Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)
Page 443
I’m writing quite a marvelous after-the-war story. Does Mr Bridges think that they’re a little passé or do you think he’d like to see it?
I’ll fix up data for advertising and have a photo taken next week with the most gigantic enjoyment (I’m trying H. G. Wells’ use of vast Garagantuan sp. words).
Well, thank you for a very happy day and numerous other favors and let me know if I’ve any possible chance for earlier publication, and give my thanks or whatever is in order to Mr Scribner or whoever else was on the deciding committee.
Probably be East next month or November.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P.S. Who picks out the cover? I’d like something that could be a set - look cheerful and important like a Shaw book. I notice Shaw, Galsworthy and Barrie do that. But Wells doesn’t - I wonder why. No need of illustrations, is there? I knew a fellow at college who’d have been a wonder for books like mine - a mixture of Aubrey Beardsley, Hogarth and Montgomery Flagg. But he got killed in the war.
Excuse this immoderately long and rambling letter but I think you’ll have to allow me several days for recuperation.
599 Summit Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota
October 25,
1919
Dear Mr Bridges:
This is a query. I have a project. It is a work of about 20,000 words and more on the order of my novel than like these stories I’ve been doing. But it’s the sort of thing that will require a full month’s work and as The New Republic, Scribner’s and possibly the Atlantic Monthly are the only magazines that would publish it I don’t want to start until you assure me that there’s nothing in the project which seems to bar it from Scribner’s if it be sufficiently interesting and well done.
It is a literary forgery purporting to be selections from the notebooks of a man who is a complete literary radical from the time he’s in college thru two years in New York - finally he goes to training camp, gets bored, and enlists as a private. This is the end of the book - a note by me will say that he served in Companies E and G of the Twenty-eighth Infantry and died of appendicitis in Paris in 1918. It will be in turns cynical, ingenuous, life-saturated, critical A few letters not addressed to Max Perkins but bearing on Fitzgerald’s relations with Scribners are included in this group.
and bitter. It will be racy and startling with opinions and personalities. I have a journal I have kept for 3 1/2 years which my book didn’t begin to exhaust, which I don’t seem to be able to draw on for stories but which certainly is, I think, highly amusing. This, thoroughly edited and revised, plus some imagination and 1/2 dozen ingredients I have in mind will be the bulk of it. It would take 2 or possibly 3 parts to publish it The tremendous success of Butler’s Notebooks and of Barbel- lion’s (Wells’?) Disappointed Man makes me think that the public loves to find out the workings of active minds in their personal problems. It will be bound to have that streak of coarseness that both Wells and Butler have but there won’t be any fames Joyce flavor to it.
Of course you can’t possibly commit yourself until you’ve seen it but as I say I’d want to know before I start if a work of that nature would be intrinsically hostile to the policy of Scribner’s Magazine. With apologies for intruding upon your patience once again I am
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
599 Summit Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota circa January 10, 1920
Dear Mr Perkins:
I was delighted to hear from you - and tickled to death that W. E. Hill liked my book and has done the cover. I admire him more than any artist in the country. I can hardly wait to see it I came home in a thoroughly nervous alcoholic state and revised two tales that went the complete rounds of the magazines last April. I did ‘em in four days and sent ‘em to Reynolds in the hopes he could get enough for ‘em so that I could go South, because I’m afraid I’m about to develop tuberculosis. Last Monday he sent me a check for a thousand from the Post for ‘em so I’m leaving for New Orleans tomorrow night. I’ll write you my address when I have one - meanwhile, anything sent here will be forwarded.
Now for several questions. When would a novel have to be finished to have it published serially and then brought out by you for the fall season? Do you think a book on the type of my first one would have any chance of being accepted for serial publication by any magazine? I want to start it but I don’t want to get broke in the middle and start in and have to write short stories again - because I don’t enjoy it and just do it for money. There’s nothing in collections of short stories is there? About how many copies of John O’May were sold?
