University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The literary reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The literary reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Content THE LITERARY REPUTATION OFF. SCOTT FITZGERALD
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of English
University of Southern Callfornia
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Ma.ster of Arts
by
Ralph Lawrence Beckett
January 1953
\
\
E '53 B 39 l,
This thesis, written by
under the guidance of h1.s. ___ Faculty Com.mittee,
and approved by all its members, has been
presented to and accepted by the Council on
Graduate Study and Research in partial fullfill
ment of the requirements for the deg:·ee of
ST
1
1 L O R s
T
·--------------------------- -------· -- .A _._ - - .,. - ------------------
Date ...... J@_~-~ . r. . ...... 9 . 5..3. .... ......... .
Faculty Committee
Chairman
.l
TABLE. OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM •
Statement of the problem.
Importance of the atudy ••
• • • • • • • •
• • • • • • • •
• • • • • • • •
Method of procedure ••••••••••••
II . 1920--1922: THE CRITICS MEET F. SCOTT FITZ-
GERALD.
Critical reviews of Fitzgerald's earliest
PAGE
l
1
2
3
6
published work. • • • • • • • • • • • • 6
Summary of the main critical attitudes
toward Fitzgerald's early published work 31
III . 1923--1926: THE FITZGERALD REPUTATION
MATURES.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Critical reactions toward Fitzgerald's
later published· work and re-evaluations
43
of his earlier work. • • • • • • • • • • 43
Summary of the changes in critical attitude
toward Fitzgerald's maturing work. . . . 65
IV. 1927--1934: A REPUTATION SURPASSES A WRITER 74
Further re-evaluations of Fitzgerald's
earlier work and the critical reception
of Tender il the Night. • • • • • • • • 74
CHAPTER
111
PAGE
Summary of the changes in literary and
social attitudes underlying the decline
of critical interest in Fitzgerald. • • 86
Fitzgerald's place in the general literary
discussions of the period from 1927 to
1934 •••••
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
94
V. 1935--1944: THE YF-ARS OF CRITICAL DECLINE. • 99
The conditions underlying the further
decline of Fitzgerald's literary repu
tation, and the critical reception of
Taps at Reveille • • • • • • • • • • • • 99
Further evaluations of Fitzgerald's place
in American literature, to the time of
his death. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 105
Fitzgerald's period of obscurity
• • • • •
The critical reception of The Last Tycoon,
anu the early evidence of renewed criti-
113
cal interest 1n Fitzgerald ••• 4 • • • 118
Summary of Fitzgerald's years of -,.., .. t1cal
decline.
• • • • • • • • • • •
• or o • •
VI. 1945--1952: THE FITZGERA~D REVIVAL IN A NEW
AGE ••••
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The nature and extent of the revival •
• •
138
141
141
1v
CHAPTER PAGE
The critical response to The Crack-up and
The Stories 2f E• Scott Fitzgerald. • • 151
Critical re-evaluations of Fitzgerald's
place 1n American literature ••
Summary of the main trends of the
• • • •
161
Fitzgerald revival. • • • • • • • • • • 201
VII. SUMMARY OF THE LITERARY REPUTATION OFF.
oCOTT FITZGERALD FROM 1920 TO 1952. • • • 207
BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • 216
CHAPTER I
AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM
Literary critics readily admit the difficulty of
predicting future trends concerning the critical or popu
lar reputation or an author during h1s productive years,
and often, tor many years after h1s death. The critics
were trequently disturbed or puzzled by the writings of F.
Scott Fitzgerald during his two decades as a professional
author. They were 1mcerta1n as to the true merit of his
work, and confused about his proper place 1n the develop
ment or modern American fiction. It was not until after
F1tz,gerald's death in 1940 that several of our leading au
thorities began to describe the author's talent as being of
the highest rank, and to assert that his reputation as a
serious artist was finally secure.
Statement of the problem. It is the purpose of th1s
stuiy to trace the development of the main critical atti
tudes, from 1920 until the present, toward the published
works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. A truly valid evaluation
of the author's literary reputation can be established only
through the consideration of changing critical and popular
opinion 1n relation to his writing; of the attitudes and
tastes of the periods during which it appeared; and or the
2
social and intellectual climate of the times when the cri
tics were • writing.
Importance of the study. Scott Fitzgerald died a
little more than a d9cade ago, and scarcely anyone noticed
his passing, so obscure was his literary reputation. His
stories were virtually unknown to the vast reading public
1n America. With the appearance of 'Ihe Last Tycoon about
a year after the author's deeth, many critics expressed an
almost startled sense of appreciation, and the way was o
pened for a revival of interest in all of his works. A
decade later, The Disenchanted and The Far Side of f~rad1se,
a novel and biography intimately dealing with Fitzgerald's
life, were published, achieving wide popularity and criti
cal approval. Almost at once, all of Fitzgerald's chief
books were put into print again, and they gained an enthu
siastic response from both the public and the critics.
What factors produced the renaissance of critical
activity centering around the personality and writing of
this author? Whence the new appreciation, even though
twenty-five years earlier many critics had attacked the
moral fiber or his characters, the philosophy of his thema
tic materials, and his personality? It 1s hoped that from
a comprehensive survey of the literary criticism on Fitz
gerald an objective and valid estimate of the author's lit-
erary reputation can be formulated, revealing his impor
tance to American literature.
j
Method of procedure. The critical materia s selec
ted for this study were organized into five chapters which
relate to the productive periods of the author's career,
including those works published after his death~ When his
work 1s studied in relation to the changing tenor of the
crit1c1am surrounding it, the chapter divisions seem natur
al and justified. The first period is from 1920 to 1922,
including the short-story collection Tales of the Jazz Age.
Tne second period reaches through 1926 and includes the
short-story volume, All the Sad Young Men. Extendin to
1934, the third period includes the novel Tender Is the
------
N15h~. The fourth period covers the ecade from 1935 to
1944, the time of Fitzgerald's decline in reputation. The
final chapter attempts to trace the causes and progress of
the Fitzgerald revival, and to indicate the basis for re
garding the author as one of the major writers of this cen
tury.
The selection of published criticism posed two prob
lems: first, the question of which sources to include 1n
the study and which to discard; and second, the selection of
pertinent areas of the available essays and articles for
q otation, paraphrase, and analysis. In ans er to the
4
first problem, use has been made of most of the serious
and distinguished sources ot critical material normally
available to the research writer. Generally the early ma
terials consisted of literary reviews in leading periodi
cals and newspapers. Periodicals such as The Bookman, The
Dial, The New Republic, 'lhe Nation, The Freeman, and The
Independent were consistently referred to. The book re
view sections of The New York Times and the New York Herald
- -
Tribune were also used. For the later periods or the study
considerably more distinguished scholarly material was
available in books dealing with American fiction and 1n
other pe1-iod.1cals. Whenever possible, the comments of
scholars and critics whose high status with fellow writers
was well established, were selected. In choosing the im
portant areas of published criticism for 1nclus1~n 1n the
study , those statements were stressed which, en masse,
created a fair sampling of the widest range of critical at
titude toward Fitzgerald. Thus, with the range and extent
of the published critical reaction to this author and h1s
writing determined, the reader should be able to judge for
himself the over-all pattern of F. Scott Fitzgerald's lit
erary reput ation during a period of more than three dec
ades.
Each of the chapters of this stu:ly includes two main
5
sections, and any add1t1onal sections necessary to present
certain special aspects of the author's career. The f1rst
large section presents and discusses the specific react1ons
or the literary critics to the Fitzgerald works published
during the period under consideration. Actual reviews are
quoted and paraphrased. The second main chapter section
1s concerned with the general critical reaction to the au
thor, with no special relevance to any particular work. An
effort has been made to analyze differing att1tu:les and
opinions 1n relation to the changing literary mainstreams
and tastes of the thirty-year period in which Fitzgerald's
work was published.
CHAPTER II
1920--1922: THE CRITICS ET F. SCOTT FITZGE LD
Critical revi ws of Fitzgerald's earliest published
work. Scott Fitzgerald's literary star, flashing and mul
ti-colored though it was, did not suddenly burst over the
publisher's sky to dazzle the critics and reading public.
It appeared on March 26, 1920, with th publication of his
first novel, This Side of Paradise. Whereas some of the
literary critics gave this new novel a second glance and a
few words of praise, several critics cast only a sidelong
glance as they went on reviewing the bigger, more popular,
or more important books of the day. Even though Fitzgerald
became the champion and the representative of his own gen
eration with his new book, This Sida of Paradise was not a
~ -------
yearly best seller, nor was it one of the most popular of
the works of fiction of 1920.
1
By the middle of 1923, how
ever, the book had sold about 50,000 copies, which, at that
1 Irving H. Hart, "The Most Popular Books of Fic
tion Year by Year 1n the Poet- ar Period," The Publisher's
Weekly, 123:364-7, January 28, 1933.
7
time, was a r 1r sale.2
Alfred Kazin3 include in his collection of critical
ssaye on Fitzgerald one of the earliest reviews of This
Side of Paradis • Enti t ed "Parad.1se and Prine ton," the
-------
crit eism was the work o · r Hey ood Broun. Taking a rather
unfavorable view of the novel, Broun attemp ed to enl1ven
his review through th use of mild satire.
'lhere is cert~1n confu on arising from the fat
that 1n spite of the gen rally callow quality of the
author's point of vi w he is intent on putting him
self over as a cynical and searching philosopher. The
resulting strain 1s terrific.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • • the evie er who has been through several seasons
of tales about sub-deb can ot view with anything but
horror the prospect of being tre te to exhaustive
studies of her brot er and cousins.
Broun then admitted that "There are occasional thrusts of
shrewd observation and a few well turned sentencee •••
Fitzgerald has bee hailed as among the most promising of
our own autho 7.'s. • Broun dissented in this latter view,
predicting that Fitzgerald would achieve little progress
2 Arthur M1zener, The Far Side of Paradise (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 195IJ, p;-87. (1zener's'b1ography
was also consulted for the f1rst-edit1on sales figures of
the fo lowing Fitzgerald volumes: Flappers and Philosopner!,
The Beautiful and Damned, Tales of the Jazz Age, The Great
Gatsby, All the Sad Youns en, and Tande_! Is the 1ght.)
3 Alfred Kazin, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The _an and His
ork (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1951),
pp. 50-52, c1 1ng the New York Herald Tribune, April 11,
1920. --
8
until he had learned to simplify his expression. He felt
that Fitzgerald's style was to overburdened with self-con
scious literary "stunts."
H. i. Boynton, who wrote one of the earliest re
views of the novel on April 17, listed This Side 2f Para
dise along with other new novels by young writers which
tt
• •
.heroically e ch w the official hero, the worthy or
all-conquering idol of the discredited past." Boynton
found the book a"• •• young and too clever chronicle," in
which youth" ••• finds himself fairly landed at last in
the blind alley of disillusion ••• in brief, poor Amory is
all dressed up, intellectually and esthetically, with no
place to go." This critic added that he did not share with
Fitz rald h1s vision of' Amory as a "new-ma.de personage,"
on who does not know where he 1s going, but at least, is
on the way.4
A eek later a revie of the book appeared in The
Nation. The reviewer proceeded to cut Fitzgerald's novel
to shreds while he praised the author's gifts for r1t1ng.
Of Fitzgerald he rote:
He 1s still largely ~bsorbed by mere form and mere
mood--the literary pass one of youth ••• He has not
yet reached any thought or perception that is abso
lutely his own. His story is in the deeper sense •••
- 4 H. w. Boynton, HNew American Novels: The Individ-
ual Bobs Up,
11
The ~eekly Revie, 2:392-4, pr11 17, 1920.
9
autob1ograph1oal. Amory Blaine 1s a little monster or
precocity.
Recalling the history or Amory, the reviewer pointed to the
story's end, when Amo~y
••• 1s left standing 1n the road gazing st the spires
of Princeton and saying: "I know myself." He does not.
He has not yet come into any self to know. Neither
has Mr. Fitzgerald. But he 1s on the path or those
who strive. His gifts have an unmistakable amplitude
and much in his book is brave and beautiful.5
Apparently this reviewer objected to Fitzgerald's "precoci
ty," his self-conscious effort to demonstrate h1s intellec
tual maturity by accepting all the problems of the individ
ual in a confusing world and then dealing with them with
only sophomoric vision.
On 1ay 9, ~ ~J-! York Times oarr1ed a review of the
novel which was very positive in its enthusiasm:
As a pi cture of the daily existence of what we call
loosely, "college men," this uook is as nearly perfect
as such a work could be ••• The whole story is d1scon
nected, but loses none of its charm on that account.
It could have been wr:\tten only by an '1rt1st who knows
how to balance h1s values, plus a delightful literary
style .
. . . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Through it all there is the spirit of inngcence 1n
so far as actual wrongdoing 1~ implied •••• o
Although the language of this review is somewhat vague, it
1s evident that the reviewer has been wholly captivated by
p. 240.
5 "Books," '!he Nation, 110:557-8, April 24, 1920.
6 Book review in The New York Times, May 9, 1920,
WWW
10
the novel. The review seems more a gesture or applause
than a cr1tlcal analysis. The critic seemed qu1te willing
to forgive Fitzgerald for any small im~erfections of struc
ture, and Amory for small imperfections of personality and
morality. It will be seen increasingly in later reviews
that even when the revi ewer objects strenuously to many
technical or struct ·~al aspects of Fitzgerald's work, he is
at the same time caught up with the spell of the author's
unfailing stylistic charm~
Three days later, a ~eviewer with the initials
R. V. A. s. (Kazin7 suggests that R. V. A. s. may have been
T. K. Whippl- ... one of Fitzgerald's Princeton fr1erds),
writing 1n .~
1
~ New Republic, called the novel
••• an astonishing and refreshing book ••• At last
the revelation has come. We have the constant young
America occupation--the "petting party"--frankly and
humorously in our literature.
