Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Before May 20, 1937

  Dear Max:

  Thanks for your letter - and the loan. I hope Ober will be able to pay you in a few weeks.

  All serene here and would be content to remain indefinitely save that for short stories a change of scene is better. I have lived in tombs for years it seems to me - a real experience like the first trip to LoudonCounty usually means a story. As soon as I can, I want to travel a little - it’s fine not having Scottie to worry over, love her as I do. I want to meet some new people. (I do constantly but they seem just the old people over again but not so nice.)

  Ever friend,

  Scott

  Thanks for the word about Ernest. Methinks he does protest too much.

  The Garden of Allah Hotel

  Hollywood, California

  Before July 19, 1937

  Dear Max:

  Thanks for your letter - I was just going to write you. Harold has doubtless told you I have a nice salary out here the until I have paid my debts and piled up a little security so that my ‘catastrophe at forty’ won’t be repeated I’m not bragging about it or even talking about it. The money is budgeted by Harold, as someone I believe Charlie Scribner recommended years ago. I’m sorry that the Scribner share will only amount to $2500 or so the first year but that is while I’m paying back Harold who like you is an individual. The second year it will be better.

  There are clauses in the contract which allow certain off-periods but it postpones a book for quite a while.

  Ernest came like a whirlwind, put Ernst Lubitsch the great director in his place by refusing to have his picture prettied up and remade for him à la Hollywood at various cocktail parties. I feel he was in a state of nervous tensity, that there was something almost religious about it. He raised $1000 bills won by Miriam Hopkins fresh from the gaming table, the rumor is $14,000 in one night.

  Everyone is very nice to me, surprised and rather relieved that I don’t drink. I am happier than I’ve been for several years.

  Ever friend,

  Scott

  The Garden of Allah Hotel

  Hollywood, California

  Before August 24, 1937

  Dear Max:

  Have heard every possible version save that Eastman has fled to Shanghai with Pauline t Is Ernest on a bat - what has happened? I’m so damn sorry for him after my late taste of newspaper bastards. But is he just being stupid or are they after him politically? It amounts to either great indiscretion or actual persecution.

  Thanks for my ‘royalty’ report. I scarcely even belong to the gentry in that line. All goes beautifully here. So far Scottie is having the time of her young life, dining with Crawford, Shearer, etc., talking to Fred Astaire and her other heroes. I am very proud of her. And a grand-daughter, Max! Do you feel a hundred?

  Ever friend,

  Scott

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation

  Culver City,

  California

  September 3, 1937

  Dear Max:

  Thanks for your long, full letter. I will guard the secrets as my life.

  I was thoroughly amused by your descriptions, but what transpires is that Ernest did exactly the asinine thing that I knew he had it in him to do when he was out here. The fact that he lost his temper for only a minute does not minimize the fact that he picked the exact wrong minute to do it. His discretion must have been at low ebb or he would not have again trusted the reporters at the boat.

  He is living at present in a world so entirely his own that it is impossible to help him, even if I felt close to him at the moment, which I don’t. I like him so much, though, that I wince when anything happens to him, and I feel rather personally ashamed that it has been possible for imbeciles to dig at him and hurt him. After all, you would think that a man who has arrived at the position of being practically his country’s most eminent writer could be spared that yelping. All goes well - no writing at all except on pictures.

  Ever your friend,

  Scott

  The Schulberg book is in all the windows here.

  TheGarden of Allah

  Hotel Hollywood,

  California

  March 4, 1938

  Dear Max:

  Sorry I saw you for such a brief time while I was in New York and that we had really no time to talk.

  My little binge lasted only three days, and I haven’t had a drop since. There was one other in September, likewise three days. Save for that, I haven’t had a drop since a year ago last January. Isn’t it awful that we reformed alcoholics have to preface everything by explaining exactly how we stand on that question?

  The enclosed letter is to supplement a conversation some time ago. It shows quite definitely how a whole lot of people interpreted Ernest’s crack at me in ‘Snows of K.’ When I called him on it, he promised in a letter that he would not reprint it in book form. Of course, since then, it has been in O’Brien’s collection, but I gather he can’t help that. If, however, you are publishing a collection of his this fall, do keep in mind that he has promised to make an elision of my name. It was a damned rotten thing to do, and with anybody but Ernest my tendency would be to crack back. Why did he think it would add to the strength of his story if I had become such a negligible figure? This is quite indefensible on any grounds.

  No news here. I am writing a new Crawford picture, called Infidelity. Though based on a magazine story, it is practically an original. I like the work and have a better producer than before - Hunt Stromberg - a sort of one-finger Thalberg, without Thal- berg’s scope, but with his intense power of work and his absorption in his job.

  Meanwhile, I am filling a notebook with stuff that will be of more immediate interest to you, but please don’t mention me ever as having any plans. Tender Is the Night hung over too long, and my next venture will be presented to you without preparation or fanfare.

