, 1920), pp. 48–49; Robert Edward Francillon, Zelda’s Fortune (Boston, 1874), p. 30; Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz, in The Collected Writings, ed. Matthew Bruccoli, Introduction by Mary Gordon (New York, 1991), p. 9.

  10. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, pp. 170–172; Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1985), p. 64; Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, Montgomery, Alabama, January 15, 1992; Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 94–95.

  11. Quoted in Laura Hearne, “A Summer with F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Esquire, 62 (December 1964), 258; Quoted in Nancy Milford, Zelda (1970; New York, 1974), p. 64.

  12. Quoted in Scott Donaldson, Fool for Love: A Biography of Scott Fitzgerald (1983; New York, 1989), pp. 71, 66.

  13. Fitzgerald, “My Lost City,” The Crack-Up, pp. 24–25.

  14. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 44; Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 196; Quoted in Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 210.

  15. Quoted in Donaldson, Fool for Love, p. 65; Fitzgerald, “My Lost City,” Crack-Up, p. 26.

  16. Donald Ogden Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck!: An Autobiography (New York, 1975), pp. 86–87; Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 153; Dear Scott/Dear Max, p. 21.

  17. Edmund Wilson, “Thoughts on Being Bibliographed” (1944), Classics and Commercials (1950; New York, 1962), p. 110; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 345.

  18. Edmund Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912–1972, ed. Elena Wilson (New York, 1977), pp. 45–46.

  19. Quoted in James Mellow, Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Boston, 1984), p. 82.

  20. Quoted in Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 108; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 50, 53.

  21. Quoted in Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 111; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 559; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 47.

  Chapter Four: This Side of Paradise and Marriage

  1. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, pp. 282, 104; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 30; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 396.

  2. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 138; Letter from Sally Taylor Abeles to Jeffrey Meyers, June 3, 1992.

  3. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, pp. 58, 175; Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, pp. 244–245.

  4. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 79; Franklin P. Adams, “The Conning Tower,” New York Tribune, July 14, 1920, p. 8; Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, pp. 310, 305, 311.

  5. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 49; John Peale Bishop, “The Missing All” (1937), Collected Essays, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York, 1948), p. 76.

  6. Edmund Wilson, “The Literary Spotlight: F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Bookman (New York), 55 (March 1922), 21–22; Quoted in Mizener, Far Side of Paradise, p. 132.

  7. Dear Scott/Dear Max, p. 245; Fitzgerald, “Early Success,” Crack-Up, p. 88.

  8. H. L. Mencken, “Taking Stock,” Smart Set, 67 (March 1922), 139; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 58; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 482.

  9. Quoted in Henry Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 272; John Davies, “Scott Fitzgerald & Princeton,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, 66 (February 8, 1966), 8.

  10. Morley Callaghan, That Summer in Paris (1963; London, 1979), p. 251; Dear Scott/Dear Max, p. 42.

  11. Catherine Drinker Bowen, “Harold Ober, Literary Agent,” Atlantic Monthly, 206 (July 1960), 35, 38; As Ever, Scott Fitz, p. xvi.

  12. Fitzgerald, “Early Success,” Crack-Up, p. 89; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 515.

  13. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned (1922; New York, 1950), p. 19; James Branch Cabell, Between Friends: Letters of James Branch Cabell and Others, ed. Padraic Colum and Margaret Freeman Cabell (New York, 1972), p. 254.

  14. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, p. 88; Fitzgerald, “Princeton,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 79; Fitzgerald, “My Lost City,” Crack-Up, pp. 28–29.

  15. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 479 (her behavior inspired the “Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Maturity Award” in Woody Allen’s Manhattan); Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz, p. 94; Quoted in Ingenue Among the Lions: Letters of Emily Clark to Joseph Hergesheimer, ed. Gerald Langford (Austin, 1965), p. 120; Carl Van Vechten, Letters, ed. Bruce Kellner (New Haven, 1987), p. 96.

  16. Carmel Myers, “Scott and Zelda,” Park East (New York), 2 (May 1951), 18; Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, p. 274; Letter from Zelda Fitzgerald to Henry Dan Piper, n.d., Southern Illinois University.

  17. Quoted in Malcolm Cowley, A Second Flowering (New York, 1973), p. 30.

  18. Drawbell, Autobiography
, p. 173; Quoted in Mizener, Far Side of Paradise, p. 93.

  19. Ernest Hemingway, “Cat in the Rain,” Short Stories (New York, 1938), p. 170; Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, p. 262; Zelda Fitzgerald, “Eulogy on the Flapper,” Collected Writings, p. 391.

  20. Quoted in Milford, Zelda, p. 103; Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, pp. 119–120; Milford, Zelda, p. 107; Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 122; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 351.

