Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography
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14. Hemingway, Selected Letters, p. 657; Quoted in Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin, Ernest Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”: The Making of a Myth (Boston, 1991), p. 12; Gregory Hemingway, Papa (Boston, 1976), p. 103.
In 1941, when Hemingway was competing with the recently dead Fitzgerald, he judged The Last Tycoon more severely and disliked Kathleen as much as Fitzgerald had disliked Maria. As Hemingway told Perkins: “Most of it has a deadness that is unbelievable for Scott. . . . The women were pretty preposterous. Scott had gotten so far away from any knowledge of people that they are very strange. He still had the technique and the romance of doing anything, but all the dust was off the butterfly’s wing” (Selected Letters, p. 527).
15. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 557; Fitzgerald, Letters, pp. 187, 619; Quoted in Mizener, Far Side of Paradise, p. 324.
16. Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon, p. 125; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 451–452. For Thalberg’s life, see Bob Thomas, Thalberg: Life and Legend (Garden City, New York, 1970) and Samuel Marx, Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints (New York, 1975).
17. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 549; Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon, pp. 118, 91, 42.
His friendships with Jews, who were invariably kind to Fitzgerald, altered his preconceived hostility and enabled him to see them as individuals. George Jean Nathan published his first stories in the Smart Set, Carmel Myers introduced him to the Hollywood elite, Gilbert Seldes wrote the most perceptive review of The Great Gatsby, Gertrude Stein generously praised his work, Dorothy Parker was another consistent supporter, Bert Barr (Bertha Weinberg Goldstein) befriended him on the voyage home to his father’s funeral, S. J. Perelman was a witty and stimulating friend in Hollywood, Nathanael West was also an admiring colleague, Budd Schulberg tried to take care of him after his binge in Hanover and Frances Kroll was his devoted secretary.
18. As Ever, Scott Fitz, p. 351; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 561; Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 112.
19. J. F. Powers, “Dealer in Diamonds and Rhinestones,” Commonweal, 42 (August 10, 1945), 408.
20. Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 594; The Time is Ripe: The 1940 Journal of Clifford Odets, Introduction by William Gibson (New York, 1988), p. 293; Fitzgerald, Correspondence, p. 614.
21. Fitzgerald, Letters, p. 144. Sheilah characteristically gives two quite different versions of Scott’s death. In Beloved Infidel (1958), p. 251, which I have followed, she said he was still breathing after he fell down. In The Real Scott Fitzgerald, p. 15, she said he died instantly. Both Edmund Wilson (Letters, p. 328) and Mizener (Far Side of Paradise, p. 335) follow the later, less reliable version.
22. Frank Scully, “F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Rogue’s Gallery (Hollywood, 1943), pp. 268–269. Fitzgerald may have been echoing the teenage Tennyson, who in 1824 “had run weeping into the woods at Somersby and despairingly carved ‘Byron is dead’ into the sandstone” (Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, Oxford, 1980, p. 231).
23. Interview with Fanny Myers Brennan; Letters from the Lost Generation, p. 259; Lee Reese, The Horse on Rodney Square (Wilmington, Delaware, 1977), p. 177; Letter from John Biggs III to Jeffrey Meyers, November 27, 1991.
24. As Ever, Scott Fitz, p. 424; Letters from the Lost Generation, p. 261.
25. Fitzgerald, In His Own Time, p. 472; Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, pp. 327, 337; Wilson, Foreword to Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, n.p.; Edmund Wilson, Foreword to Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, The Great Gatsby and Selected Stories (New York, 1945), p. xi; Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 343.
26. Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 337; Wilson, “Dedication” to The Crack-Up, pp. 8–9; Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 335. See Jeffrey Meyers, “Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson: A Troubled Friendship,” American Scholar, 61 (Summer 1992), 375–388.
27. Stephen Vincent Benét, “Fitzgerald’s Unfinished Symphony,” Saturday Review of Literature, 24 (December 6, 1941), 10; Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics, p. 475; John Updike, Hugging the Shore (New York, 1983), p. 380.
