(6) — If I could think of a wonderful selling title unconnected with jazz I’d use it but I can’t, so we better use a safe one that has a certain appeal. Short story collections are the hardest things on earth to name - to get a title which is at once arresting, inviting, applicable and inclusive, and doesn’t sound like a rehash of the titles of O. Henry, or isn’t an anemic namby-pamby wishy-washy phrase.
(7) — In any case I think it will be wise to undersell the booksellers - a few, I fear from your silence, are going to be stuck with The B. and D. and, though Flappers seems to be still trickling along, there are two bookstores in St Paul that have quite a few left.
(8) — The only possible other title I can think of is The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories. I hate titles like Sideshow and In One Reel and Happy End. They have begun to sound like veils and apologies for bringing out collections at all. Only good short story titles lately are Limbo and Seven Men. I might possibly call my book Nine Humans and Fourteen Dummies if you’d permit such a long title (in this case I’d have to figure out how many humans and how many dummies there are in the collection) - but if you feel awfully strongly against Jazz Age, I insist that it be an arresting title if it spreads over half the front cover. Please let me know at once what you think. I’m sure in any case the stories will be reviewed a great deal, largely because of the Table of Contents. Wire me if necessary.
As ever, Scott Fitzg —
If you are really considering the library, don’t forget The White Mice by Gouverneur Morris.
626 Goodrich Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota
Before May 13, 1922
Dear Mr Bridges:
As Mr Perkins has no doubt told you I was aghast and horrified at that silly anecdote sprung from God knows whither which Burton Rascoe had the ill-taste to reprint in his column. I wrote him an indignant letter about it but I haven’t heard from him.
I can only tell you what I have long suspected - that any strange happening in the new literary generation is at once attributed to me. When we returned from Europe last summer there were legends enough current to supply three biographers.
Needless to say I regret the indignity done to you by the association with your name of such a piece of unwarranted vulgarity - and believe me.
As ever Sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Yacht Club
White Bear Lake,
Minnesota circa August 11, 1922
Dear Mr Perkins:
I’ve labored over these proofs for a week and feel as if I never want to see a short story again. Thanks for the information about Canadian and Australian publishers. You ought to penalize the lighted-match-girl twenty yards.
Now as to ‘Tarquin of Cheapside.’ It first appeared in the Nassau Literary Magazine at Princeton and Katharine Fullerton Gerould reviewing the issue for the Daily Princetonian gave it high praise, called it ‘beautifully written,’ and tickled me with the first public praise my writing has ever had. When Mencken printed it in the Smart Set it drew letters of praise from George O’Neill, the poet, and Zoe Akins. Structurally it is almost perfect and next to ‘The Offshore Pirate’ I like it better than any story I have ever written.
If you insist I will cut it out, though very much against my better judgment and Zelda’s. It was even starred by O’Brien in his yearbook of the short story and mentioned by Blanche Colton Williams in the preface to the last O. Henry memorial collection. Please tell me what you think.
As to another matter, my play, Gabriel’s Trombone is now in the hands of Arthur Hopkins. It is, I think, the best American comedy to date and undoubtedly the best thing I have ever written. Noting that Harper’s are serializing The Intimate Strangers, a play by Booth Tarkington, I wonder if Scribner’s Magazine would be interested in serializing Gabriel’s Trombone - that is, of course, on condition that it is to be produced this fall. Will you let me know about this or shall I write Bridges?
Also, last but not least, I have not yet received a statement from you. I am awfully hard up. I imagine there’s something over $1000 still in my favor. Anyway will you deposit $1000 for me when you receive this letter? If there’s not that much due me will you charge off the rest as advance on Tales of the Jazz Age? After my play is produced I’ll be rich forever and never have to bother you again.
Also let me know about the ‘Tarquin’ matter and about Gabriel’s Trombone.
As ever,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P.S. Thanks for the Fair & Co. check. —
Great Neck,
Long Island
Before November 7, 1923
Dear Max:
I have got myself into a terrible mess. As you know, for the past month I have been coming every day to the city to rehearsals * and then at night writing and making changes on the last act and even on the first two. It’s in shape at last and everybody around the theater who has seen it says it’s a great hit. I put aside the novel three weeks ago and wrote a short story but it was done under such pressure that it shows it and Hovey doesn’t want it. I am so hard pressed now for time trying to write another for him that I’m not even going to the Harvard-Princeton game Saturday. The show opens in Atlantic City a week from Monday.
I went up to the American Play Company yesterday and tried to get some money on the grounds that the show was in rehearsal. They sighed and moaned a little but said firmly that it was against their rules.
I’m at the end of my rope - as the immortal phrase goes. I owe the Scribner Company something over $3500, even after deducting the reprint money from The Beautiful and Damned. I owed them more than that before The B. and D. was published but that was guaranteed by the book being actually in your hands.
Could this be done? Could I assign the first royalty payments on the play to you to be paid until the full amount be cleared up? I meant to pay some of it if there was a margin anyhow on account of the delay in the novel. But this would at least guarantee it.