Continuing in his almost wholehearted praise, he wrote that
this book
••• is not dependent for its attraction upon biologi
cal excellence or cinem a badness; it is an amusing and
sometimes disconcertingly realistic investigation of a
sensitive mind growing up in our present-day c1v111za
t1on.
Tiring for an instant of unbounded praise, the critic
turned to the book's faults. He wrote that the work lacked
7 Alfred K azin, .2£• cit ., p . 47.
11
unity and had too many abrupt transitions with disturbing
om1es1ons to be a really solid work. He felt, too, that
Fitzgerald's "musings" about his own life experience should
have been omitted. "The book has its faults, . " he admitted,
"though they 1n general represent virtues in our other nov
els." He claimed that the book was an example of the gen
eral technique of the ''Impressionistic novel" 1n style and
form, and that this experimental approach set the book a
part from the traditional ma1nstream.8
"R. v. A. s." was tolerant of Fitzgerald's youth,
and was symp thetic to the idea of a young mind, part or a
new generation, exploring the realities of its environs.
He admired Fitzgerald's honesty and his sense of satire,
and was willing to forgive hie excesses and his lack of a
d1so1p11ned structure,
Margaret Bailey thought of Fitzgerald's novel as
"A Chronicle of Youth by Youth," 1n her review for The
Bookman, in June. She felt tha1~ the book held special in
terest and importance because" ••• the author sets himself
the task of the social historian, presenting society 1n its
mad reaction to war." Since much of her review merely
traced the story outline~ she apologized, saying that her
8 R. v. A. s., "TQ1s Side of Paradise," The New
Republic, 13:362, May 12, 1920.
_ ..... --· ·
12
review
,, •• fails to ·take into account passages, sometimes
whole chapters of br1i11ant elev rness--those for ex
ample where the autho takes a fling at modern liter
ary movements or satirizes the already Jaded debu
tante. ~ .Little, moreover, dos Mr. Fitzgerald care
for the conventions o form ••• he passes from straight
narrative to letters ·~poems, or dramatic episodes •••
Quite as willful 1s his style. But in all its affecta
tions, its brillia c ••• it so unites with the matter
as to make the book a convincing chronicle of youth.
Taking an a most sentimental view of Fitzgerald's youth,
Miss Bailey wrote "Mr. Fitzgerald gives the impression
of being still ~n the tnick of the fight ••• The dust of
conflict a still in his ey s arrl he does not even see very
clearly."9
This cr1t1c, too, seemed to be most fascinated by
Fitzgerald's feeling for aharp, realistic etching of his
social environment, and hie "brilliant cleverness." When
she described Fitzgerald as setting for himself the task of
"social historian," she was perhaps enlarging the intellec
tual purpose of the novel beyond what Fitzgerald had for
his real purpose. It must be remembered that th~e _novrfl is
--
... . - ~ - - ··-- .. ..
largely autob1.ographical, aIJ.ct -that 1 ts scope 1s, in the
main, l 1mi_ "tted-... -t-e- .. croI1ege 1 ife and manners. Its inte l lec-
-·- -· ---· ---
- · --
····· -~ · -· · tual concerns revolve around that variety of problem stimu-
lated in young minds through campus discussions.
9 Margaret Enerson Bailey, " Chronicle of Youth by
Youth," The Bookman, 51:471-2, June, 1920.
13
The June issue of Booklist recommended This Side or
-
Paradise as one of the "Best New Books," expertly summing
up the basic idea of the novel in these words:
Amory Blaine, the hero, is a composite photograph of
many young Americans who live the unhampered life al
lowed by plenty of money, fertile imagination, and free
dom from parental discipline.10
The reviewer found more here than a single individual, sug
gesting that Amory Blaine might stand as the basis for a
study of a social type, or possibly a satire of it.
Commenting on certain of the novel's disturbing rev
elations of the social scene, the reviewer for The Indepen
dent wrote in July that" ••• this first novel, written by
a very recent Princeton graduate and dealing largely with
Princeton men, has not been enthusiastically received by
the university." The critic then reminded his readers that
there had been some objection to Fitzgerald's line in the
book which called Princeton "the pleasantest country club
1n America." Predicting still further reaction to the
book, the reviewer wrote, "The book is well written and its
picture of modern youth is so obviously founded on solid
fact that Victorian mamas are likely to be quite upset by
it." Return1n5 to the merits of the book itself, this
10 'A Guide to the Best New Bc,oks," Booklist,
16:312, June, 1920.
14
writer relt that in the last part of the story (this would
·-
include the many verbose digressions and Amory's final
sense or victory in his struggle for maturity) Fitzgerald
proceeded into such deep waters that he soon went over his
head.11
The acceptance of This Side of Paradise by Scrib
ner's, along with the quick commercial success of the book,
proved to be the key which admitted Fitzgerald to a profes
sional career 1n the field of magazine short fiction. Ar
thur Mizener
1
2 described Fitzgerald's meteoric rise to com
mercial success through the Paul Reynolds literary agency,
where the young Harold Ober sold his stories to such maga
zines as Smart Set, Metropolitan, Ihe Saturday Evenin&
Post, Collier's, and Vanity Fair, for very high prices.
Fitzgerald wrote steadily during this early period
and sold almost everything he wrote. He collected what he
considered to be the best of these 1920 short stories for
his new Scribner's book, Flappers and Philosophers, which
was published early that fall. All of the stories 1n the
book had appeared earlier that year in the leading maga
zines. Nevertheless, this first short-story collection
11 "Here Are Books--and Books," The Independent,
103:53-4, July 10, 1920.
12 Arthur M1zener, ~• cit., pp. 92-6.
15
sold about 12,000 copies.
The literary critics scarcely gave passing notice
to Flapp§rs and Philosophers at that time, possibly be
cause many of them felt that the book represented only a
"slick," commercial achievement in the popular mood of the
day, rather than a work of serious artistic pretensions.
"We were among the first to welcome the richness,
the verve, the promise of. • .1111s Side of Paradise, u wrote
the critic for The Nation in reviewing the new book. He
went on to criticize Fitzgerald's lack of grammar in the
volume, excusing this defect with an epigram, "An illiter
ate genius can afford such luxuries." The critic found an
"ugly hardness" in such stories as "The Cut Glass Bowl."
'!his hardness was neither
• ~ascetic nor cynical. It is merely harsh and
flippant. What has happened to Mr . Fitzgerald? In
stead of w 1ng1ng his art ••• free of all dross, he
proceeded to cultiv·ate it and to sell it to the Satur
day Evening Post. Why write good books? You •••
have to sell something like five thousand copies to
earn the price of one story. S1c transit glor1a
art1a.13
This review was one of the earliest of several which at
tac eel F1tzge ald's artistic integrity because he had de
cided to earn a substantial living using his writing talent
to meet the editorial needs of the better popular maga-
13 "Books," The Nation, 111: 330, Septem ber 18,
1920.
16
z1nes.
In October Booklist commented briefly on Flappers
and Philosophers:
A short story treat for the friends of This Side of
Paradise. The best stories are or youth, clever,
witty! with interesting plots and amazing young charac
ters. 4
'!his was the type of review designed to popularize and to
sell a book. If Fitzgerald's magazine publishers could
have written a single short statement on why they offered
his stories to the public, the above comment might have
expressed their view admirably.
The Outlook's review of the book made reference to
••• the author of the astonishing "This Side of Para
dise." We use the word "astonishing" literally, for
Mr. Fitzgerald has an impish joy in shocking and sur
prising his readers. These stories have clever situa
tions.IS
Other than making frequent references to Fitzgerald's clev
erness, his wittiness, and his great popularity in repre
senting the younger set, the reviews of Flappers and Phil
osophers said little of importance about the book.
Lees than a year after the appearance of This Side of
Paradise, F zgerald was at work on his second novel. He
had sold the serial rights to Metropolitan Magazine, and
14 "Fiction," Bookl1at, 17:31, October, 1920.
15 "The New Books," The Outlook, . 126:238, October 6,
1920.
17
The Beautiful and Damned began its appearance there before
------- -----
its publ1cat1on 1n book form on March 3, 1922. Although
this second novel sold only about 40,000 copies in book
form, it should be remembered that many thousands read the
story in Metropolitan Magazine. It should be noted, too,
that according to the August publication of "'fue Bookman's
Monthly Score," a popularity rating for new books compiled
by Frank P. Stockbridge j.n coopers tion w1 th the American
Library Association, The Beautiful and pamned appeared for
the first time, and 1n position number eight, for the month
of June. John Dos Passos had Just dropped off the 11st of
ten, and Fitzgerald had taken his place, representing, ac
cording to Mr. Stockbridge, the "ultra-modern 'young set.'"
In July The Beautiful and Damned disappeared from the list
of ten, not to return again in future monthsel6
Despite this evidence of the temporary popularity
of The Beautiful and Damned, the novel was not one of the
most popular books of fiction for 1922, nor for the entire
decade, according to statistical summaries based upon the
reports of bookaellers.17
FJimund Wilson's unsigned essay on Fitzgerald in the
16 Frank P. Stockbridge, "The Bookman's Month..i.y
Sco1"e~" . The Bookman, 55:651, August, 1922.
-
17 Irving H. Hart, .Q.E• cit.
18
March issue of The Bookman was an early attempt at evalua
ting Fitzgerald's literary personality. Wilson wrote that
This Side or Paradise was consciously imitative or Compton
Mackenzie's Sinister Street, which, Wilson felt, was "a
bad model." He wrote further that This Side of Paradise
-
was filled with glaring faults and deficiencies.
Tnis Side of Paradise 1s really not about anything:
intellectually 1t amounts to little more than ages
ture--a gesture of indefinite revolt ••• it is always
Just verging on the ludicrous. And, finally, it is
one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever pub
lished. It is not only full of bogus ideas and faked
literary references but it is full of English words
misused with the most reckless abandon.
Feeling, perhaps, that he had been a little too harsh with
Fitzgerald, Wilson quickly found something good to say
about the first novel •
• • • its gaiety and color and movement gave it a dis
tinction for a literary criticism long accustomed to
heaviness, dinginess, and banality in serious American
novels.18
After writing This Sid~ of Paradise, continued Wil
son, Fitzgerald became acquainted with another s~hool of
writing:
••• the 1ron1cal-pess1mist1c. In college he supposed
that the thing to do was to write autobiographical
novels ••• since his advent into the literary world,
he has discovered ••• another §enre: the kind which
makes much of the tragedy and 'meaninglessness of
life."
18 "The Literary Spotlight, VI: F. Scott Fitzger
ald," The Bookman, 55:22, March, 1922.
19
F.arl1er, Fitzgerald had sought an illusive meaning in life,
while now (1922) he was seeking a tragedy of meaningless
ness. He accomplished this latter aim, according to Wil
son, with The Beautiful and Damned. Th1s novel showed the
solid institutions of 11fe, finance, the army, and busi
ness, as being without any dignity or real meaning. "Carpe
d1em" was the theme of life offered, and this was the logi
cal battle cry of a sensitive young soul in a chaotic
world. Concluding his essay, Wilson wrote:
It may be we must not expect too much intellectual
balance of young men who write books 1n ••• 1921:
We must remember that their environment and their chief
source of stimulation have been the wars, the commerce,
and the society of the Age of Confusion itself.19
Dr. Henry Seidel Canby, one of the chief literary
critics of this century, wrote a review of The Beautiful
and Damned on March 4, 1922, in which he described Fitz
gerald's literary talent in terms of solid praise. Canby
wrote with such genuine sympathy and with such a whole un
derstanding of Fitzgerald's purpose, that his review has
been quoted from at length.
Scott Fitzgerald, rather surprisingly, has written a
tragedy, an almost uncompromising tragedy, which is
more than the critics have led us to expect from one
of the younge~ generation. He has felt the implica
tions of a rudder ess society steering rapidly from
nowhere and has followed them down the rapids to final
20
c tas t r ophe • •• I a mire him for it, and f Th1s ide
Qf arad i se showed 1n c rtain passages and 1n the ea
sential energy of the whole that he had glimpses of a
genius f or sheer writing, this book proves that he has
the art ist's consciAnce and enough intellect to learn
how to contro
1
the life that fascinates him.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
H e has chosen to wallow 1n naturalism ••• The scenes
of debauchery •• will be very much censured by some
on m oral grounds, by others (more Justly, I think) on
arti stic ••• The Beautiful and Damned is not so much a
novel as n 1rrespons1ble ·social document.
Canby downgraded the novel because of Fitzgerald's many ex
cesses and irrelevancies, but nevertheless, he found solid
evidence of" ••• great and growing artistic power. o
finer· study of the relationships between boy husband and
gir l wife has been given us in erican f1ct1on."20
Canby'e prediction of the effect of Fitzgerald's
second novel on other critics was almost prophetic . He
pointed out clearly the valid obJecttons others might make
t o the book, but still he cast his vote fo~ it because of
t he evidence he found of Fitzgerald's "great and growing
art i stic power." Quite possibly Canby, along with others,
admired Fi zgerald's creative power more than he ad.mired the
structure or theme of the novel itself.
Louise M. Field, in her review of The Beautiful and
Damned the next day in e Ne\=: York ime s, rote:
--
- -------
20 Henry Seidel Canby, "The Flapp r's Tragedy," The
Literary Rev1e, 2:463, March 4, 1922.
21
••• its slow-moving narrative is t~e
utterl y worthless and utterly futile.
book's many characters ••• ever rises
ordir1ary decent · numani ty.
record of lives
Not one of the
to the level of
So far as its style is concerned, much of the
novel is well written, and Anthony's ••• gradual de
generation into a bleak and sordid wreck is conv1n
c1n ly depicted.
It 1s to be hoped that Mr. Fitzgerald, who pos
sesses a genuine, undeniable talent, will some day
acquire a less one-sided understanding.
This criti c felt that Fitzgerald was guilty of a" •••
pseudo-realism which results from shutting one's eyes to
all that is good in human nature.