Everything goes serenely except that I feel written out on this short stuff. I’ve had two vaudeville offers for my current play in Smart Set and I’ve just sent $1000 worth of movies to the Metro people. I have two stories for Mr Bridges, both stuck in the middle, and two Post stories cut off in their first paragraphs.
My Drunkard’sHoliday and Diary of a Literary Failure are also defunct.
The more I think of that advertisement I wrote for my book the more I dislike it. Please don’t use it unless you have it already set up in which case I’ll make a few small changes in proof and it’ll have to go.
I’m deadly curious to see if Hill’s picture looks like the real ‘Rosalind.’ I suppose he did either the boudoir scene or the mellow parting. May be in New York in March if I can get rid of this damn cough. By the way, I liked Maxwell Burt’s ‘Cup of Tea’so well that I wrote him a note about it and got a very pleasant one in return. He’s sort of Richard Harding Davis, only literary instead of journalistic - but he’s the only real romanticist there is. We have the daughters of Henry James - Gerould, Glaspell and the other female psychological hair-splitters and the Yiddish descendants of O. Henry - Fanny and Edna and that’s all - except Burt, so I like him.
As ever,
F. Scott Fitz -
2900 Prytania StreetNew Orleans, Louisiana January 21, 1920
Dear Mr Perkins:
I am returning herewith the first batch of proofs, corrected. There is one change I would like to have you make if you can possibly see your way clear to doing it. It is in regard to the type used in those subheadings throughout the chapters, such as ‘A kiss for Amory’ and ‘Preparatory to the great adventure’ - you know what I mean.
Now I have a very strong instinct about having those in a different sort of type. It may seem a small point but I got the idea originally from the Shaw prefaces and the exact sort of type does make a difference. Those subheadings are intended as commentaries, sort of whimsical commentaries rather more than they are intended as titles, and the correct type would be that sort used in the first two words of the book. The words ‘Amory Blaine’ that begin Chapter one are in exactly the sort of type I mean. I don’t know what you call it but it has capitals slightly bigger than the ones in the present subheadings and the first letter of the important words is slightly bigger.
I should have explained that to you before - you see, I think that this sort of type I mean gives the sort of effect of a marginalia - really doesn’t break it up as much as these small, severe headings you’re using now.
Of course this is my fault but I feel very strongly about it so if it can be done without inconvenience I wish you’d have it fixed up.
As ever, Scott Fitzgerald F S. It looks damn good. Thanks for your letter. O. Henry said this was a story town - but it’s too consciously that - just as a Hugh Walpole character is too consciously a character.
2900 Prytania StreetNew Orleans, Louisiana February 3,
1920
Dear Mr Perkins:
I certainly touched the depths of depression tonight. The action on that book, Madeline, has knocked hell out of my new novel, Darling Heart, which turned completely on the seduction of the girl in the second chapter. I was afraid all along because of Susan Lennox and the agitation against Dreiser but this is the final blow. I don’t know what I’ll d
o now - what in hell is the use of trying to write decent fiction if a bunch of old women refuse to let anyone hear the truth!
I’ve fallen lately under the influence of an author who’s quite changed my point of view. He’s a chestnut to you, no doubt, but I’ve just discovered him - Frank Norris. I think McTeague and Vandover are both excellent. I told you last November that I’d read Salt by his brother Charles and was quite enthusiastic about it. Odd! There are things inParadise that might have been written by Norris - those drunken scenes, for instance - in fact, all the realism. I wish I’d stuck to it throughout! Another of my discoveries is H. L. Mencken who is certainly a factor in present day literature. In fact I’m not so cocksure about things as I was last summer - this fellow Conrad seems to be pretty good after all.
I’ve decided I’d rather not use Nathan’s t name at all in connection with my book and in fact that whole foreword strikes me as being rather weak. Couldn’t one of your advertising men write it?
I’m glad you’re fixing it up about those subtitles. I’m anxiously awaiting the cover.