  I am sorry about the Tom Wolfe business. I don’t understand it. I am sorry for him and, in another way, I am sorry for you for I know how fond of him you are.

  I may possibly see you around Easter.

  Best to Louise.

  Ever yours,

  Scott

  All this about ‘The Snows’ is confidential.

  The Garden of Allah Hotel

  Hollywood,

  California

  April 23, 1938

  Dear Max: —

  I got both your letters and appreciate them and their fullness, as I feel very much the Californian at the moment and, consequently, out of touch with New York.

  The Marjorie Rawlings’ book fascinated me I thought it was even better than South Moon Under and I envy her the ease with which she does action scenes, such as the tremendously complicated hunt sequence, which I would have to stake off in advance and which would probably turn out to be a stilted business in the end. Hers just simply flows; the characters keep thinking, talking, feeling and don’t stop, and you think and talk and feel with them.

  As to Ernest, I was fascinated by what you told me about the play, touched that he remembered me in his premonitory last word, and fascinated, as always, by the man’s Byronic intensity. The Los Angeles Times printed a couple of his articles, but none the last three days, and I keep hoping a stray Krupp shell hasn’t knocked off our currently most valuable citizen.

  In the mail yesterday came a letter from that exquisitely tactful co-worker of yours, — . I’ve never had much love for the man since he insisted on selling This Side of Paradise for a dollar fifty, and cost me around five thousand dollars; nor do I love him more when, as it happened the other day, I went into a house and saw someone reading the Modern Library’s Great Modern Short Stories with a poor piece of mine called ‘Act Your Age’ side by side with Conrad’s ‘Youth,’ Ernest’s The Killers’ because — was jealous of a copyright.

  His letter informs me that This Side of Paradise is now out of print. I am not surprised after eighteen years (looking it over, I think it is now one of the funniest books since Dorian Gray in
its utter spuriousness - and then, here and there, I find a page that is very real and living), but I know to the younger generation it is a pretty remote business, reading about the battles that engrossed us then and the things that were startling. To hold them I would have to put in a couple of abortions to give it color (and probably would if I was that age and writing it again). However, I’d like to know what ‘out of print’ means. Does it mean that I can make my own arrangements about it? That is, if any publisher was interested in reprinting it, could I go ahead, or would it immediately become a valuable property to — again?

  I once had an idea of getting Bennet Cerf to publish it in the Modern Library, with a new preface. But also I note in your letter a suggestion of publishing an omnibus book withParadise, Gatsby and Tender. How remote is that idea, and why must we forget it? If I am to be out here two years longer, as seems probable, it certainly isn’t advisable to let my name sink so out of sight as it did between Gatsby and Tender, especially as I now will not be writing even the Saturday Evening Post stories.

  I have again gone back to the idea of expanding the stories about Philippe, the Dark Ages knight, but when I will find time for that, I don’t know, as this amazing business has a way of whizzing you along at a terrific speed and then letting you wait in a dispirited, half-cocked mood when you don’t feel like undertaking anything else, while it makes up its mind. It is a strange conglomeration of a few excellent overtired men making the pictures, and as dismal a crowd of fakes and hacks at the bottom as you can imagine. The consequence is that every other man is a charlatan, nobody trusts anybody else, and an infinite amount of time is wasted from lack of confidence.

  Relations have always been so pleasant, not only with you but with Harold and with Lorimer’s Saturday Evening Post, that even working with the pleasantest people in the industry, Eddie Knopf and Hunt Stromberg, I feel this lack of confidence.

  Hard times weed out many of the incompetents, but they swarm back - Herman Mankiewicz, a ruined man who hasn’t written ten feet of continuity in two years, was finally dropped by Metro, but immediately picked up by Columbia! He is a nice fellow that everybody likes and has been brilliant, but he is being hired because everyone is sorry for his wife - which I think would make him rather an obstacle in the way of making good pictures. Utter toughness toward the helpless, combined with super-sentimentality - Jesus, what a combination!

  I still feel in the dark about Tom Wolfe, rather frightened for him; I cannot quite see him going it alone, but neither can I see your sacrificing yourself in that constant struggle. What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max - Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood. Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy.

  Do let me know about This Side of Paradise.------ — ‘s letter was so subtly disagreeable that I felt he took rather personal pleasure in the book being out of print. It was all about buying up some secondhand copies. You might tell him to do so if he thinks best. I have a copy somewhere, but I’d like a couple of extras.

  Affectionately always,

  Scott

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation

  Culver City,

  California

  September 29, 1938

  Dear Max:

  I feel like writing to you about Tom as to a relation of his, for I know how deeply his death must have touched you, how you were so entwined with his literary career and the affection you had for him. I know no details. Shortly after I got your letter that he was in Seattle, I read in the paper that he was starting East sick. This worried me and it seemed a very forlorn and desolate and grievous experience, yet something which his great vitality would somehow transcend and dominate - and then the end at Baltimore and that great pulsing, vital frame quiet at last. There is a great hush after him - perhaps even more than after the death of Ring who had been moribund so long.