• •
u21
Taking a slightly different perspective, and dis
cussing Fitzgerald as a novelist with poetic capabilities
of style, Carl Van Doren wrote of The Beautiful and
Damned in The Nation :
If it w a s haste and insolence which hurt This
Paradise, what hurts r nie Beautiful and Damned
liberate ser1ousness--or rat er a seriousness
liberated quite enough ••••
Side of
------ -
is de-
not de-
Van Doren felt that Fitzgerald was truly insp1~ed only when
his "beautiful and damned,-: characters were at the peak of
their beauty and their health. He suggested that Fitzger
ald lost interest in his charactets as they went downhill
into moral chaos.
21 Louise M . Field, book review in The ~~w York
Times, M arch 5, 1922, p. 16.
22
Few current writers can represent young love 1n its
incandescence as he can, but his knowledge--so far as
this novel goes to show--does not extend. with the same
accuracy to the seedy side of life ••• he has, without
adding much to the body of his style, sacr1ficed--or
lost--some of the poetry which illuminated the earlier
narrative . •• Why did he have to mix good poetry with
indifferent moral1sm? Moralists are plenty but good
poets few. It 1s encouraging, however, to see signs
or increasing power 1n his work.22
Reviewing the novel a few days later for The Dial,
Vivian Shaw felt that Fitzgerald had offered nothing to the
intellectual of his day which was new, and that the author
had not sufficient maturity to handle a really serious
theme. "To his contemporaries," Shaw wrote, "interested
only in ourselves and wit, his revelations are of quite
secondary importance.
• • •
"
Shaw went on to note a change
1n Fitzgerald's literary growth, a change which did not in
clude his" ••• increasingly detailed naturalism ••• The
new thing is his overburden of sentiment, and his really
alarming seriousness." Sl1aw suggested t hat Fitzgerald's
sentiment was offered with a measure of skepticism, which
was "the real nature of t he a ut hor's noted irony." The
critic t hen pointed to a weakness 1n Fitzgerald 's charac
terization, saying that the author first made Gloria a wom an of real promise by giving he r a s oul, but that he then
22 Carl Van Doren, "The Roving Critic," The Nation,
114:318, March 15, 1922.
23
retreat ed rrom t he task or handling th1s depth of character
by making Glor ia into a flapper. Shaw, along with several
other cri t ics, objected to Fitzgerald's interpolated inter-
ludes , w h1 .ch r eveal ed ". •
and effe ct. • • • "
.a carelessr1ess about structure
Unwill i ng t o let hie disapproving view of the novel
stand as such, Shaw alm ost grudgingly relented, claiming
that the book was important because 1t offered a"• •• def
i ni te Ame r i can milieu and because it has pretensions as a
work of ar t .
11
23
H. W . Boynton, who had found almost nothing to recom
mend about This Side of Paradise, adjusted his opinion of
Fitzgerald upward i n several directions with his April 22
review of The Beaut i f ul and Damned. He found the novel
ti
• •
.a notable fabl e of current life." He wrote that the
book" •• • 1a a real story, but a story greatly damaged by
wit. The narrative i s infe s ted with brilliant passages,
striking descriptions .
• • •
"
Boynton felt that Fitzger-
ald had sacrificed hi s characters as individuals by holding
them w1th1n a type. Ant hony and Gloria were, however,
ff
• •
.true enough to prevalent types. And the parable ends
with a glorious ironical punch." In summing up , this critic
L •-------
2
3 Viv an Shaw, "Book Reviews,tt The Dial, 72:410,
412, April, 1922.
24
could not
••• make much of this as pure novel, certainly not as
either realism or romanticism ••• I think Mr. Fitzger
ald has the gift, if he has the patience to sort it
out from minor gifts and to give it a chance.
It is interesting to note that in the next paragraph of hie
column, Boynton went on to describe a similar novel, The
Fair Rewards, by Thomas Beer, as" • •
ter story.
02
4
• a considerably bet-
A few days later in her review of Fitzgerald's novel
for The Freeman, Mary M. Colum wrote that the book was tru
ly an achievement for so young a writer. She summed up
Fitzgerald's place as a novelist with concise c sr1ty:
In Mr. Fitzgerald's book, the American novel has at
tained quite a notable expression of the highly intel
ligent commonplace ••• with him there has stepped into
the rank of young novelists a satirist; so rare an
apparition in this ••• country, that .he ought to be •••
given any treatment whatever that will insure his free
development.
This critic, too, objected to the author's character draw
ing as being .. somewhat amateurish." She also objected to
Fitzgerald's several excesses. His characters too often
expressed opinions which were u ••• quite unrelated to
their characters."25
24 H. W. Boynton, "Flashlight and Flame," The Inde
pendent and Weekly Review, 108:397, April 22, 1922.
25 Mary M. Colum, "Books," The Freeman, 5:162-4,
April 26, 1922.
25
Miss Colum's description of Fitzgerald as a ne sat
irist in American literature was a departure from what the
other critics were saying . While some writers found in
Fitzgerald's style scattered ev1 ences of satire, a, for
example, 1n his descriptions of the pathology o whol
groups of drifting idlers within the wealthy class, none of
the other leading critics thou ht of Fitzgerald as being
chiefly a satir s. Al hough the author revealed a strong
ly negative critical spirit toward. American institutions,
which is at least the beginning of satire, it could bear
gued that since his writing as not motivated by a desire
to inspire reform, his work was not true satire.
Robert Littell, in his review of the novel the next
month in The New Republic, rote that this story
11
••• may
have a contemporary ring and contemporary furniture, but
his story is an old one ••• It is the familiar one of char
acters eroded by idleness, and love by time." Oommen ing
on Fitzgerald's cleverness and sensitivity, this critic
spoke of " ••• a real sincerity and vigor of mind •• • A
mind knowing both bittern as and triumph and keenly enjoy
ing both." Moving to the core of Fitzgerald's cr1aracter1-
zat1on, Littell described Anthony and Gloria as being
••• like sand ••• [i:heyJ cling to nothing, but are
forever sh1ft1ng ••• They try to obey Nietzsche's
1nJunct1on to live dangerously, but succeed only in
living disasterously .
26
This reviewer felt that the characterization of nthony was
not three imensional, and he sa this same fuzziness of
focus as the character of Gloria developed.26
Burton Rascoe discussed The Beautiful and Damned a
Mr
few days later 1n The Bookman, writing a balanced opinion
that attacked Fitzgerald's subject matter and organization
of ma rial but praised his narra 1ve talent. The trouble
with the book, he felt, " ••• is not that 1t 1s racy,
shocking, or ill-mannered, but that it is a blubberingly
sentimental ork. It amounts almost to temperance
tract." Rascoe suggested that Fitzgerald's attitude illus
trated the old clich , "rum, the curse of the age. u He
further attacked Fitzgerald for" ••• being not only a nov
elist but at the same time an amateur philosopher, sociol
ogist, and theologian.u Turning to the style of the book,
this crl tic objected to Fitzgerald
1
s frequent ". • • col
lapse ••• into the banal and commonplace." This fault ex
isted because the author had refused'' ••• the refining
procesa of self-criticism and ••• the clarification of a
plan."
Having almost convinced himself, as ell as his rea
ders, that this novel was not orthy of the time spent in
2
6 Rober Littell, "The Beau ti ul and Damned," The
Republic, 30:348 May 17, 1922.
27
reading it, Rascoe put aside his acrid style of attack to
praise Fitzgerald for certain outstanding qualities, in
cluding his "happy verve,. and his "prom1s1ng narrative tal
ent." His concluding remark was that Fitzgerald. was too
" • •• richly endowed with ability not to turn that ab111ty
to permanent account.u27
Rascoe'e review had much of the tone of an affec
tionate mother scolding her little boy vigorously but then
assuring him that he was still a good boy 1n spite of all
his badness .
Th~ Literary Digest published a late review of the
novel 1n July, praising Fitzgerald's taleni~s, but finding
fault with his subject and theme. A clue to the book's
early popularity is found 1n the opening statement, "M· oral
degeneration 1s depicted ••• by one of our moat popular
young novelists , Scott Fitzgerald, in a much read book."
This critic felt somewhat disgusted that the people in the
story were worthless failures, unable to adjust to life.
This was the main point of attack.
Our young people are not like Anthony and Gloria •••
As a strain in the national makeup nothing could be
more negligible ••• Tney are worth noting, but a little
of them goes a long way. If Mr. Fitzgerald has not
other material to draw from, his skill as a writer
will hard.ly prove enough.
-------: -
27 Burton Rascoe, "Novels From the Younger Men,"
The Bookman, 55:305, May 22, 1922.
;
28
The odd mixture of strong revulsion combined with strong
attraction 1s as evident in this revie as in some of the
earlier ones. "No one can read very far into The Beautiful
and Damned without realizing that here is a born riter • • •
he has the creative power ••• the novel has the quality
of inevitability. It is a tragedy."28
With his popular reputation by now established,
Fitzgerald was eager to publish his fourth book, a volume
of short stories. For this project he collected everything
he had written since Flappers and Philosophers, and he in
cluded some stories he had rejected for his first collec
tion . Scribner's published Tales of the Jazz As~ in Sep
tember, 1922. The book did slightly better than his first
story collection, selling about 13,000 copies during the
f irst year. As with FlapPers and Philosopher~, the liter
ary critics did not give it much attention. Very little
serious or intensive criticism was written, even though
this collection contained some stories which were later to
be considered American short-story classics.
0
May Day,"
"Bened1ct1on,u and "The Diamond as B1g as the Ritz" ere
all in this volume.
Burton Rascoe wrote a very brief revie on October l,
28 "Reviews of N w Novels," The Literary Digest,
74:51-3, July 15, 1922.
29
pausing long enough to continue his affectionate scolding
of Fitzgerald. He felt that th stories were
Of varying merit from the sentimental vapidity of "The
Lees of Happiness," to "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
which is, with "Blue Ice" and "Benediction," the high
water mark of Fitzgerald's achievement a.a a prose ar
tist of abundantL e uberant, irresponsible, and 1nco -
rigible ta.l nte.~9
"The book as it stands 1a amus1ng, . 1ntereeting, and
well done," wrote Hildegarde Ha theme on October 20,
••• 1t is filled be~1des w1th all sorts of hints,
promises and portents that make it exciting beyond its
actual content. There are flashes of wings and sounds
of trumpets mingled with the tramp of feet and casual
laughter ••• 1t 1a ••• a finished thing, each piece
polished and fit for sho 1ng •••• 30
Here again 1s seen an oddly mixed reaction. Miss Hawthorne
felt that the stories were composed of ordinary materials,
but these materials were spun all around with a magic web
of style, to which she reacted with a lyrical outpouring of
her own, akin to poetry.
Admitting, 1n a sense, Fitzgerald's solid status as
a professional writer, The New Republic's review of the book
attempted to explain the reasons for his popularity. This
critic pointed out that Fitzgerald's "articulation" was
ft
• •
.car fully d1sgu10ed from the reader, ho therefore
29 Book review in the New York Herald Tribune,
October 1, 1922, p_ 8.
30 Book review in The New York Times, October 20,
1922, p. 12.
30
reads for content alone." Thia technique, suggested the
cr1t1c, would hardly disqualify Fi zgerald for Saturday
Evening Post readers. ~He is amusing,, flippant, glib,
sophisticated according to Princeton undergraduate stan
dards, and this admits him to Smart Set." The reviewer
then charged that Fitzgerald's characters lacked substance,
and describing the effect of the whole book, he wrote,
"There are split-seconds of beauty expressed. But that em
phatically 1s all." This review had begun 1th the apology,
"It 1s always hard to criticize a good craftsman in 1 t-
t
"
era •••• The critic's conclusion, nevertheless, was
that though Fitzgerald was a skilled craftsman, he did not
have that superior grasp of hie material which would quali
fy him ae a true artist. 31 .
Taking a more careful, middle-of-the-road position, .
William Rose Benet, in his "Plotting of An Author's Curve,"
suggested that the reviewers must have been puzzled about
what to do with Tales of the Jazz Age. Benet felt that
these tales would neither help nor hinder Fitzgerald's rep
utation,
0
commerc1al or artistic." Comparing Fitzgerald to
a good football coach, . he wrote that the author did not be
lieve in showing all his best work in "preliminary or inter-
31 "A Page of Fiction," The Ne Republic, 32:259,
Novemberl, 1922.
31
mediate games.tt Realistically speaking, the critic poin-
ted out , Fitzgerald's" •• • old tricks are good enough.
• •
It 1s better than the run. Why quarrel with it because it
1s not great art--or pretend that it ia?32
The critical reviews cited above are by no means all
of the reviews by well known writers, but they are a rep-
.
resentat1ve sample of the complete range or the critical
attitude toward Fitzgerald's earliest published work.
Summary of the main critical attitudes toward Fitz•
gerald's early published work. Fitzgerald began his liter-
~ry career. a completely u.~known personality, at the start
of that decade which was infamous for its instability and
confusion of manners, morals, and ideas. To give a proper
context to the critical reaction to him, it would be well
to consider the critics and Fitzgerald in relation to cer
tain of the main literary and intellectual movements of the
decade, and to social conditions.
The events of World War I had stimulated a sense of
shock, disgust , bewilderment, and even disillusion in the
minds o those who participated. A young generation re
turned home f1lle with skepticism about the old morality .
3
2
William Rose Ben6t, "Plotting of An Author's
Curve," The Literary Review, 3:219, November 18, 1922.
32
This generation was hostile, insecure, and ripe ror moral
and intellectual revolt. Their spirit or revolt was car
ried into the heart of the "new style" in 11t rature.