What I need to extricate myself from the present hole is $650.00 which will carry me to the 15 th when Hovey will have my next story. And the only grounds on which I can ask for this additional is for me to assign you those rights up to the figure outstanding and to include also the interest on the whole amount I owe you.
If I don’t in some way get $650.00 in the bank by Wednesday morning I’ll have to pawn the furniture. Under the assignment of the royalties to you, the full amount would be paid back at between $500.00 and $1100 a week, before January 15th.
I don’t even dare come up there personally but for God’s sake try to fix it.
Yours in Horror,
F. Scott F.
Great Neck,
Long Island
Before April 16, 1924
Dear Max:
A few words more, relative to our conversation this afternoon. While I have every hope and plan of finishing my novel in June, you know how those things often come out, and even if it takes me ten times that long I cannot let it go out unless it has the very best I’m capable of in it, or even, as I feel sometimes, something better than I’m capable of. Much of what I wrote last summer was good but it was so interrupted that it was ragged and, in approaching it from a new angle, I’ve had to discard a lot of it - in one case, 18,000 words (part of which will appear in the Mercury as a short story). It is only in the last four months that I’ve realized how much I’ve, well, almost deteriorated in the three years since I finished The Beautiful and Damned. The last four months of course I’ve worked but in the two years - over two years - before that, I produced exactly one play, half a dozen short stories and three or four articles - an average of about one hundred words a day. If I’d spent this time reading or traveling or doing anything - even staying healthy - it’d be different, but I spent it uselessly, neither in study nor in contemplation but only in drinking and raising hell generally. If I’d written The B. and D. at the rate of one hundred words a day, it would have taken me 4 years, so you c
an imagine the moral effect the whole chasm had on me.
What I’m trying to say is just that I’ll have to ask you to have patience about the book and trust me that at last, or at least for the first time in years, I’m doing the best I can. I’ve gotten in dozens of bad habits that I’m trying to get rid of 1. — Laziness 2. — Referring everything to Zelda - a terrible habit; nothing ought to be referred to anybody until it’s finished 3. — Word consciousness and self-doubt, etc., etc., etc., etc.
I feel I have an enormous power in me now, more than I’ve ever had in a way, but it works so fitfully and with so many bogeys because I’ve talked so much and not lived enough within myself to develop the necessary self-reliance. Also I don’t know anyone who has used up so much personal experience as I have at 27. Copperfield and Pendennnis were written at past 40, while This Side of Paradise was three books and The B. and D. was two. So in my new novel I’m thrown directly on purely creative work - not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere yet radiant world. So I tread slowly and carefully and at times in considerable distress. This book will be a consciously artistic achievement and must depend on that as the first books did not.
If I ever win the right to any leisure again, I will assuredly not waste it as I wasted this past time. Please believe me when I say that now I’m doing the best I can.
Yours ever,
Scott F —
Villa Marie, Valescure StRaphael, France June 18, 1924
Dear Max:
Thanks for your nice long letter. I’m glad that Ring’s had good reviews but I’m sorry both that he’s off the wagon and that the book’s not selling. I had counted on a sale of 15 to 25 thousand right away for it.
Shelley was a God to me once. What a good man he is compared to that colossal egotist Browning! Haven’t you read Ariel yet? For heaven’s sake read it if you like Shelley. It’s one of the best biographies I’ve ever read of anyone and it’s by a Frenchman. I think Harcourt publishes it. And who ‘thinks badly’ of Shelley now!
We are idyllically settled here and the novel is going fine - it ought to be done in a month - though I’m not sure as I’m contemplating another 16,000 words, which would make it about the length ofParadise - not quite enough even then.
I’m glad you liked ‘Absolution.’ As you know it was to have been the prologue of the novel but it interfered with the neatness of the plan. Two Catholics have already protested by letter. Be sure and read The Baby Party’ in Hearst’s and my article in The Woman’s Home Companion.
Tom Boyd wrote me that Bridges had been a dodo about some Y.M.C.A. man - I wrote him that he oughtn’t to fuss with such a silly old man. I hope he hasn’t - you don’t mention him in your letter. I enjoyed Arthur Train’s story in the Post but he made three steals on the first page - one from Shaw (the Arab’s remark about Christianity), one from Stendahl, and one I’ve forgotten. It was most ingeniously worked out - I never could have handled such an intricate plot in a thousand years. War and Peace came - many thanks, and for the inscription too. Don’t forget the clippings. I will have to reduce my tax in September.
As ever, yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P.S. If Struthers Burt comes over here, give me his address.
Villa Marie,
Valescure
St Raphael,
France
circa July 16, 1924
Dear Max:
Is Ring dead? We’ve written him three times and not a word. How about his fall book? I had two suggestions. Either a collection called Mother Goose in Great Neck (or something nonsensical) to include his fairy tales in Hearst’s, some of his maddest syndicate articles, his Forty-niners’ sketch, his Authors League sketch, etc.
