F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby: Thanks, Scott, For Showing Me How Powerful and Poignant the Written Word Can Be

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I wish The Great Gatsby wasn't required reading in so many high school English classes. When you're forced to read a book in school, you're far less likely to love it. When people ask me why I chose to write for a living, the most tangible answer I can come up with is The Great Gatbsy by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book had a profound impact on me. 

Somehow, Gatsby continues to subtly influence my journalism, books, short stories and song lyrics. Gatsby showed me how powerful and poignant the written word can be.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is in my opinion America’s most indigenous and skilled writer. His poignant, powerful and uniquely American prose has no rival, and his themes resonate. They are utterly American. Although all four of his novels are excellent, Gatsby is perfection. It's a book that is both heartbreaking and redeeming. And yes, in many ways it is indeed the definitive American story.

 

I had a girlfriend in my college years who I called Daisy even though that was not her name. And she called me Jay. Yes, we were young, romantic and downright corny. But we were in love. With life, and literature, and each other. Of course, that relationship was destined to hit the rocks. And it did. But it shows you the impact a book and a writer can have on you. And nothing that happened to us was anything close to what happens in the book. After all, I am still alive and last I heard she is, too. 

With all the anger and division right now in this country, and the entire world, with the total lack of kindness or decency or grace, it's important to remember the goodness and greatness this country has produced, especially in our art.

America has produced some of the finest writers who ever lived. Significantly, that includes some amazing writers from the Deep South. You know, those red states that some of us are so mad at right now. 

F. Scott was a Yankee, but he married a woman from the Deep South. Zelda was a debutante, and she was Scott’s real-life Daisy. She rejected him at first, and only married Scott after  his first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published and he became a success. Sadly, she was mentally ill, and it got worse over the years.

Below is an interesting piece from Scott that I had not seen before called A Short Autobiography. It's from the May 25, 1929 issue of New Yorker magazine.

While it isn't an autobiography per se', it is telling and amusing. It's lightly comic, but it's alcohol-soaked and a sad glimpse of what was to become of Scott, who died in the most undignified of ways and places: in an apartment off the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, which has been known to destroy numerous novelists.

It was Dec. 21, 1940. Scott had a fatal heart attack in the apartment of gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. He should have died many years later, and in a much more dignified way. Say, in Paris outside a bistro, or while walking the streets of Greenwich Village in Manhattan. But not in Hollywood.

But that may be the most significant lesson a writer ultimately faces. Unlike in his novels and short stories, where he could choose where the characters lived, loved and died, Fitzgerald had no control over when and how he passed. It just doesn't work that way in real life. 

 

And there's the rub. Real life is something that many of our great writers and artists have tangled with and lost.

 

Personally, I have never had that problem. I embrace life, always have. Not every day is a good day, and I have battled cancer three times. Life can be a son of a bitch. But I have always had a love for life. It's good just to be alive. It's a gift. I really believe this, and most days I live my life that way. 

 

I wish more of our writers and other artists could realize that the beauty and joy in their work can also inhabit their lives, if they let it. I guess that's easier said (or written) than done. 

Regardless, Scott, I extend to you a sincere thank you for inspiring me throughout my life and for your perfect prose.

A Short Autobiography

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

May 17, 1929

(WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO NATHAN)

1913

The four defiant Canadian Club whiskeys at the Susquehanna in Hackensack.

1914

The Great Western Champagne at the Trent House in Trenton and the groggy ride back to Princeton.

1915

The Sparkling Burgundy at Bustanoby’s. The raw whiskey in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, when I got up on a table and sang, “Won’t you come up,” to the cowmen. The Stingers at Tate’s in Seattle listening to Ed Muldoon, “that clever chap.”

1916

The apple brandy nipped at in the locker-room at the White Bear Yacht Club.

1917

A first Burgundy with Monsignor X at the Lafayette. Blackberry brandy and whiskey with Tom at the old Nassau Inn.

1918

The Bourbon smuggled to officers’ rooms by bellboys at the Seelbach in Louisville.

1919

The Sazzarac Cocktails brought up from New Orleans to Montgomery to celebrate an important occasion.

1920

Red wine at Mollat’s. Absinthe cocktails in a hermetically sealed apartment in the Royalton. Corn liquor by moonlight in a deserted aviation field in Alabama.

1921

Leaving our champagne in the Savoy Grill on the Fourth of July when a drunk brought up two obviously Piccadilly ladies. Yellow Chartreuse in the Via Balbini in Rome.

1922

Kaly’s crème de cacao cocktails in St. Paul. My own first and last manufacture of gin.

1923

Oceans of Canadian ale with R. Lardner in Great Neck, Long Island.

1924

Champagne cocktails on the Minnewaska, and apologizing to the old lady we kept awake. Graves Kressman at Villa Marie in Valescure and consequent arguments about British politics with the nursery governess. Porto Blancs at a time of sadness. Mousseux bought by a Frenchman in a garden at twilight. Chambéry Fraise with the Seldes on their honeymoon. The local product ordered on the wise advice of a friendly priest at Orvieto, when we were asking for French wines.

1925

A dry white wine that “won’t travel,” made a little south of Sorrento, that I’ve never been able to trace. Plot coagulating—a sound of hoofs  and bugles. The gorgeous Vin d’Arbois at La Reine Pédauque. Champagne cocktails in the Ritz sweatshop in Paris. Poor wines from Nicolas. Kirsch in a Burgundy inn against the rain with E. Hemingway.

1926

Uninteresting St. Estèphe in a desolate hole called Salies-de-Béarn. Sherry on the beach at La Garoupe. Gerald M.’s grenadine cocktail, the one flaw to make everything perfect in the world’s most perfect house. Beer and weenies with Grace, Charlie, Ruth, and Ben at Antibes before the deluge.

1927

Delicious California “Burgundy-type” wine in one of the Ambassador bungalows in Los Angeles. The beer I made in Delaware that had a dark inescapable sediment. Cases of dim, cut, unsatisfactory whiskey in Delaware.

1928

The Pouilly with Bouillabaisse at Prunier’s in a time of discouragement.

1929

A feeling that all liquor has been drunk and all it can do for one has been experienced, and yet—“Garçon, un Chablis Mouton 1902, et pour commencer, une petite carafe de vin rose. C’est ça—merci.”