Irene and Allen Claaton, in their Books and Battles,
looked back upon tl1is revolt and concisely summed up its
content:
Writing men and women were in a fever of revolt against
tradi t1on. • • They wrote not of the tr1. umph of nobili
ty and virtue, ·as their American predecessors had done,
but of sex, d1s1llusionment, escape, the younger gener
ation ••• the hypocrisy of American business and govern
ment. • • the stupidity of the hab1 ta of the mi.ddle-
aged and the elderly.33
Defining this revolt further, the Cleatons wrote:
••• the authors who did the most striking work 1n
the decade were ••• in revolt against ••• those dread
philosophies which were loosely described as Victori
anism and Puritanism •••• 34
Harold Stearns was the editor of Civilization in the
---
United States, "An Inquiry by Thirty Americans," which was
a cooperative criticism of the major fields of American
life, published in the early twenties. Stearns wrote of
"
• •
.the intellectual collapse that came w1th the hyster-
1cal post-armistice days."35
33 Irene and Allen Cleaton, Books and Battles (New
York: Houghton Mifflin, Company, 1937), p. xiv.
34 Ibid., p. 3.
35 Harold Stearns, editor, C1v111zat1on !_n the Uni
ted States (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 19221:
p. iv.
33
Lewis Mumford, in his chapt,er or this symposium,
"The C1ty," reported that our lire, by the . t1rat part, or
the decade, had become "externalized."
Broadway 1s the ra9ade or the American city: a false
rront. The highest achievements of our material civ
ilization ••• count as so many symptoms of its spiri
tual failure.
. . . . . ~ . . ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The movies, the Wh1te Ways, and the Coney Islands,
which almost every American city boasts 1n some form,
are means or giving Jaded and throttled people the
sensations of living without the direct experience of
11fe.36
These are words or bitter attack, a throwing up of the
hands at tl1e loss or spiritual or moral conscience on the
part of whole segments of the American people. These same
words, in their feeling and content, might have come from
the core of Fitzgerald's early writing.
Van Wyck Brooks, in his chapter of the same book,
"The Literary Life," reported, "The chr·onic state of liter
ature 1s that of a youthful promise which 1s never re
deemed." Continuing, he wrote, "The blighted career, the
arrested career, the diverted career, are, with us, the
rule." He charged t hat writers were t he slaves of public
fancy and had thus become less creative as artlsts.37
How perfectly these ideas fit the characters and story ma-
36 Ibid., pp. 9-13.
37 Ibid., p. 180.
34
terial Fitzgerald as using and continued to use in his
-
serious o~k! How prophetic these same words ere of his
own later career!
Turning to "The Intellectual Life," Harold Stearns
found a" ••• lack of any common concept of the good life."
He sensed a repudiation of old r heritages. Real, indepen
dent intellectual activity w s gon, and what remained was
"crippled and sterile. t, l,.J tearns spoke then of a new sp1ri t
of revolt in the younger generation, " •• • a genuine am
moving attem t to create a life fr e from the bondage of an
authority that has lost all meaning."38
Looking back on the twenties, Henry Steele Commager,
in 1950, wrote, "The twenties brought cynicism and disil
lusionment and the novelists faithfully reflected the new
mood.
0
39
Fitzgerald's early writing as at the center of this
developing literary mains ream. His ork was written 1th-
n the crucible of his own time and reflected its social
and moral changes. A member of the younger generation him
self, he was a leader in its revolt against tradition, and
his personal life as consistently a part of that revolt.
38 Ibid., pp. 139-149.
39 Henry Steele Commager, The American ind (New
Haven: Yale Un1 ers ty Press, 1955), p. 249 .
35
It would be difficult to separate his personal life from
his wr1t1ng, so largely was that life at the core of his
work. Fitzgerald the man and Fitzgerald the writer uni
ted to become a champion of the "younger generation" and
this fact accounts for his early wide popularity, regard
less of the critical reactions to his published work.
Discussing the post-War I period in his biography
of Menoken, William Manchester wrote, "A war had ended,
but the nation's appetite for excitement had not, as the
success of Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise was ••• to
---------
test1fy.n40 The Cleatons, too, described the popular re-
action to This Side of Paradise, writing that it was
••• a cry of revolt. It championed youth against
the old, the rebels against the conformists. It pre
sented the arguments of the young plausibly ••• It
dignified their philosophy ••• It cast over their
doings and dreams a wistful, poetic, and nostalgic
haze.41
By the end of 1922 many of Scott Fitzgerald's chief
ambitions had been realized. His income was soaring and
he was spending all of it. H1s new source of high income
had permitted his marriage to Zelda. His writings were a
triumphant success, especially among his own generation.
He and Zelda moved within the center of a dazzling, ever-
40 William Manchester, Disturber of the Peace (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1951), p. 116:-
41 Irene and Allen Cleaton, 2-2• cit., pp. 10-11.
36
sh1ftin5 Ne York social life. One of 1is earliest dreams,
however, that of being considered a truly great writer.
was not even close to fruition in so far as the literary
critics were concerned.
Alfred Kazin has written that the critics, in their
early reaction to Fitzgerald,
••• ere naturally generous and enthusiastic in a
way serious critics are not today, for they felt
themselves part of an exciting movement in th Amer
ican novel.42
He rote, too, that the critics ere extremely eager to
note any stylistic advances in Fitzgerald's work from his
first to his second nov 1. This estimate perhaps paints a
brighter picture of Fitzgerald's general critical reception
than actually occurred. Even 1th the liberal critics and
t he younger critics, Fitzgerald's reputation was not very
high at the end of 1922.
It is interesting to stuiy the critical ratings com
piled by The Bookman in ay, 1922.43 These ratings repre
sent the results of a statistical analysis of a long 11st
of famous nEunes of the past and "present." The nine crit
ics no participated incl ded: Ernest Boyd, Henry Seidel
42
lfred Kazin, .2.E• cit., pp. 12-13.
43 "Spring Elections on Mount Olympus," The Book
man, 55:285-92, ay, 1922.
37
Canby, Floyd Dell, John Farrar, Llewellyn Jones, Ludwig
Lewisohn, John Macy, Louis Untermeyer, . and Carl Van Doren.
These critics admittedly shared "liberal sympathies, .. but
they still were defended as representing the "centre" of
American critical opinion. The basis for scoring the 11st
of famous names was that of genuine critical interest. A
score of plus 25 was absolute high, and minus 25 was abso
lute low . It should be pointed out that zero on this
scoring represented complete indifference, the lack or any
critical interest in the writer or artist concerned.
Some of the average scores for literary figures of
the twentieth century were as follows: John Dos Passes,
plus 5.3; Amy Lowell, minus .3; Sinclair Lewis, plus 5.3;
Sherwood Anderson, plus 7.7; Theodore Dreiser, plus 9.2;
Eliith Wharton, plus 10; and F. Scott Fitzgerald, plus 1.3.
Fitzgerald received a lower score than any except Amy
Lowell .
The individual breakdown of the scores assigned to
Fitzgerald was as follows: Boyd, zero; Canby, l; Dell, l;
Farrar, l; Jones, 3; Lew1sohn ½; Macy, zero; and Van Doren,
plus 5. Certainly Fitzgerald had not established a very
high general critical rating with even the "liberal" crit
ics by the end or 1922.
If there is a single trend of reaction discernible
38
1n the early c 1tical reviews o Fitzgerald's ork, it 1s
tha of ad chotomy of attitude. One s1de of t his split
a t t itude was indicated by the thorough disapproval of the
work under criticism. The structure was too loose , ram bling, and episodic, the word usages were too often i ncor rect or obscure, the grammar was "terrible," the charac
teri za t i ons ere shallow and flat, the digressions w e re
unbearable conceits, the intellectual ideas wer e 1mm ture ,
and t he sentiment as overdone. In merely listing the out stand i ng faults found by the critics in Fitzgerald's works,
one would have on hand a
reader of these reviews nd critical essays might carry
away a first impression that the critics believed Fitzger a l d t o be one of the worst writers then 1n print.
n opposing point of view emerged, however, in al
most every review. Having carefully torn Fitzgerald to
pieces, the reviewer then proceeded to put the pieces to
ge ther again, asserting that the author was also one of the
most prom1s1ng talents of the decade. He was brilliant ,
clever, witty, satiric, realistic, romantic, and shocking,
with a t, grac ful and vivid" prose style~
The apparent dichotomy perhaps r solves itself into
t his s ngle conclui .on: although Fitzgerald' talent for
choo ing his ra materials and organizing them into a uni-
39
f 1ed structure was poor, -his talent for writing rich,
fluent, and moving prose (1n short, h1s style), was almost
m agi cal in its poetic and emotional effect.
Most of the critics agreed that Fitzgerald presen
te a shockingly realistic picture of the "younger genera
tion , " t he upper middle and upper class college set, in its
revolt against Victorianism.
Most of t hem agreed t hat Fitzgerald had chosen pro
vocative and stimulating subject matter with which to work,
but that he had not acquired sufficient intellectual mas
tery of hi s materials. He lacked the ability to see the
whole of his work as a single plan. Eimund Wilson wrote,
"He has been given i m agination without intellectual con
trol of it ••• a gift for expression without many ideas to
express.
0
44 On t hi s s am idea, Vivian Shaw wrote, u ••• he
has neither the critical i ntelligence nor t he profound vis
ion to make h i m an i m posing figure."45
Without exception, the critics were impressed with
or amazed at the brilliance and subtlety of Fitzgerald's
literary style, his ability to m ake every sentence glow
with color and light, to convey m ood or emotion directly
44 "The Literary Spotlight," -2-E• cit., p. 20.
45 Vivian Shaw, .£E• cit., p. 419.
40
through a almost 1ntu1t1ve mastery of the "feel" and the
sound o words. "Fitzgerald plays the language ent1r ly
by ear. . . ,
tt
rote El:lmund Wilson. "He has an instinct
for graceful and vivid prose whi h some of his more eri-
ous fellows m1gh envy.
0
nd a few sentences later, "He 1s
Irish on bo h sides ••• like the Irish, _ ... - is romantic,
but 1a also cynical about romance; he is ecstatic and bit
ter; lyrical and sharp.u46
Wh le lamenting Fitzgerald's them, The Literary
Digest n verthel s
style:
as suffic ently impressed 1th hie
There is so much life 1n him, such felicity in e
porting dialog,. so keen a sense of drama, that one
can not believe that This Side of Paradise and The
Beautiful and Damned, with a handful of stories in
the same cast, 1s them asure of his reaction to
11fe.47
Carl Van Doren, discussing the "Ne Style" in his
book, Contemporary American Novelia s (1922), placed Fitz
gerald as one of a group ~of new novelists who represented
"The Revolt from the Village."
His restless generation sparkles 1th inquiry and
challenge. When its elders have let the world fall
into ch oa, hy, youth queet1ons, sho d it trust
their counsels any longer?
46 "The Literary Spotlight, .QE• cit., pp. 22-23.
47 "Rev1A s of Ne Books," o p. 52.
41
Recalling the thematic intent of This Side of Paradise,
Van Doren ~Tote:
This Side of Paradise comes to no conclusion ••• Yet
how vivid 8document th~ book is upon a whirling time,
an how beguiling an entertainmen ••• It shifts from
passion to farce, from satire to lustrous beauty,
from 1mpu:lent knowingness to pathetic youthful hum.111-
ty.48
lthough be lightly applauded Fitzgeral 's "Revolt from the
Villag ," Van Daren's heavy applaus as reserved for the
vividly entertaining style used to portray the tkeme of
revolt.
One other early critical attitude is evident. This
concerns not Fitzgerald's literary ta ents, but rat er his
insistence on making a good living from selling stories to
the better popular magazines. Many rev1 ers felt early
that Fitzgerald had "sold out" to the commercial mark t,
and that this ould somehow subvert his serious ambitions.
"Why write good books?" demanded the critic from The Na
tion. A writer could earn a higher income from The Satur-
day Evening Post.
~
1111am Rose Benet suggested in ovember,
1922, that Fitzgerald might be deceiving those critics ho
redicted his greatn es by" ••• making a gr
money nstead. tt49
deal of
(
48 Carl Van Doren, Contemporary er1can Novelists
York: The acmillan Company, 1922), pp. 172-3.
9
1111am Ros
✓
Benet, .2.E• cit., ~ p 219.
42
"What will Fitzgerald eventually amount t as a lit
erary figure?" asked Edmund Wilson and he ans ered h1s own
question, "It is difficult to tell. Despite his immaturity,
he has great imaginative power and might create great beau
ty~"50
s one who knew Fitzgerald well, both as a man and
an artist, ilson dramatically evaluated the early critical
att1tud toward Fitzgerald:
It may be said that Just now he presents spectacle
to sadden the critic ••• The spigot is out of order
and the ine is running out on the floor! Will the
owner no supply some receptacle to preserve it for
a few generat1ons?51
Perhaps 1lson ould say today that this wine, spilled over
though it as, ha.d aroma and flavor rich enough to pre
serve itself for a generation, and no it has been perma
nently reeer e
50 "The Literary Spotl ight," .Q.E• cit., p. 24.
51 Loe. cit.
CHAPTER I.iI
1923--1926: THE FITZGERALD REPUTATION MATURES
Critical reactions toward Fitzgerald's later pub
l i shed work and re-evaluations of his earlier work. His
----- -- -------- - --
popular and editorial reputation assured with the better
popular magazines, Fitzgerald began, in 1923, to direct his
literary energies into two~main channels: first, producing
a steady flow of short-story fiction, most of which reflec
ted current tastes and fashions with a lightly satiric or
humorous s l ant; and second, : working in earnest with more
challenging and serious literary material, some of which
as to be m olded into his finest short stories and The
Great Gatsby. Consciously realizing that he was the per
sonal champion, as well as the most articulate representa
tive of hie own generation, he proceeded to project himself
fully int o his new champion's role. His steadily rising
income f r om m agazine fiction and from the sale of the mo
tion pictur e rights to his first two novels allowed him to
fit his income to his fabulous social life, a 11fe that
took him to Europe fre quently and for extended periods dur
ing the twent i es.
The Dial made the most of Fitzgerald's ambition for
commerci al success in its February, 1923, review of Tales
44
of the J zz A.ge, some five months after the publication of
that book. The critic rebuked Fitzgerald for having ub
stituted salesmanship in the place of good 1ct1on.