- or My Life and Loves (privately printed for subscribers only - on sale at all bookstores). I believe I gave you a tentative list for that but he’d have to eke it out by pointing some new syndicate articles that way. I thought his short story book was great - ‘Alibi Ike,”Some Like ‘em Cold’ and ‘My Roomy’ are as good almost as ‘The Golden Honeymoon.’ Mencken’s review was great. Do send me others. Is it selling?
Would you do me this favor? Call up Harvey Craw, Fifth Ave. - he’s in the book - and ask him if my house is rented. I’m rather curious to know and letters bring me no response. He is the Great Neck agent.
I’m not going to mention my novel to you again until it is on your desk. All goes well. I wish your bookkeeper would send me the August statement even the no copies of my books have been sold. How about Gertrude Stein’s novel? I began War and Peace last night. Do write me a nice long letter.
As ever, Scott
Villa Marie,Valescure StRaphael, France
Before August 27, 1924
Dear Max:
(1) — The novel will be done next week. That doesn’t mean however that it’ll reach America before October 1st as Zelda and I are contemplating a careful revision after a week’s complete rest (2) — The clippings have never arrived.
(3) Seldes has been with me and he thinks For the Grimalkins is a wonderful title for Ring’s book. Also I’ve got great ideas about My Life and Loves which I’ll tell Ring when he comes over in September.
(4) How many copies has his short stories sold?
(5) — Your bookkeeper never did send me my royalty report for August 1st.
(6) — For Christ’s sake, don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.
(7) — I think my novel is about the best American novel ever written. It is rough stuff in places, runs only to about 50,000 words, and I hope you won’t shy at it.
(8) — It’s been a fair summer. I’ve been unhappy but my work hasn’t suffered from it. I am grown at last.
(9) — What books are being talked about? I don’t mean best sellers. Hergesheimer’s novel in the Post seems vile to me.
(10) — I hope you’re reading Gertrude Stein’s novel in the Transatlantic Review.
(11) — Raymond Radiguet’s last book (he is the young man who wrote Le Diable au Corps at sixteen untranslatable) is a great hit here. He wrote it at 18. It’s called Le Bal du Comte d’Orgel and though I’m only half through it I’d get an opinion on it if I were you. It’s cosmopolitan rather than French and my instinct tells me that in a good translation it might make an enormous hit in America, where everyone is yearning for Paris. Do look it up and get at least one opinion on it. The preface is by the dadaist ean Cocteau but the book is not dada at all.
(12) — Did you get hold of Ring’s other books?
(13) — We’re liable to leave here by October 1st so after the 15th of September I wish you’d send everything care of Guaranty Trust Co., Paris.
(14) — Please ask the bookstore, if you have time, to send me Have- lock Ellis’ Dance of Life and charge to my account.
(15) — I asked Struthers Burt to dinner but his baby was sick.
(16) — Be sure and answer every question, Max.
I miss seeing you like the devil.
Scott
Villa Marie, Valescure St Raphael, France
Before October 18, 1942
Dear Max:
The royalty was better than I’d expected. This is to tell you about a young man named Ernest Hemingway, who lives in Paris (an American), writes for the Transatlantic Review and has a brilliant future. Ezra Pound published a collection of his short pieces in Paris, at some place like the Egotist Press. I haven’t it here now but it’s remarkable and I’d look him up right away. He’s the real thing.
My novel goes to you with a long letter within five days. Ring arrives in a week. This is just a hurried scrawl as I’m working like a dog. I thought Stallings’ book was disappointingly rotten. It takes a genius to whine appealingly. Have tried to see Struthers Burt but he’s been on the move. More later.
Scott
P.S. Important. What chance has a smart young Frenchman with an intimate knowledge of French literature in the bookselling business in
New York? Is a clerk paid much and is there any opening for one specializing in French literature? Do tell me as there’s a young friend of mine here just out of the army who is anxious to know.
Sincerely,
Scott
Villa Marie,Valescure StRaphael, France (After Nov. 3d care of American Express Co., Rome, Italy)
October 27, 1924
Dear Max:
Under separate cover I’m sending you my third novel, The Great Gatsby. (I think that at last I’ve done something really my own, but how good ‘my own’ is remains to be seen.)
I should suggest the following contract.
15% up to 50,000
20% after 50,000
The book is only a little over fifty thousand words long but I believe, as you know, that. Whitney Darrow has the wrong psychology about prices (and about what class constitute the book- buying public now that the lowbrows go to the movies) and I’m anxious to charge two dollars for it and have it a full-size book.
Of course I want the binding to be absolutely uniform with my other books - the stamping too - and the jacket we discussed before. This time I don’t want any signed blurbs on the jacket - not Mencken’s or Lewis’ or Howard’s or anyone’s. I’m tired of being the author of This Side ofParadise and I want to start over.
About serialization. I am bound under contract to show it to Hearst’s, but I am asking a prohibitive price, Long t hates me, and it’s not a very serialized book. If they should take it - they won’t - it would put publication in the fall. Otherwise you can publish it in the spring. When Hearst turns it down, I’m going to offer it to Liberty for $15,000 on condition that they’ll publish it in ten weekly installments before April 15 th. If they don’t want it, I shan’t serialize. I am absolutely positive Long won’t want it.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 445