  McKaig, with all his perception, ended up as tragically as Zelda. On January 7, 1936, Bishop wrote Wilson that McKaig had become “hopelessly and completely insane. It sounds like paresis. He is unable to receive any communication and only sporadically and uncertainly recognizes visitors” (quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 443).

  21. William Rothenstein, Men and Memories (1913; New York, 1934), 2:164; Quoted in Mizener, Far Side of Paradise, p. 145; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 399; Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, pp. 125–126.

  22. Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 63; Letter from John Dowling to the Vatican, June 3, 1921, Princeton; Fitzgerald, Ledger, p. 175.

  23. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 346; Quoted in Piper, F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. vii.

  24. Zelda Fitzgerald, “The Girl the Prince Liked,” Collected Writings, p. 311; Fitzgerald, Ledger, p. 176 (see also The Great Gatsby, p. 17); Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, The Romantic Egoists, p. 87; Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, p. 10.

  25. Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 244; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 247.

  26. Frances Fitzgerald Lanahan, “Introduction” to Six Tales of the Jazz Age (New York, 1960), p. 5; Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Romantic Egoists, p. 96; Cyril Connolly, Previous Convictions (London, 1963), p. 302; Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, p. 253.

  27. Buttitta, The Lost Summer, p. 31; Quoted in Laura Hearne, “A Summer with Scott Fitzgerald,” p. 258; Fitzgerald, “One Hundred False Starts,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 132.

  28. Letter from Burton Rascoe to George Jean Nathan, April 3, 1920, Princeton; Letter from Charles Norris to Fitzgerald, c. 1921, Princeton.

  29. Fitzgerald’s best stories, in addition to these two, are “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” “The Rich Boy,” “The Swimmers,” “One Trip Abroad” and especially “Babylon Revisited” and “Crazy Sunday.”

  30. Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace,” Flappers and Philosophers, p. 47; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 44–45; Fitzgerald, “The Ice Palace,” Flappers and Philosophers, pp. 58, 65, 60, 68.

  31. Fitzgerald, “May Day,” Short Stories, p. 126; Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” Crack-Up, p. 13.

  32. Jackson Bryer, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception (New York, 1978), pp. 40, 39, 43.

  Chapter Five: The Beautiful and Damned and Great Neck

  1. Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, pp. 423, 296, 62.

  2. Ibid., pp. 212, 204; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 600. Scott took Zelda’s advice about concluding the novel with Anthony’s last speech on the ship, which echoes the title of D. H. Lawrence’s volume of poems Look! We Have Come Through! (1917) and unconvincingly affirms: “It was a hard fight, but I didn’t give up and I came through!”

  3. Zelda Fitzgerald, “Friend Husband’s Latest,” Collected Writings, p. 388; Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, p. 419; Bryer, Critical Reception, pp. 92, 107, 74.

  4. Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, p. 285; Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, pp. 56, 78–79.

  5. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 350; Wilson, “The Literary Spotlight,” p. 22; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 119.

  6. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 111; Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age, pp. ix, vii.

  7. Fitzgerald, “Early Success,” Crack-Up, p. 87; Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 131.

  8. Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Writings, ed. Edward Davidson (Boston, 1956), p. 95; Fitzgerald, Short Stories, pp. 185–186, 188, 212, 204, 209; Fitzgerald, Crack-Up, p. 82. For more on Poe and Fitzgerald, see Appendix I.

  9. John Dos Passos, The Best Times (New York, 1966), p. 129; Interview with Ring Lardner, Jr., New York, March 14, 1992; Lane Yorke, “Zelda: A Worksheet,” Paris Review, 89 (Fall 1983), 219; Fitzgerald, “Ring,” Crack-Up, p. 35.

  10. Ring Lardner, What Of It? (New York, 1925), pp. 18, 59, 118.

  11. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Romantic Egoists, pp. 157, 115.

  12. Ring Lardner, Jr., The Lardners (New York, 1976), pp. 164–165; Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York, 1981), p. 200; Fitzgerald, “Ring,” Crack-Up, pp. 38, 34, 39, 36.

  13. Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, pp. 9, 82–83.

  14. Dos Passos, Best Times, pp. 129–130; P. G. Wodehouse, Yours Plum: The Letters of P. G. Wodehouse, ed. Frances Donaldson (London, 1990), pp. 28–29.

  15. Van Wyck Brooks, Days of the Phoenix (New York, 1957), p. 109; Edmund Wilson, “Imaginary Conversations: Mr. Van Wyck Brooks and Mr. Scott Fitzgerald,” New Republic, 38 (April 30, 1924), 249; Carl Van Vechten, Parties (New York, 1930), p. 78.