Salesmanship ••• proceeds to smother technical func
tions, emo ion, and thought 1n these inform 1 draper
ies which sell so well to the public which takes its
fiction as relaxation.1
In 1922 Fitzgerald had begun work on a ne play,
which · hc3 hoped ould be ". • • 'an a fully funny play that's
going to make me rich forever.•tt2 The Vegetable was reJec
ted by the producers to hom the author had first submitted
1t, and the play as revised several times, "• •• with care
and literary ambition."3 It as finally accepted for pro
duction in 1923, but it failed completely in its November
opening in tlantic City. Scribner's felt +hat this polit
ical satire and fantasy held enough humorous appeal to Jus
tify its publication in April, 1923. The slim 145-pag
volume created very little popular stir, however, and even
less critical commente
The Ne York Times carr ed a review of Scribner's
edition of the play on ay 13. The rev1e er mentioned
that the play had b en turned down by several producers,
1 "Briefer Mention," The Dial, 74:311, February,1923.
2 rthur M1zaner, £.E• cit., p. 148.
3 Ibid. , p. 155.
45
but nevertheless, " ••• it makes merry reading." The com
edy comb ned elements of satire, farce, and fantasy effec
tively, and the Times critic concluded that he had enjoyed
both the play's harp style and its moral.4
An opposite view o the play'a literary merit was
expressed by the critic for The Freeman two months later.
This reviewer described The Vegetable as having succeeded
in being only an attempt at a
0
sat1rical comedy," and this
was due to Fitzgerald's lack of reverence for the needs of
dramatic form.
ThA onportu_n ty or an adro t thrust wa n his grasp,
but it is evident that the author looks down upon the
dramatic form in which he has chosen to ork. He pa
tronizes it ••• and the reader ••• the characters have
about as much vitality as ax figures; his comedy be
comes a comic strip, and the irony vanishes in thin
air.5
That the basic ideas and attitudes toward politics ex
pressed in The Vegetable were fundamentally entertaining
was demonstrated a few years later with the hit production
of Of Thee 1 Sing, h1ch was remarkably similar 1n story
con ent. Possibly the addition of music and song to Fitz
gerald's play would have turned th balance in its favor.
Early in 1925 Charles- C. Baldwin's The Men Who ake
Our Novels, a collection of critical essays on most of the
4 Book rev e York Times, ay 13, 1923,
p. 13.
5 "Books,u The Freeman. 7·430 July 11 1°23 , • , , .7 •
popular novelists or the time, was publ1shed9 The essays
contai ned biographical material followed by Baldwin's im
pressi ons of their chtef works and an effort to evaluate
the clai m s t o literary fame these novelists were Juetitied
n making. The chapter on Fitzgerald was written before
the publication of The Great Gatsby, yet Baldwin found
ample r eason to praise the novelist as a writer of dis
tinction and i m portance.
If I w ere given to prophecying I should certainly
predict, once his mania for writing ephemeral short
stories is done with, a great and glorious future for
F. Scott Fitzgerald; and I should base that predic
t i on upon the irony,. the beauty, . the wit or This Side
of Par ad!se and The Beautiful and Damned. There are
- ~-~-
t wo books unique in American literature, though imi-
tated a thousand times ••• They have form, ease and
var1 ty. They are utterly fearless, shirking no con
clus i ons, true to their characters.
Summing up Fitzgerald's consistent strength in his delinea
tion of charac t er, Baldwin wrote:
He lets them play their piece to the end; and they
become , even for the dullest, tragic comedians, dang
ling helpl essly on the threads of destiny and time.
Rightly understood, they are heroic--and Fitzgerald
understand s t hem absolutely.6
Along with Henry Seidel Canby, Baldwin was one of the ear
liest critics t o express a J uigment of Fitzgerald w hich
penetrated more deeply into th3 underlying spirit of his
serious work than the brilliance and glitter of its sur-
6 Char les c. Baldwin, The Men Who Make Our Novels
(New York : Dodd, Mead and Company, . 1925), pp. 166-67.
47
face appeal. Earlier cr1t cs frequently had been content
to think of his first two novels as clever, cynical, o
ophist1cated, but Bald in was impressed 1th the very real
pathos surrounding Fitzgerald's "trag c comed1ans,u a pa
thos which made for genu.1ne tragedy in the classical sense.
Fitzgerald had begun work on The Great Gatsby as
early as 1923, but economic pressures and the obligation
to met them 1th what Charles Baldwin called 'ephemeral
short stories," interrupted his novel. He picked up the
-
story again early in 1924 and finished it in France and
Italy, , revising scenes almost up to the day of publication,
April 10, 1925. Anxiously determined that his nove should
make its ay on the basis of its unquestionable merit and
maturity, Fitzgerald gave the writing an almost loving care,
polishing the most minute details. He felt that the book
was great, and he was eager to have the literary critics
agree with h1m.7
Most of the critics did agree 1th him, and several
claimed that a new prose masterpiece had found its place in
American fict on. None of the critics was unimpressed with
certain aspects, at least·, of Fitzgerald's narrative and
descriptive alents.
"Scott Fitzgerald Looks Into Middle Age," was the
7 rthur Mizener, .2.E• cit., p. 168.
48
title of E:dw1n Clark's review of The Great Gatsbx for The
New York Times. Looking back over the author's six years
as a professional writer, Clark concluded that he had re
mai ned the steadiest and most entertaining writer of the
post-war years. Clark pictured Long Island as having be
come a symbol and figure in the new American life. Life on
Long I sland , with its "humor, : irony, ribaldry, pathos, and
lovel i ness," had been reflected as a new humor in An1er1can
literature , " ••• a conflict of spirituality caught fast 1n
the web of our commercial life." Thia new spirit" •• • ani-
mates (The G reat GatsbiJ with whimsical magic and simple
pathos that is realized with economy and restraint."
Concerning t he development of t he novel's charac
ters, Clark wrote, "With sensitive insight and keen psycho
logical observation, Fitzgerald discloses in t hese people
a meanness of spirit, carelessness and absence of loyal
ties." Summi ng up the achievement of The Great Gatsby,
Clark felt that the author
••• takes a deeper cut a t life than hitherto has
been essayed by Mr. Fitzgerald. He writes well-
he always hae--for he writes naturally, and his
sense of form is becoming perfected.8
The rev e wer for The Literary D15est International
Book Review wrote of a m or e mature and. serious point of
8 Book review in The New York Times, April 19, 1925,
p. 9.
49
iew in Fitzgerald, remarking that even though The Great
Gatsby combined elements of melodrama, mystery, satire,
and jazz, no confusion resulted, " ••• but a graceful and
finished tale."
The Fitzgerald ho tells it is no longer the impudent
youngster, glorifying in his own soph stication •••
He is as gay, as extravagant as ever, but not quite
as toler·a11t, no longer indifferent, for 1n the tragic
ending of Gatsby's grotesque career, he shows us a
ne emotion--that o pity.9
This critic felt that Fitzgerald had created a true trage
dy.
The Independent, which had reviewed Fitzgerald's
previous books with objective detachment, now grumblingly
admitted the excellence of his new book, amidst a confused
welter of sarcasm directed more at Fitzgerald than at his
novel. The critic opened his essay with a reference to
certain remarks supposed to have been made by Fitzgerald's
intimate friends to the effect that that he "could write
if he would." The Great Gatsby, . suggested the reviewer,
might be the beginning of Fitzgerald's fulfillment of this
potentiality.
"The Great Gatsby" is not a good book, . but it is
superior to his others with the exception of the
first. That, of course, contained all he knew •••
The conversation throughout 1s a rather quaint
collection of epigrams~
9 "In This Month's Fiction Library," The Literary
Digest International Book Review, 3:426-27, May, 1925.
50
In summing up Fitzgerald's literary potentialities, the
critic concluded that the novelist might become an effec-
tive writer" ••
niles. "10
• outside the field of sophisticated Juve-
Walter Yust as much more impressed with the novel's
tragic unity of effect and vivid style as he wrote of "Jazz
Parties on Long Island Beach" the same day as the above re
view.
Scott Fitzgerald is the poet of that portion of society
which crashes madly ••• along the borderline between
culture that money brings and vulgarity that money
scarcely ever conceals or dissipates--a portion of
society that embodies d1e1 uaion and practices •••
a harshness in camaraderie cheaply tragic.
The dissolution, the tawdry tragedy of much of
life, as revealed in those pages, is bitterly true.
Yust felt that although no single character was truly mem
orable, all of the central characters lived vividly as a
social group. Rather than presenting a self-conscious
study of a maladjusted individual, Fitzgerald here offered
an intensely realistic history of a segment of the urban
ized, upper class social world. Turning to the effect of
Fitzgerald's style, Yust wrote that the book had held his
complete attention until he had finished it, for it was a
story" ••• that refuses to be ignored..," The style threw
10" ew Books in Brief Review," The Independent,
114:507, ay 2, 1925.
51
" ••• a spell over the reader." Yust felt that the author
was at hie best when describing the color and movements of
social groups. "A poet of discorda, he gives us starkly
the asymmetry, the motley, the cacophony of cro'Wds."
1
1
Yuet's review of the novel was one of many descrip
tions of Fitzgerald's work that revealed a highly colored,
lyrical, almost poetic response to the stimulus of his lit
erary style. The diction of such reviews often held a
haunting quality that as closely imitative of Fitzgerald's
prose.
H. L. Mencken was greatly impressed with the style
of The Great Gatsby, but he expressed disappointment in the
narrow range, the thinness of the story. The book ". • .is
in form no more than a glorified anecdote, ~nd not too
prvbable at that," he wrote in the Baltimore Evening Sun.
This story 1s obviously unimportant, and though, as
I shall show, it has its place in the Fitzgerald
canon, it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf
with, say, This Side of Paradise.
Mencken went on to offer the novel its deserved praise,
because of:
••• the charm and beauty of the writing. In Fitz
gerald's first days it seemed almost unimaginable
that he could ever show such qualities. His writing,
then, was extraordinarily slipshod ••••
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
11 Walter Yust, "Jazz Parties on Long Island Beach,"
The Literary Review, 5:3, May 2, 1925.
The Great Gatsby ••• is plainly the product of a
sound and stable talent, conjured into being by hard
work.
Concluding his review with some remarks on Fitzgerald's
choice of subject matter for his serious work, Mencken
wrote:
52
The thing that chiefly interests the basic Fitzgerald
is still the florid show of American 11fe--and es
pecially the devil's dance that goes on at the top.
He 1s unconcerned about the sweatings and sufferings
of the nether hero.12
It is interesting to note that Mencken had encouraged
young writers to write for The Smart Set during the years
after the war. According to William anchesterl3 Fitzger
ald's stories ere literally demanded by George Jean athan,
while Mencken offered a "critical tutelage" to the major
writers of the twenties. Mencken and Nathan did much to
provide Fitzgerald 1th an entrance into the publishing
field. Mencken liked Fitzgerald personally and was in
creasingly impressed with his talent, yet he did not indi
cate that he considered the writer to be one of the major
authors of hie age.
✓
William Rose Benet, writing 1n The Saturday Review
of Literature, expressed his opinion that The Great Gatsby
12 Alfred Kazin, .2.E· cit., pp. 88-91, citing H. L.
Mencken 1n the Baltimo~ Evening Sun, May 3, 1925.
13 i1lliam Manchester, .2.E• cit., p. 134.
53
as Fitzgerald's m ost mature achievement. H e referred to
its clarity, its steadily moving pace, a11.d its "admirable
'control. '" The styl e had all the excellence of the au
thor' a earlier work , si1ce he was born with a "natural
gift" for writing. " Recall ing This Side 2!,. Paradise, Benet
remarked that it was " ••• amazing in its excitement and
gusto, a.mazing in phrase and epithet." Flappers and Phil
osophers was" •• • a m ore valuable document concerning the
younger generation •••• "
~
Benet asserted that all of
Fitzgerald's earlier work had come from a '"wonder boy' of
our time," that it was overloaded with glamor and contained
little else. In contrast, The Great Gatsby
••• reveals a thoroughly matured craftsmanship. It
has structure. It has high occasions of felicitous,
almost magic, phrase .
~
Benet felt that parts of t he book, notably the second chap-
ter,
0
••• could not have been better written." The char
acters were living individual s, fully portrayed, and not
padded types designed to fit the plot etructure.14
Benet had earlier characterized Fitzgerald as a
commercial writer interested in the "tricks of the tra9,e,
0
and in inning wide popular a ppeal with Tales of the Jazz
ge. The critic had suggested, too, that Fitzgerald had
14 ill1am Rose Ben~t, "An Admirable Novel," The
Saturday Review of Literature, 1:739-40, May 9, 1925.
•
the artistic power to do more serious work. In Benet's
Judgment, the author's stature as a serious novelist had
increased considerably with The Great Gatsby.
John Farrar, editor of The Bookman, revie ed the
54
novel in June, assigning a narrower scope of meaning to it
than moAt of the other critics had done, or have since done.
The Great Gatsby is a strange combination of satire,
burlesque, fantasy, and melodrama. It 1s Fitzgerald
writing with his old gusto, with driving imagination,
and with a sense of the futility of life ••• It is a
satire on present day fa~e.
The story, Farrar felt, revolved around people who by ac
cident of fate or by their personal power, achieved noto
riety, and drew around them other people w~o were" ••• on
the fringes of society.u The main characters degenerated
rapidly when personal scandal attacked their lives. Farrar
suggested that this inner weakness of character prevented
their achieving tragic stature. Concluding his review, the
,. I
critic claimed, in what seemed a gesture of naivete or an
admittance of a too rapid reading of the novel, that he
did not understand all of the story and its implications.
Even so, " ••• you at least cannot deny its vitality."15
Farrar's closing remarks are disturbing, in that
the interpretation of the~ remains obscure. It seems
15 John Farrar, "The Fiiitor Recommends," The Book-
m n, 61:469-70, June, 1925.