  I would like to know something about the situation. You, as his literary executor, are I suppose oddly enough more in control of his literary destiny than when he was alive. I don’t suppose that his ‘million words’ rounds out his great plan but I am not so sure that that matters because the plan must have been a mutating and progressive thing. The more valuable parts of Tom were the more lyrical parts or, rather, those moments when his lyricism was best combined with his powers of observation - those fine blends such as the trip up the Hudson in Of Time and the River. I am curious to know what his very last stuff was like, whether he had lost his way or perhaps found it again.

  With deepest sympathy for you and his family. Do you think it would do any good to write them a letter, and to whom should I address it?

  Ever, your friend

  Scott

  P.esses: I am more than delighted about Zippy’s boy. Which of your daughters went to Vassar? You speak vaguely of some plan of Ernest’s, but you leave me in the dark. Glad he cut me out of ‘The Snows.’ Thanks for ‘The Captain’s Chair.’ Also for the news about Elizabeth.

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation

  Culver City,

  California

  December 24, 1938

  Dear Max:

  Since the going-out-of-print ofParadise and the success (or is it one?) of The Fifth Column I have come to feel somewhat neglected. Isn’t my reputation being allowed to let slip away? I mean what’s left of it. I am still a figure to many people and the number of times I still see my name in Time and The New Yorker, etc., makes me wonder if it should be allowed to casually disappear - when there are memorial double deckers to such fellows as Farrell and Steinbeck.

  I think something ought to be published this spring. You had a plan for the three novels and I have another plan, of which more hereafter, for another big book; the recession is over for awhile and I have the most natural ambition to see my stuff accessible to another generation. Bennett Cerf obviously isn’t going to move about Tender and it seems to me things like that need a spark from a man’s own publisher. It was not so long ago that Tender was among the dozen best of a bad season and had an offer from the Literary Guild - so I can’t be such a long chance as, say, Callaghan. Either of the two books I speak of might have an awfully good chance to pay their way. A whole generation now has never read This Side of Paradise. (I’ve often thought that if Frank Bunn at Princeton had had a few dozen copies on his stands every September he could have sold them all by Christmas.)

  But I am especially concerned about Tender - that book is not dead. The depth of its appeal exists -I meet people constantly who have the same exclusive attachment to it as others had to Gatsby andParadise, people who identified themselves with Dick Diver. Its great fault is that the true beginning - the young psychiatrist in Switzerland - is tucked away in the middle of the book. If pages 151-212 were taken from their present place and put at the start, the improvement in appeal would be enormous. In fact the mistake was noted and suggested by a dozen reviewers. To shape up the ends of that change would, of course, require changes in half a dozen other pages. And as you suggested, an omnibus book should also have a preface or prefaces - besides my proposed glossary of absurdities and inaccuracies in This Side of Paradise. This last should attract some amused attention. The other idea is this:

  A Big collection of stories leading off with Philippe - entirely rewritten and pulled together into a 30,000-word novelette. The collection could consist of:

  1. — Philippe 2. — Pre-war (Basil and Josephine)

  3. — ‘May Day 4. — The Jazz Age (the dozen or so best jazz stories)

  5. — About a dozen others including ‘Babylon’

  The reason for using Philippe is this: he is to some extent completed in the fourth story (which you have never read) and, in spite of some muddled writing, he is one of the best characters I’ve ever ‘drawn.’ He should be a long book - but whether or not my M-G-M contract is renewed I’m going to free-lance out here another year to lay by some money, and then do my modern novel. So it would be literally years before I got to Philippe again- if ever.

  In my work here I can
find time for such a rewrite of Phillippe as I contemplate - I could finish it by the first of February. The other stories would go into the collection unchanged. Unlike Ernest I wouldn’t want to put in all the stories from all four books but I’d like to add four or five never published before.

  I am desperately keen on both these schemes - I think the novels should come first and, unless there are factors there you haven’t told me about, I think it is a shame to put it off. It would not sell wildly at first but unless you make some gesture of confidence I see my reputation dying on its feet from lack of nourishment. If you could see the cards for my books in the public libraries here in Los Angeles continually in demand even to this day, you would know I have never had wide distribution in some parts of the country. When This Side of Paradise stood first in The Bookman’s Monthly List it didn’t even appear in the score of the Western States.

  You can imagine how distasteful it is to blow my own horn like this but it comes from a deep feeling that something could be done, if it is done at once, about my literary standing - always admitting that I have any at all.

  Ever your friend,

  Scott

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation

  Culver City,

  California

  January 4, 1939

  Dear Max:

  Your letter rather confused me. I had never clearly understood that it was the Modern Library who were considering doing my three books as a giant volume. I thought it was an enterprise of yours. If they show no special enthusiasm about bringing out Tender by itself, I don’t see how they would be interested in doing a giant anyhow. You spoke of it last year as something only the recession kept you from doing.