28. See Wilson’s The Crime in the Whistler Room (1924), Lardner’s What Of It? (1925), Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring (1926), Van Vechten’s Parties (1930), Zelda’s Save Me the Waltz (1932), Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again (1941), Schulberg’s The Disenchanted (1950), George Zuckerman’s The Last Flapper (1969), James Aldridge’s One Last Glimpse (1977), Ron Carlson’s Betrayed by Scott Fitzgerald (1977), Kaye McDonough’s Zelda (1978), Tennessee Williams’ Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), Donald Davie’s poem “The Garden Party” and Theodore Roethke’s “Song for the Squeeze-Box.”
29. Quoted in Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 327; Hartnett, Zelda Fitzgerald, p. 185; “Fire in Carolina Mental Hospital Kills 9 Women,” New York Herald Tribune, March 12, 1948.
The catastrophic fire almost ruined Highland. The medical director resigned and was replaced by Dr. Carroll’s adopted daughter Charmian, a nurse who had become a psychiatrist and who served as director until 1963.
30. Brendan Gill, A New York Life (New York, 1990), p. 315; Interview with Meryle Secrest, November 22, 1992; Interview with Eleanor Lanahan, Hempstead, New York, September 26, 1992.
31. Chandler, Selected Letters, p. 239; Toklas, Staying on Alone, p. 171.
Books by Jeffrey Meyers
Biography
A Fever at the Core: The Idealist in Politics
Married to Genius
Katherine Mansfield
The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis
Hemingway
Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle
D. H. Lawrence
Joseph Conrad
Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy
Scott Fitzgerald
Criticism
Fiction and the Colonial Experience
The Wounded Spirit: T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom
A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell
Painting and the Novel
Homosexuality and Literature
D. H. Lawrence and the Experience of Italy
Disease and the Novel
The Spirit of Biography
Bibliography
T. E. Lawrence: A Bibliography
Catalogue of the Library of the Late Siegfried Sassoon
George Orwell: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism
Edited Collections
George Orwell: The Critical Heritage
Hemingway: The Critical Heritage
Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs
Edited Original Essays
Wyndham Lewis by Roy Campbell
Wyndham Lewis: A Revaluation
D. H. Lawrence and Tradition
The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence
The Craft of Literary Biography
The Biographer’s Art
T. E. Lawrence: Soldier, Writer, Legend
Graham Greene: A Revaluation
Copyright
Reprinted with permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company:
Excerpts from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copyright 1920 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Copyright renewed 1948 by Zelda Fitzgerald.
Excerpts from Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copyright 1933, 1934 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Copyright renewed 1961, 1962 by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan.
Excerpts from The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Copyright 1989 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Excerpts from Dear Scott/Dear Max, edited by John Keuhl and Jackson Bryer. Copyright 1971 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Excerpts from The Great Gatsby (Authorized Text) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copyright 1925 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Copyright renewed 1953 by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan. Copyright 1991, 1992 by Eleanor Lanahan, Matthew J. Bruccoli and Samuel J. Lanahan as trustees u/a dated July 3, 1975, created by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith.
Excerpts from The Letters of
F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Andrew Turnbull. Copyright 1963 by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan. Copyright renewal 1991 by Joanne J. Turnbull, Frances L. Turnbull, and Eleanor Lanahan, Matthew J. Bruccoli and Samuel J. Lanahan, Sr., as trustees u/a dated July 3, 1975, created by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1994 by HarperCollins Publishers.
SCOTT FITZGERALD: A BIOGRAPHY. Copyright © 1994 by Jeffrey Meyers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Harper Perennial edition published 2014.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Meyers, Jeffrey.
Scott Fitzgerald: a biography / Jeffrey Meyers.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-019036-1
1. Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896–1940—Biography. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PS3511.I9Z687 1994
813'52—dc20 93-37895
ISBN 978-0-06-231695-0 (pbk.)
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062316967
Version 12062013
14 15 16 17 18 DIX/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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