55
possible that the critic was suggesting satirically that
since he did not fully understand the story, Fitzgerald
had not clearly formulated the underlying thematic intent.
In July the reviewer for The Outlook agreed that
The Great Gatsby showed ~itzgerald's serious intent as a
novelist. In some respects, the critic felt, the novel
was a continuation of the author's earlier work; the sub
ject matter was the same, and the book ended with melo
drama like The Beautiful and Damned. Nevertheless, this
new novel was superior to anything Fitzgerald had done
before . "The virtues of this book are its painstaking,
often exquisite workmanship and its humor." One notable
example of the story's humor was to be found in thP. eRtire
of the week-end guest list.16 The tightly knit structure
of the book and its "exquisite" style, rather than a depar
ture in theme or subject matter, were the evidences of
Fitzgerald' s maturing powers, according to this critic.
"There has never been any question of the talents of
F. Scott Fitzgerald," Gilbert Seldes wrote 1n the August
issu of The Dial, "but t,he real question was what Fitz
gerald was going to do wtth his talents." In the most pos
itive and vivid manner, Seldes proceeded to answer the
lt; "The Book Table," The Outlook, 140:341, July l,
1925.
56
question he had raised.
The question has been answered in one of the finest
of contemporary novels. Fitzgerald has more than
matured; he has maste.ed his talents and gone soaring
in a beautiful flight ••• leaving even farther behind
all the en o his own generation and oat of his
elders.
It 1a on~ thing to compare an artist 1th himself and to
praise him accordingly, out 1t is quite another thing to
compare him with the greatest lights of his time and to
rank him with the brightest. Seldes as one of the first
critics to place Fitzgerald's reputation as a serious wri
ter at the highest level of quality in American fiction.
Turning to the author's craftsmanship, Seldes wrote:
The technical virtuosity is extraordinary. 11 this
as true of Fitzgerald's first two novels, and even
of those deplorable short stories which one feared
were going to ruin him.
Seldes made a tenuous attempt to sh the source which
inf uenced Fitzgerald. "The book is written as a series
of scenes, the method which Fitzgerald derived from Henry
James through Mrs. Wharton." The critic found in the
story's matter thematic values hich transcended the spe
cific local scenes and characters depicted.
Fitzgerald has ceased to content himself with a satiric
report on the outside of American life and has 1th
considerable irony attacked the spirit underneath,
and so has begun to report on life in its most general
terms.
Rec lling the appeal of Fitzgerald's earlier work, he wrote:
57
"Even now, . 1th The Great Gatsby before me, I cannot find
in the earlier Fitzgerald the artistic integrity and the
passionate feeling which this book poasesses."17
According to Arthur Mizener, Maxwell Perkins cabled
Fitzgerald on April 18, 1925, about the novel: "SALES
SITUATION DOUBTFUL, EXCELLENT REVIEWS."
18
It seems ironic
that, despite Fitzgerald's achievement of a literary tri
umph with his new novel, _ along with the high praise of the
critics, The Great Gatsby sold no more than 25,000 copies
at that time. "The Bookman's Monthly Score" for the months
of June, July, and August did not place the novel among
the top twelve books for popularity, while such books as
Arrowsmith, So Big, and Zane Grey's The Thunderin~ Herd
received high places for all three months.
The Fitzgeralds remained in Europe most of the time
until 1931, returning to America briefly in 1927 and again
in 1929. After The Great· Gatsby's sale was over, Fitzger
ald began work on a projected novel of even larger scale.
Its theme was to have dealt with matricide. He seemed
unable to follo through with his entire energy and con-
17 Gilbert Seldes, ttspring Flight," The Dial,
79:162-64, August, 1925.
18 Arthur izener, ££• cit., p. 178.
58
v1ct1on, and he abandoned the proJ ct, using som of the
atmospheric and character material he had sketched out, in
his later novel, Tender Ia the Night.19
Repeating his earlier patt.ern, Fitzgerald followed
the publication of The Great Gatsby with a new volume of
nine short stoi·ies, All the Sad Young en, published by
Scribner's in February, 1926. He had collected a large
number of stories from which to choose, and, sensitive to
the criti,1sms of his earlier story collections that he had
included too much material which was merely ephemeral, he
chose stories he felt had both substance and high quality.
This new volume contained stories which were to add much
to their author's reputation, especially "Winter Dreams,"
"The Rich Boy," and "Absolution."
The cr1t1 for The New York T1m~a suggested that
this volume could easily have been an anti-climax after
The Great Gatsby. "A novel so widely pra1sed--by people
whose recognition cotmts--,
0
he wrote, "1s stiff competi
tion ~" Fitzgerald's place in literature was as a" •••
chronicler of the efforts of his sad young men to restle
beauty a d love from the world and the ladies. • • " Al
though Fitzgerald could write convincingly in the realis-
19 Ibid., pp. 189-90.
59
tic vein, he wrote from other viewpoints as well, and 1n
the present volume he had displayed the talent of the
"Poet, satirist, and realist." The critic felt that with
The Great Gatsby and All the Sad Young Men, ". • .Scott
Fitzgerald has realized the promise of his brilliant Juve
nil1a."
He has written a book of mellow, mature, ironic,
entertaini~ stories, and one of them, E_oretchen's
Forty Wink[] at least
1
challenges the best of our
contemporary output.2u
This review set the general tone of praise of All the Sad
Young M en as a work which was more mature and artistically
m ore satisfying than either of Fitzgerald's earlier two
collection.a.
E. C. Beckwith, writing in The Literary Review, felt
t hat "Absolution" was a positive sign of Fitzgerald's rea
chi ng maturity. This story, he claimed, was
11
••• as fine
an achievement in the field of the brief tale as any by a
l iving A m erican." Beckwith reaffirmed his conviction that
Fi tzgerald, on t he basis of The Great Gatsby, deserved a
place in American fiction along with Willa Cather, Dreiser,
and A nderson. Returning to a discussion of the nine sto
ries of the collection, Beckwith pointed out a unifying
spiri t in t he characterization.
20 Book review in The New York Times, March 7, 1926,
p . 9 .
Through them all runs the cheap, coarse grasp ng
materialism of the mentally limited and the spiri
tually barren.
60
B~1t Fitzgerald even at hie thinnest and worst,
never writes dully; there 1s an eas grace, a v1talit~
in his prose which makes one forgive the "wisecracks,'
and the clever lines he gives his charactera.21
Resorting to the epigram, The Independent's c 1tic
derisively explained Fitzgerald's steady popularity in
the past.
Scott Fitzgerald has been with us since his college
days, a nice little boy spoiled by a false environ
ment. His youth has always been a justification of
his imperfections.
Turning finally to the book under review, the critic felt
compelled to admit that all of the stories we1"";e " •• .equal,
if not superior, to anything that has come from his facile
pen. tt22
In her review for The Literary Digest International
Book Review, Louise • Field attempted to clarify the under
lying thematic meaning which served to unify all of the
stories. She suggested that the book describes
••• half-conscious efforts of men and women to find
something into which they may send down spiritual
roota--eome sort of congenial soil wherein these may
21 E. c. Beckwith, "Volume of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stories in Which 'Absolution' Reigns Supreme," The Literary
Review, 6:4, March 13, 1926.
22 "Ne Books in Brief Review," The Independent,
116:335, arch 20, 1926.
61
have a chance to grow and flourish.
rs. Field felt that all of the stories had to do with the
individual personality's acceptance or rejection of adult
responsibilities. When the ma1n characters partially ac
cepted these responsibilities and achieved material stabil
ity, they lost something else of beauty or of dreams in
their lives. Hence the sadness of the young men, even hen
they we out ardly successfu1.23 Mrs. Field did not make
any statement bearing on Fitzgerald's reputation, but her
serious and searching interest in the book was in itself
evidence that the book held both literary charm and maturi
ty.
The title of William Rose Benet's article on the
book, "Art's Bread and Butter," indicates his having picked
up the threads of his old theme on Fitzgerald and commer
cialism. ~rit1ng in The Saturday Review of Literature,
he reasserted that Fitzg~rald was primarily faced with the
problem of "making a living by writing,!' and that he was
continuing to do so. He as selling his stories to the
"market, u and All the ad Young Men was a "w1rinow1ng" of
these commercial stories.
~
Benet declared that one felt
23 Louise M. Field, "Three Exhibits of Drifting
American," The Liter ry Digest International Book Review,
4:315-16, April, 1926.
62
in these stories" • •• the pressure of 11v1ng conditions
rather than the demarn of the spirit." Feeling, perhaps,
that this single analysis of all nine stories failed to
" show a sense of discrimination, Benet half-apologetically
admitted that some of the stories revealed literary quality
and that u'Absolut1on' 1s almost first-rate!"
2
4 It might
be pointed out that Benit's criticisms of Fitzgerald's
stories always seemed to deal with the problem of the au
thor's literary life rather than with the content of the
stories themselves. He rarely compared the stories 1n
terms of theme, plot, and style with Fitzgerald's other
stories or with the stories of other writers. Th1s fasci
nation with Fitzgerald as a person would indicate that
the latter's personal life was a phenomenon of the twen
ties which attracted the interest of friend and cr1t1c
alike as much as the literature he wrote.
John Farrar began a review of All the Sad Young
Men with the generous comment: ttAs F. Scott Fitzgerald
continues to publish books, it becomes apparent that he is
head and shoulders better than any writer of his genera
ti on." The present collection, . Farrar wrote, contained
stories of "compelling fineness," as well as gay and fool-
2
4 Will i am Rose Benet, "Art's Bread and Butter," The
Saturday Review of Literature, 2:682, Aprj.1 3, 1926.
ish stories for Fitzgerald's flapper fans. Farrar was most
impressed with the author's probing of his characters.
Fitzgerald knows hie men and women with appalling
clarity. He knows their nerves ••• lie treats the
abnormal psychology of the war generation with a
cynicism that has in it a t,ouch of wisdom and love
almost godlike in its detachment.
Dexter, of "Winter Dreams," was particularly impressive
as an individual unique in fiction, and yet he stood for a
genuine type. Farrar summed up Fitzgerald's ability to
build atmosphere in a sentence: "Few people have ever writ
ten who could create so suddenly and so completely social
atmosphere." The editor recalled Fitzgerald's early repu
tation as an entertaining writer on flappers, and his wide
popular appeal. He jokingly apologized for having made
his subject seem an "important" writer, since he did not
wish to drive Fitzgerald's public away by making him seem
too serious.25
Almost reversing Farrar's opinion, the critic for
The Outlook was much more impressed with the popular sto
ries than with stories such as "Absolution," which he con
demned as being too "'arty' and confused." Fitzgerald's
discussions of the frustrations of married life appealed
more to this reviewer than did the more intense efforts.
2
5 John Farrar, .:The Fiiitor Recommends," The Book
man, 63:348-49, May, 1926.
64
In all of the stories, however, the author showed" • • • the
same easy sorcery in the manipulation of words • • • the same
deft handling of dialog, and the same insight into the psy chology • •• " of his characters that readers had found i n
his earl ier stor1es.26
Leon Whipple, writing in The Survey, objected to
• •
.the click of 'the well-made story.'" Whipple had
expe ct ed more serious and penetrating work from Fitzgerald .
uThe stories are amusing and their irony often gives to
think, but they do not cut deep into the author's own rare
knowl dge.
• • •
tt27
Whipple added his voice to the chorus
whi ch , up to the time of Fitzgerald's death, mourned for
an unrealized genius, insisting that the author had "sold
out" to a shallow and destructive commercial market.
T~he Dial reviewe'" the book in June an expressed a
w eariness from reading about the melancholy young people
w ho never achieved their goals. Most of the book's young
m en , the c t c wro e, "~ • • by t he time they are thirty,
••• are saturated with a weariness which Sherwood Anderson
reserves for the middle forties." The critic was somewhat
26 "Tl1e Book Table," The Outlook, 146:33, May 5,
1926 .
27 Leon Whipple, "Letters and Life, " The Survey,
56: 331, June, 1926.
65
repelled by the spectacle of young men weeping, longing,
or de s pairing over the forever lost past. Leet he appear
too condemnatory, he hastened to add a note of praise.
"Writing in other moods ••• Mr. Fitzgerald displays the
sureness and insight which distinguishes his best work."28
Even though all of the nine stories of this volume
had been previously published in magazines such as Red
Book , _Q, Calls, Liberty, and The Saturday Evening Post,
the book ' s sale was about 14,000 copies, better than that
of either of the two previous story collections.
Summary of the changes in critical attitude toward
Fitzgerald 's m aturing work. What Carl Van Doren aptly
termed "The Revolt from the Village" was, by the mid-twen
ties, an established literary movement among the American
novelists w ho represented the "new style." This revolt
constituted a denial of the validity and meaning of tradi
tional provi nci a l morality. It evolved into a critical
search for values in the urbanized, industrial civilization
that was mushrooming across the United States. Malcolm
Cowley has re ferred to this changed situation in American
literature 1n his recent volume, Exile's Return. Looking
back on the de cade of the twenties, he wrote:
28 "Br i efer Mention," The Dial, 80:521, June, . 1926.
66
In 1920 it had been a provincial literature, dependent
on English standards even when it tried to dety them
••• By 1930 it had come to be valued for itself and
studied like Spanish or German or Russian literature.29
The central literary character of the twenties, according
to Cowley, was that of extreme individualism and experi
m entalism, dominated in letters by Dreiser, Anderson, Menc
ken, Lewis, O'Neill , Willa Cather, and Robert Frost-30
(Fitzgerald's name is consuicuously absent from t 1s 1st.}
That Scott Fitzgerald's work was at the center or
this revolt has already been indicated, but even though
the best of his work retained its popular appeal, to which
was added a steadily rising critical approval, no single
book of his could be found among the ten or fifteen most
popular books for any one of these years, nor for any group
of years. Nor did he win any literary awards. In 1921
IDiith Wharton had won the Pulitzer Prize for Th~ Age of
Innocence. Tarkington's Alice Adams had won this prize 1n
1922, iilla Cather's One of Ours in 1923, and IDina Ferber's
---
So Big in 1925. Sinclair Lewis rejected the prize awarded
to his Arrowsmith in 1926 . In 1925 , the year of The Great
Gatsbx publication, a novel by Anne Parrish, The Perennial
29 alcolm Cowley, Exil e's Return (New York: The
Viking Press, 1951) , p . 296 .