  16. W. A. Swanberg, Dreiser (New York, 1965), p. 272; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 138; Quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 272.

  17. Nelson Aldrich, Jr., Old Money (New York, 1988), p. 182. See also Nelson Aldrich, Jr., Tommy Hitchcock: An American Hero (privately printed, 1984). In World War II Tommy became a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and air attaché at the American Embassy in London. He was head of a fighter squadron in Texas, helped develop the Mustang plane and died in a test flight in April 1944. He was posthumously decorated with the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  18. Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 327; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 64; Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby, pp. 6–7; Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, p. 18.

  19. Dear Scott/Dear Max, p. 57; Quoted in William Goldhurst, F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Contemporaries (New York, 1963), p. 88; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Vegetable (1923; New York, 1976), p. 143.

  20. Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 84; Wilson, “A Selection of Bric-à-Brac,” Vanity Fair, 20 (June 1923), 18; Quoted in Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, pp. 187, 189; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” Afternoon of an Author, pp. 93–94.

  21. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 456; Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (New York, 1961), p. 288.

  22. Dear Scott/Dear Max, pp. 69–70; Quoted in Mizener, Far Side of Paradise, p. 134; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 95.

  Chapter Six: Europe and The Great Gatsby

  1. Quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 203; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 317; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 111.

  2. Frances Fitzgerald Smith, “Où Sont Les Soleils d’Antan? Françoise ‘Fijeralde’?” F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest M. Hemingway in Paris, ed. Matthew Bruccoli and C. E. Frazer Clark (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1972), n.p.; Fitzgerald, “How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year,” Afternoon of an Author, p. 105.

  3. Quoted in Honoria Murphy Donnelly with Richard Billings, Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After (New York, 1982), p. 14; Dos Passos, Best Times, p. 152; Interview with Fanny Myers Brennan, Kew Gardens, New York, March 14, 1992.

  4. Quoted in Milford, Zelda, pp. 430–431; Interview with Honoria Murphy Donnelly, Palm Beach, Florida, February 7, 1992.

  5. Quoted in Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 172; Interview with Ellen Barry, Hobe Sound, Florida, February 7, 1992; Calvin Tomkins, Living Well is the Best Revenge (New York, 1972), pp. 125–126.

  While living in Havana in 1939, Hemingway behaved in a remarkably similar fashion: “During his high-spirited fortieth birthday party at Sánchez’s house, Hemingway got completely drunk, threw Thorwald’s clothes out the window and began to break the Baccarat crystal glasses while Tina Sánchez screamed for her butler to lock them up” (Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography, New York, 1985, p. 332).

  6. Quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 269; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 196–197,
398; Quoted in Laura Hearne, “A Summer with Scott Fitzgerald,” p. 209.

  7. Quoted in Tomkins, Living Well is the Best Revenge, p. 128; Fitzgerald, “Handle with Care,” Crack-Up, p. 79; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 447.

  8. Quoted in Tomkins, Living Well is the Best Revenge, p. 120; Wanda Corn, “Identity, Modernism and the American Artist After World War I: Gerald Murphy and Américanisme,” Nationalism in the Visual Arts (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 169.

  9. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 377; Quoted in Milford, Zelda, p. 141; Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz, Collected Writings, p. 86; Quoted in Milford, Zelda, p. 433.

  10. Fitzgerald, “Handle with Care,” Crack-Up, p. 77; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 246; Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 113.

  11. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Romantic Egoists, p. 120; Zelda Fitzgerald, “Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number——,” Crack-Up, pp. 44–45 (this work is attributed to Zelda in Scott’s Ledger); Letter from Scott Fitzgerald to Charles Warren, December 6, 1934, Princeton.

  12. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The High Cost of Macaroni,” Interim (Seattle), 4 (1954), 15; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 349; Myers, “Scott and Zelda,” p. 32; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 160.

  13. Joseph Conrad, Collected Letters. Vol. III, 1903–1907, ed. Frederick Karl and Laurence Davies (Cambridge, England, 1988), pp. 230, 239, 241; D. H. Lawrence, Letters. Volume III: 1916–1921, ed. James Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge, 1984), p. 469; Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 197, 376.

  14. Dear Scott/Dear Max, pp. 82–84.

  15. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 501; Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer,” The Shadow-Line and Two Other Tales, ed. Morton Zabel (New York, 1959), p. 123; Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby, p. 99.

  16. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (New York, 1931), pp. 81, 215; Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby, p. 111; Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 383–384, 329.

  17. Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 378, 499.

  18. Fitzgerald, Great Gatsby, pp. 65, 129–130; Herbert Asbury, “The Noble Experiment of Izzy and Moe,” The Aspirin Age, 1919–1941, ed. Isabel Leighton (New York, 1949), p. 34.