Those stories I sold the Post will start to appear February 21st. I have ‘Dalyrimple’ and ‘Benediction’ in the current Smart Set and I had a one-act play in the January number which got several vaudeville offers. Read it if you can. It was called ‘Porcelain and Pink’ and it’s excellent. Smart Set, Scribner’s and Post are the only three magazines.
I’m going to break up the start of my novel and sell it as three little character stories to Smart Set. I’ll only get $40.00 a piece but no one else would take them, I don’t think - and besides I want to have Mencken and Nathan hot on my side when my book comes out. As soon as I’ve done that I’m going to do two or three stories for Mr Bridges. If I give up the idea of Darling Heart which I’ve practically decided to do, at least as a serial, and plan not to start my fall novel until June and finish it in August, my idea will be to do 3 stories a month, one for Smart Set, one for Scribner’s, and one for the Post. The latter are now paying me $600.00 which is a frightful inducement since I’m almost sure I’ll get married as soon as my book is out.
Have you any idea of the date yet? And when my short stories will begin to appear?
Faithfully yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P.S. Please forward any mail that may come there for me. I expect to be in New York about the 24th - leave here the 20th.
Westport,Connecticut August 12, 1920
Dear Mr Scribner:
Again I am immensely obliged to you. I should certainly feel much more business-like and less profligate if you would tell your bookkeeper when our reckoning comes this autumn to charge me full interest on the advances you’ve made me.
My new novel, called The Flight of the Rocket,! concerns the life of one Anthony Patch between his 25th and 33d years (1913 — 1921). He is one of those many with the tastes and weaknesses of an artist but with no actual creative inspiration. How he and his beautiful young wife are wrecked on the shoals of dissipation is told in the story. This sounds sordid but it’s really a most sensational book and I hope won’t disappoint the critics who liked my first one. I hope it’ll be in your hands by November 1st.
Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald 38 West 59th StreetNew York City December 31, 1920
Dear Mr Perkins:
The bank this afternoon refused to lend me anything on the security of stock I hold - and I have been pacing the floor for an hour trying to decide what to do. Here, with the novel within two weeks of completion, am I with six hundred dollars’ worth of bills and owing Reynolds $650.00 for an advance on a story that I’m utterly unable to write. I’ve made half a dozen starts yesterday and today and I’ll go mad if I have to do another debutante, which is what they want.
I hoped that at last being square with Scribners I could remain so. But I’m at my wit’s end. Isn’t there some way you could regard this as an advance on the new novel rather than on the Xmas sale which won’t be due me till July? And at the same interest that it costs Scribners to borrow? Or could you make it a month’s loan from Scribner & Co. with my next ten books as security? I need $ 1600.00.
Anxiously,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
6 Pleasant Avenue Montgomery, AlabamaJuly 30, 1921
Dear Mr Perkins:
I have been intending to write you the following letter for some months and I’ve been deterred for many causes - chief among which were the facts that any letter from me on this subject would sound like impertinent and unsolicited criticism and secondly because I have been the recipient of so many favors and courtesies from Scribners that it was scarcely my place to cavil at what I considered ultra-conservatism in their marketing and editorial policies. But in most businesses nowadays a box is set aside for employees’ suggestions and so perhaps even from outside you won’t resent it if I speak what’s on my mind.