30 Loe. cit.
Bachelor, w on the Harper award. lso , An
-
67
erican Tragedy
was published, receiving extremely high criti cal prai se .
By the end of 1926, Fitzgerald's critical reput ation
was more uni formly high. Many more critics agreed that he
was a writer of the first rank, or, in fewer cases, that
he was am ong the best of the "popular" writers of his t i m e.
This wide and growing critical approval of most of his work
was one indication of his increasing maturity and sureness
as a liter ary craftsman. What is even more noticeable in
the reviews of this period is the rather surprising absence
of the spl i t critical attitude toward his writing, which
so clearly marked the earliest reactions to bis work.
The f ew adverse comments were directed not so much at any
specific work or literary problem as at Fitzgerald's liter
ary career as a whole, his intellectual attitu:le toward his
material, or his commercial inclinations. One has the feel ing, reviewing the negative comments on Fitzgerald, that
the critics were attacking not so much the writer or his
writing, but the excesses, the ru:ie extrovertism, and the
mat e r i alism of the age itself, which, of course, were at
t he core of his writing.
Fi tzgerald was no longer criticized for a lack of
struct ure and form, for failure to grasp his theme, or for
irrelevant or flippant stylistic excesses. He was now
68
praised for his mastery or form, for the unity ot his ma
terial around a central theme, and ror a sharpness and
subtlety of style which had lost none of its charm, its
lyrical tone and beauty, but had gained compression and
emotional impact. More than this, the style was no longer
a tour de force created to exhibit shocking cleverness; 1t
had now united with the very essence of his theme and mat
ter. His writing was now praised, too, for 1ts serious
ness of purpose. He had begun to depict the spirit beneath
American J
1
~fe , " ••• to report on life in its most general
terms." He had taken" ••• a deeper cut at life" than
previously . He no longer was content merely to delineate
character from an external viewpoint, giving the impression
of having contrived the character to suit the cleverness of
plot or situation. Now he was probing deeply into his
characters ' inner lives, touching spiritual overtones. He
knew their "nerves" now, and their abnormal psychology.
He knew their spiritual anguish and their desperation.
Their pathetic struggles to find happiness often made them
"tragic comedians."
Several critics had reached the conclusion that
Fitzgerald's best writing was equal to or better than that
of any of his contemporaries. Many critics agreed that
The Great Gata~ was one of the masterpieces of American
69
f i ction, . or that this novel as as excellent as any other
work of the twentieth cent ury.
"I want to be one of t he greatest writera who ever
l i ved, don't you?" Fitzger ald had asked Edmtmd Wilson one
day when they were both at Princeton.31 If he had not
reached this goal by the end of 1926, ~ he was well along
the path of thos~ who strive . Wilson occasionally wrote
an article or essay attempting to evaluate Fitzgerald's
literary accomplishment . Displ aying a thorough under
standing of Fitzgerald' s social , . as well as his literary
personality, ilson wrote a witty imaginary conversation
between "Mr. Van Wyck Brooks and Mr . Scott Fitzgerald"
in April, 1924. With a perfectly controlled satiric
touch, Wilson poked fun at Fitzgeral d's foibles and lamen
ted the commercialism that was inf l uencing the younger wri
ters. Wilson had Fitzgerald say that"• •• the Younger
Generation never really became self-conscious before then
(jh1s Side of Paradise nor d i d the public at large become
conscious of 1t.u Discussing the popularity of the younger
writers, Brooks charged :
You have succumbed to a capitalistic civilization.
And it is difficult to see how you can atop. Are
• •
31 Arthur Mizener, "Scott Fi t zgerald and the Imagin
ative Possession of American Life, " The Sewanee Review,
54:70, 1946.
t here not publishers and editors to be kept alive?
••• You can at best, I fear , gain nothing but money
and a ho low popular reputation .
70
Brooks noted disapprovingly that even ins i ncer e stories
and unf i ni shed poems sold well . He lamented the book ad
vertis i ng system which made everyone an Anatole Franca . 32
The impli cation of this imaginary conversation certainly
was t hat Fitzgerald as not living up to his finest abili
ties, and this was partly due to his having sold himself
to t he money interests of publishing .
Some other noteworthy evaluations of Fitzgerald's
lite r ary career were made during the period being dis
cussed . Ernest Boyd, then one of the younger literary crit
ics , wrote an amusing report on Fitzgerald's social and in tellectual life in his Portraits: Real and Imaginari. Af ter having vividly described Fitzgerald's somewhat disjoin
ted but always gay social life in New York, Boyd commented
on t he farmer's intellectuality:
The truth is, Scott Fitzgerald is intensely preoccu pi ed with the eternal verities and the insoluble prob lems of this world ••• He is one of the few frivolous
people with whom one can be sure of having a seri ous
conversation.
Turni ng with a terse clarity to the literary mood of the
early twenties, Boyd wrote, "Where so many others are con-
32 Etlmund Wilson, "Imaginary Conversations . II : Mr .
Van yck Brooks and Mr . Scott Fitzgerald , u The New Re pub
lic, 38: 249-54, April 30, 1924.
sc1ous only of sex, he [}'itzgeralci] is conscious of the
soul."33
Paul Rosenfeld included an honest and searching
71
ssay on Fitzgerald 1n his book, Men Seen, a stw.y of
twenty-four modern authors published before the appearance
o The Great Gatsby . Rosenfeld felt that Fitzgerald wrote,
at heart, from the pure Joy of writing, and thus was a born
writer. Of his subject matter Rosenfeld wrote: "Not a con
temporary American senses as thoroughly in every fiber the
tempo of privileged post-adolescent America." Explaining
th9 thematic essence underlying this subject matter, the
critic stated that through Fitzgerald, "America is proven
the breeding ground of a kind of decay," a spiritual im
morality h1ch as" •• • a falling away from the ideal
spirit of life." Stylistically, Fitzgerald achieved a po
etic force from his material because he viewed all he saw
in the light of Europe's glamorous pa.st; he saw "beauty
through decay." His basic fault, Rosenfeld believed, was
that he missed the pathos in his material, because he
viewed it
0
••• from without. But he has never done what
the artist does: seen it from withih and without; and loved
it and judged it too . " Concluding his essay, Rosenfeld ex-
33 Ernest Boyd, Portraits: Real and Imaginary (New
York: George H. Doran Company, 1924), pp. 219-20.
72
pressed t he d sire to see Fitzgerald bre k away from his
mold and"• •• free himself of the compulsions of the civ
ilization in hich he grew.
0
34
In The Great ~ataby, Fitzgerald handled his material
both subjectively and objectively, working from a grasp of
the whole down to the delineation of the parts. 1th this
novel he reached the stature of the artist Rosenfeld had
defined.
Writing in 1926 on the modern novel, Elizabeth Dre
spoke of the increasing analysis of the meaning of life ev
ident in fiction, and of the sense of cotifusion that had
resulted. "This almost conscientious pessimism is the
•
cause of a certain heavy air of self-consciousness which
hangs over a good deal of the fiction of ••• Scott Fitzger
ald •••• "35 This comment on Fitzgerald as meant neither
to praise nor to criticize, but only to characterize the
nature of the trend of the modern novel.
With his increasing psychological insight into char
acter and situation, his heavier thematic problems, and his
polished style and technical virtuosity, Fitzgerald, by the
34 Paul Rosenfeld, Men Seen (New York: The Dial
Press, . 1925), pp. 215-26.
35 Elizabeth A. Drew, The Modern Novel (Ne York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1926), p.-138.
73
end of 1926, had achieved a substantial reputation as one
of the major writers of the decade, and one of the most
readable writers of the century.
CHAPTER IV
1927--1934: A REPUTATION SURPASSES WRITER
Further re-evaluations of
-
itzgerald'~ earlier work
and the critical recept on of "Teder Is the Night ... The
title of this chapter needs some amplification to avoid
creating a wrong impression of Fitzgerald's literary repu
tation during the period covered. It must not be thought
that the author' reputation continued to soar up ard from
its already high pos1tion at the end of 1926. Actually,
his reputation early retained its fairly solid footing on
the basis of what he had already written, while his liter
ary activity declined steadily. In this sense, Fitzgerald
permitted his reputation to surpass his literary productiv
ity. Except for the revie s of Tender Is the Night in 1934,
a negligible amount of critical material was written on
Fitzgerald between 1927 arid 1934, and in turn, :F'i tzgerald
produced nothing else to merit critical interest. Malcolm
Cowley wrote that from 1926 until 1931, Fitzgerald"• ••
was giving most of his time to shorter fiction."
1
The
latter managed to average about ten stories a year during
the whole period.
1 alcolm Cowley, editor, The Stories of!• Scott
Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951),
p. xxv.
75
The reasons for Fitzgerald's low level of literary
creativity, both qualitatively and quantitatively, during
this period have been carefully explained by Arthur Mizener
in his biography. Fitzgerald was caught 1n a destructive
web of personal conflicts and crises hich drained him of
his physical and emotional resources, brought his alcohol
ism to an acute stage, and resulted in his physical and
nervous breakdown in 1935, a collapse from which he never
fully recovered. According to Mizener, Fitzgerald had no
ticed the earliest stages of Zelda's growing insanity as
early as 1927. Zelda broke down completely in 1929, a vic
tim of a cyclical schizophrenia characterized by partial
short-term recoveries which raised their hopes, followed
by severe relapses that dashed Fitzgerald's hopes down
again and created an almost unbearable mental anguish.
Yet in spite of these handicaps, he managed to
make a home and a life for the three of them. He
was fighting to save Zelda and to save himself, for
the two things seemed to him 1nextricable.2
Financial difficulties were growing steadily worse, added
to by the economic circumstances of the depression. Not
only did his output of short stories decline, but their
sales value fell off considerably. In the face of these
continuing high odds against hie survival as a successful
2
Arthur Mizener, rh Far Side of Paradise, p. 222 .
----------
....
76
writer, Fitzgerald worked on Tender Is the Night with an
energy borrowed from eserve s nearing depletion. His des
perate hope was that this book would save him both finan
cially and artistically . The critical reception of thie
novel will be d1.scussed after a glimpse of two intervening
comments on Fitzgerald's earlier work.
Annie Russell Marble , in her 1928 study or the mod
ern novel, classified Fitzgerald , along with Dos Passos
and Hemingway, as an "exploratory novelist." She regarded
This Side of Paradise as
---------
••• a pioneer novel of revolt against the sentimental
camouflage of American colleges and universities. To
create a sensation it was exaggerated and cynical in
tone ••• The promise in Scott Fitzgerald's first novel
has not been fulfilled in any literary way, 1n The
Great Gatsby and other stories of Jazz indulgences.3
The observer here aligned her thinking with a small but
growing critical attitude which was in revolt against
revolt, as it were, and which was weary of the excesses of
the jazz age as reported in the new literature . The crit
ics who held this attitude did not consider the decade of
the twenties as suitable subject matter for literature of
high quality and serious purpose . These critics were ul
timately united under the banner of "The New Humanism," led
3 Annie Russell Marble,~ Study of the Modern Novel
(New York: D. Appleton Century Company, 1928), pp . 401-2.
by Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt.
Frederic Lewis Allen, in Only Yesterday. wrote of
This Side of Paradise, "The book caused a shudder to run
---
77
down t he national spin." He described Fitzgerald as an
accurate historian of the revolution in manners and morals
which was under way n 1920, and which was most clearly
re f lected in the ne sta us of young women, who had gained
a new social freedom from the old Victorian moral code.4
Tender Ia the Night was published serially in
.§_cribner's agaz1ne, beginning in December, 1933. Fitz er ald as working on the last installment of the magazine
version and the proofs for the forthcoming book simultane
ously early in 1934. He as able to give the book proofs
only the most cursory attention, since Zelda had grown
suddenly sicker and had to be confined in a sanitarium, and
then later in various hospitals in the East. The novel was
published April 12, 1934, and the sale of about 13,.000
copi es as a bitter disappointment.
up the critical reaction:
rthur 1zener summed
The reviewers, with one ear cocked for the dialectic
and the other for further evidences of the literary
gossip about Fitzgerald's disintegration, were mostly
superficial and unfriendly.5
4 Frederic Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday { ew York:
Harper and Brothers, 1931), p. 91.
5 rthur M1zener, £>.E• c1t., p. 238.
78
The critical reaction was not unified along any single
line, how ever. Some critics found in the book evidence of
even greater intellectual maturity and artistry in Fitz
gerald.
Mary M. Colum wrote an article on the new psycho
pathic novel, in which she compare Fitzgerald with Morley
C
-1, a.g,..a- and '1,., .a -- ''a--'- .. .a..,.,_ ..,.,__ , -t·--- ···- ~------- ·"'-g
ea. .1. u .u 1 n .1. ..1. .1. aw J!J. r ~ u , . w .1. 1., u " u.o .1. ~ "'o .L · "' w v ~ ~::n.a:; .J. v .J.. u
the worst of the compariaqn. Fitzgerald, Colum wrote,
••• has a far more varied talent and a brilliance
that has not dimmed. It simply has not grown more
profound, nor does it seem to have drawn any fresh
sustenance from life.
Tender Ia the Night was a more complex work, but it repre
sented" ••• too shallow a level of experiencee ••• " The
loose construction of the narrative did not conceal itz
gerald 'a
••• distinctive gifts--a romantic imagination, a style
that is often brilliant, a swiftness of movement, and a
sense of enchantment in people and places, ••• nearly
all his early faults remain ••••
The faults referred to were of characterization. Colum
felt that too many of his characters were contrived,
"prankish sophomores," or females who were "bright, brittle,
d
tt
an young. • • •
This critic felt that Fitzgerald had
succeeded most ably in creating the neurotic personality
in his nove1.6
6 Mary M. Colum, "The Psychopathic Novel," The
Forum, 91:219-23, April, 1934.