What prompted this letter was the clipping on page D which I took from the Tribune. I happen to know that two weeks ago Mooncalf had not reached 50,000 copies and I know also that it has not had nearly the vogue of my book in the libraries as is apparent from The Bookman’s monthly score. Yet my novel so far as I have seen got not one newspaper ad, not one Times or Tribune ad or Chicago ad since six months after publication. And Knopf has forcibly kept Mooncalf in the public eye for twice that long. What notoriety my book has preserved as well as what notoriety it got in the beginning, it got almost unaided. Its ads were small and undistinguished and confined almost entirely to college magazines and to Scribner’s. The only ad from among my nine or ten suggestions that was used (except the ‘novel about flappers written for philosophers’) was ruined by Black’s ‘make it a Fitzgerald Christmas.’ The ads gotten up in the office were small and so scattered as to have no follow-up or reiterative punch. Don’t gather from this that I have the idea that my book was slighted: on the contrary I think Whitney Darrow and Rodgers and everyone who had anything to do with it there gave it much more personal attention than any book they were handling. Nevertheless the following facts remain:
(1) Mooncalf, on its issue, was advertised in Montgomery, Alabama. This Side of Paradise, the it sold fifty or more copies here on Zelda’s reputation, wàs not once advertised. Mooncalf was advertised two months in St Paul. This Side of Paradise appeared in the papers 3 times in ads. It sold itself largely on personal home-town unsolicited notices about me. This was also true to a great extent in Chicago - from the advertising section of the Chicago Daily News which I have on file together with the numbers ofChicago Tribune during the week when my book was heading the list, I discover about eleven ads. It ran 18 weeks as best seller in Chicago. During that time it should have been advertised in 2 papers at least every other week. From my slight experience in advertising I know that much about campaigns. Mooncalf (not to mention Lulu Bett and The Age of Innocence, neither of which had one-tenth the initial publicity of my book and both of which are still selling) has been advertised almost every week for 8 months in Chicago papers and usually in both. Knopf runs almost daily ads for books that he believes in that may not sell 10,000 copies (like Zell for instance) in the Tribune. The greatest selling point my book had, Mencken’s statement quoted on the wrapper (together with an entirely neutral statement from Phelps) was allowed to be forgotten with one exception, one ad. Knopf would be using it still, and keeping the book talked about by means of it. Sinclair Lewis’s remark in the Tribune, ‘In Scott Fitzgerald we have an author who will be the equal of any young European,’ was absolutely unused.
Dellwood White Bear Lake, Minnesota August 25, 1921
Dear Mr Perkins:
Excuse the pencil but I’m feeling rather tired and discouraged with life tonight and I haven’t the energy to use ink - ink, the ineffable destroyer of thought, that fades an emotion into that slatternly thing, a written-down mental excretion. What ill- spelled rot!
About the novel - which after my letters I should think you’d be so bored with you’d wish it had never existed - I
’d like very much if it came out in England simultaneously with America. You have the rights to it, have you not? If you do not intend to place it would you be willing to turn them over to me on the same 10% basis asParadise so I could place it either with Collins or thru Reynolds?
Hope you’re enjoying New Hampshire - you probably are. I’m having a hell of a time because I’ve loafed for 5 months and I want to get to work. Loafing puts me in this particularly obnoxious and abominable gloom. My third novel, if I ever write another, will I am sure be black as death with gloom. I should like to sit down with 1/2 dozen chosen companions and drink myself to death but I am sick alike of life, liquor and literature. If it wasn’t for Zelda I think I’d disappear out of sight for three years. Ship as a sailor or something and get hard - I’m sick of the flabby semi-intellectual softness in which I flounder with my generation.
Scott Fitz
Dellwood White Bear Lake, Minnesota
Before October 7, 1921
Dear Mr Perkins:
I appreciate your courtesy and thoughtfulness in telegraphing me. Zelda received the letter and is awaiting the book with interest. In setting up the book are they including that table ‘By F. Scott Fitzgerald’ with my multitudinous and voluminous notes numbered beneath?
I have not seen one single review for 2 months but here are my prognostications for the fall. I have only read the first of these books.
(1) — Brass by Charles Norris. Worthy, honest, thorough, but fundamentally undistinguished.
(2) — Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos. The book of the autumn.
(3) — Eric Dorn by Ben Hecht. Probably the second best book of the autumn.
(4) — The Beginning of Wisdom by Stephen Vincent Benet. Beautifully written but too disjointed and patternless. Critics will accuse him of my influence but unjustly as his book was written almost simultaneously with mine.