79
Amy Loveman reviewed the book for The Saturday Eve-
ning Post and concluded that it was
Disappointing ••• not only because it 1s not a good
novel, but because it shows flashes of excellence which
are disappointing, since Fitzgerald was unable to main
tain the story at its highest level.7
Henry Seidel Canby was all too aware of the dozens
o~ stylistic and grammatical errors in the text, errors
which ha not been caught, since the book had been pub
lished immediately aft er Fitzgerald's hasty approval of the
proofs~ Canby felt that Fitzgerald had worked with first
rate material but had lost his focus of the central theme
and plot. The book followed the lost generation through
to a second era, he rote . The theme, characterization,
and narrative all showed" • •• promise of a book of first
importance." As the narrative progressed, Fitzgerald lost
his grip on the theme , the characters changed, and the
focus of the plot shifted; also , " ••• the story rambles,
the style drops to the commonplace and even the awkward
and ungrammatical."
This book may be life ••• but it 1s not art ••• Any
second rate English society novelist could have written
this story better than Scott Fitzgerald, though not
one of them could have touched its best chapters.
Canby cited the opening chapters as being especially "bril-
7 Amy Loveman, "Books of the Spring," The Saturday
Revie of Literature, 10 :610 , April 7, 1934.
---------
liant." He then used Fitzgerald's perennial brilliance
and promise of great literature as a concrete basis for
accusing American novelists as roup of the
ft
••• con-
stant botching of the first rate.
11
8
80
Di playing a flair for the romantic phrase, Horace
Gregory, writing for the New York He~ald Tribune Books,
described the novel as "A Generation Riding to Romantic
Death." Gregory sensed a close relationship between Fitz
gerald and the protagonist, Dick Diver, ho possessed
"• •• an air of dangerous fatality •••• " The critic des
cribed the book as a story holding violence,
11
••• a gener
ation is riding to its death and is possessed by a romantic
will to die." The story was not great largely because the
characters were not convincing, especially Diver. Never
theless, "A number of isolated scenes in this novel have
extraordinary power." The narrative held ". • • terror
beyond death, that. • • will not soon be forgot ten." The
novel as a mature development in Fitzgerald's fiction,
since the latter had, in 1931,
11
••• said goodbye to those
post-
1
ar years on which he had set his trade-mark with the
name 'Jazz Age,' across the page."9
8 Henry-S. Canby, urn the Second Era of Demoraliza
tion," The Saturday Review of Literature, 10:630-31, April
14, 1934. -
9 Horace Gregory, "A Generation Riding to Romantic
81
The critic for The ew York Times was even less im
pressed, flatly calling the novel a disappointment, after
The Great Gatsby. "His ne book is clever and brilliantly
surfaced, but it is not the work o a ise and mature nov
elist~" he wrote. He was dissatisfied with the charac
terization of Nicole, who never fully developed as a per
son, and remained scarcely more than a case history. Fitz
gerald's sketching of the minor characters was more alive
and convincing, as as the whole social and physical back
ground of the story. Summing up hie total impression of
the novel, this critic wrote, " • Fitzgerald conveys
deftly and satirically the a mosphere of futility in which
his playboys and playgirls waste a ay their lives.ulO It
would seem that this critic overlooked one of the chief
conflicts of the novel, that of Nicole's struggle for an
independent personality, free from the way of life Dr. Div
er had imposed. Nicole comes brilliantly to life 1n the
closing chapters, as she ins this struggle at the tragic
expense of her husband's vitality, his career, and his
sustaining dream.
John Chamberlain, on the very next day, wrote quite
a different review of the book for the same paper He be-
Death," __ York Herald Tribune Books, April 15, 1934.
10 Book revie in The Ne York Times, pril 15, 1934,
p. 7.
82
ga11 with the rema k that "We" would rather have ritten
The Great atsbx than any other American novel of the twen
ties. Chamberlain was concerned lest Tender Is the Night
should prove to be a let-down. This fear was soon allayed.
"Mr. Fitzgerald has not forgotten his craftsmanship, his
marvelous sense of what might be called social cl mate, his
sheer wr ing ability," Chamberlain asaerte. He !elt that
the story was one hich might have occurred in any decade,
and that it was not merely a hangover from the lost genera
tion theme of the t enties. He pointed to a single large
fla, that of introducing Rosemary into the center of the
story and then dismissing her after her"• •• having star
ted a chain of developments." Chamberlain defended the
book from one attack repeated by several critics, that Dr.
Diver's spiritual collapse was not sufficiently motivated
or explained. "1th this e can't agree," Chamberlain
wrote, " ••• Mr. Fitzgerald proceeded accurately, step by
step, with just enough documentation to keep the drama from
being misty •••• " The c~itic felt that the study of
Diver's gradual disintegration was u ••• a suff1c1ent exer
cise in cause-and-effect. Compared to the motivation in
Faulkner, 1 t is logic personified. ull
Writing in The Nation a few weeks later, i1111am
11 Alfred Kazin, .2.E· cit., pp. 95-99, citing John
Chamberlain in The New York Times, April 16, 1934.
Troy, too, stressed the excellence of The Great Gatsby.
stating that Fitzgerald had revealed himself to be"• • • a
very distinguished artist." The tragic effect of Tender
Is the Night was lessened, however, because there was little
or no elevation of character to begin with, and, hence, no
true degeneration of character. None of the characters,
Troy felt, was mature. The reader was uncertain of the
basic cause of Diver's disintegration, since Fitzgerald
had never chosen the real reason. Troy suggested that the
destroying power of money--having too much of it ruins
character--may have been the reason. He also claimed that
the characterization of Diver was a basic weakness.
Dick Diver turns out to be another Jay Gatsby all
over again, another poor boy with a "heightened sen
sitivity to the promises of life" betrayed by his
own inability to make the right distinctions.
The reviewer concluded with the advice to Fitzgerald that
it was time for the latter to"• •• give us a character
who is not the victim of adolescent confusion •••• "12
According to Herschel Brickell, the "violent argu
mentsu going on about the novel among the critics were
proof of its "genuine i mportance." Brickell complimented
Fitzgerald 's consistent skill as a story-teller, declaring
12
W1111am Troy, "The Worm 1' the Bud," The Nation,
138:539-40, .. ay 9, 1934.
84
that he" •• • writes with consistent brilliance." s for
the d ominant mood of Tender Is the Night , ttThe spectacle
of t he utter disintegration of a group of people, if it is
bel i e ved at all, must be moving and saddening • • •• "
Bri ckell concltrled his review with one of the few compli
ments offered Fitzgerald as a writer competing with the
ne
,.: p--,-t-~•a- a-boo, -~ ·~
" .1·u .Lt: c:1,.1. · J. 11 \,; .L .L VJ. uu~
he asserted, as " ••• a novelist and a writer ••• and fe
enough of the people who turn out fiction are either . "13
"A whole class has flourished and decayed and sud
denly broken nto fragments," wrote Malcolm Cowley of Ten-
~er I s the Night in June, 934.
Tl1e book
as ". •
. a good
novel that puzzles you and ends by making you a little an
gry because it isn't a great novel aleo.
11
The story was
neither complete nor well unified, he felt. Fitzgerald re
vealed a split literary personality; he was the ttguest" at
the fine house party and also the objective observer stan
d i ng outside and looking in through the window. He could
not decide his point of view for his tragedy. Since the
book was written over a period of years, the original char
acters changed into other characters. In general, the main
characters were the same people Fitzgerald had always writ-
13 Herschell Brickell,
0
The Literary Landscape," The
orth American Review, 237:569-70, June 1934.
85
ten about, the r cher members of his own generation . "He
followed them through college days to business and finan
cial life ••• " and then on into their years of exile .
Summing up his impression of the who e work, Cowley wrote
that"• •• it has a richness of meaning and emotion.
• •
There is nothing false or borrowed." Fitzgerald had said
To this
Cowley replied, "I hope he changes his mind . He has in him
at least one great novel about them, and it is a novel I
would like to read."~4 Cowley as most insistent that once
Fitzgerald achieved a consistent and objective point of
view toward his characters, his ork would pass from the
stage of brilliant e position to lasting greatness in terms
of theme and structure. Fitzgerald lived too closely with
his characters and too close to the heart of his work to
achieve the artist's ideal clarity of vision.
C. Harley Grattan saw the work of a mature thinker
and artist in Tender Is the Night. "Fitzgerald has grown
s eadily and now definitely promises to emerge as one of
the really important interpreters of the upper middle class
of our time." Expressing a view 1n direct contrast to al
colm Cowley's, Grattan pointed to a basic change in Fitz-
14 Malcolm Cowley, "Books in Review," The Tew Re:[?ub lic, 79:105-6, June 6, 1934.
., ••>.._, .... u •• •-.~_,l,.. ,...,.,..,.._,. .. ,.,...,.:.,,.,." ,_,,.•-•• ~ .,.,. '-•-, - ,,..,,.., ~.,,.,._ ,...,..,, •• .,,.,,._.,,.._,.,
.
86
gerald'a approach to h1s material, in that the author could
now stand back of the seen s to observe obJec ively rather
than directly participate in his story. Grattan saw in the
story of the Divers an e tended meaning, a "larger purpose
• •
.symbolic reflection of a larger corruption."15
It can be seen that Tender Is the Night was an im-
vreasive ··ork to man
3
of the crit ... cs, and that the chief
disappointment expressed wa that the book barely missed
being a great work and a major novel because of various
underlying faults of characterization or of the plan of the
whole structure. Fitzgerald was later to attempt a re
construction of the structure and a revision of smaller
details of the whole text, in an effort to Justify to him
self, the critics, and his public , the years of intense and
often agonizing labor he spent on what he considered to be
his largest and finest work. He never completely finished
his revision, but under the editorship of ~alcolm Cowley
a revised edition as published by Scribner's in 1951.
Summary of the changes in literary an£ social atti
tudes underlying the decline of critical interest in Fitz
gerald . The to stages of Fitzgerald's exile from the
1
5 Alfred Kazin, 2£• cit., pp. 104-7, citing a re
vie by C. Harley Gratta11 1n The Modern Monthly, July,
1934.
87
social and 1 terary cene during the late t enties and ear ly thirties have already been mentioned. His years 1n
France and travelling in Western Europe were not produc
tive from a 11 te1·ary viewpoint. His single large accom
plishment was the developmer1 of the several versions of
what was to become Tender l! the Night. His relative iso
lation after his return to the United States was caused by
his complete involvement, mentally and emotionally, 1n the
tragedy of Zelda's illness. His personal concern and sense
of personal responsibility were lmoat overpowering. His
own rapidly developing exhaustion prevented the fullest
exercise of his creative power. In one sense, Tender Is
----
the Night 1s a monument to the man's genius and endurance.
That the novel was not a great success during the
thirties, aside from the conditions already examined, can
be partially explained. Perhaps it presented all too
clearly and awfully the pattern of hopeless failure and
personal disintegration which had so recently gained a lu
rid prominence before the eyes of a fearful nation. The
Great Depression was a dismal reality, and a literature of
pessimism and defeat did not supply the national need for
a cathartic, or, at least, a change of mood and a new
dream. Randall Stewart, 1n reviewing the chief trends 1n
American literature between the two great are, wrote that
88
the dominant mood was pessimistic, and that it grew in
creasingly "negative and despairing." With the literature
of the early thirties, the feeling of the growing help
lessness and hopelessness of the individual loomed large.
"The new physics gave the impression to the lay mind that
the universe is somehow doomed," Stewart wrote. The
"wreckage of the war" a.nd the r1 sing tide of cr1.t cism of
American economic and social life increased this mood of
pess i mism .
1
6 The theme and the subject matter of Tender Is
th~ Night were rooted 1n the center of upper middle class
life . The growing social and economic uncertainty and in
security of this class provided ample subject matter for
the pessimistic criticism Randall Stewart analyzed in the
article cited above . Thus, Tender Is the Night was actu
ally on the fringe of the mainstream of fiction. Never
theless, the brooding melancholy and final despair of the
novel did not at this time excite critical or popular res
ponse.
Charles Gray Shaw pointed out that with the advent
of the thirties , a new seriousness of mind and purpose was
developing among the young men 1n this country. College
enrollment had trebled from 1919 to 1930 and students were
16 Ran all Stewart, "American Literature Between the
are," South Atlantic guarterly, 44:371-83, October, 1945.
89
more serious, possessing a new social consciousness as they
faced the real probl ms of unemployment and deflation . 17
That part of the literature which took an honest grip of
these problems found a responsive audience, especially
among the younger men. Fitzgerald's writing was never a
part of this new school of social thought, and thus it was
not a part of a developing and dynamic new trend in ii~er·a
ture .
Leo Gurko has r1tten what 1s perhaps the fullest
treatment of the literature and underlying social impulses
Harbor. Gurko felt that John Steinbeck was the representa
tive writer of the proletarian thirties. "The two basic
impulses of the thirties, toward escape and toward social
consciousness, found their sharpest expression 1n the writ ing of John Steinbeck," Gurko wrote. This critic further
analyzed the proletarian school of writing, which tended
to make epic heroes of workers and to show the inevitable
struggle between labor and management. The appeal of this
literature was to a middle class audience, while its sub
ject matter focused upon" ••• every variety of trade and
17 Charles Gray Shaw, Trends of Civilization and
Culture ( ew York: American Book Company, 1932), p . 622 .
90
craft in the American economy. r, Fitzgerald was not to
accept a basic economic theme for a major literary effort
until he began work on The Last Tycoon, the actual writing
of which was begun in the closing months of his life, when
a new decade of war was gathering its explosive power.
Although the economic struggles of the thirties were
main literary direction, largely because he did not have
the physical and nervous energy necessary to participate.
Still, he was part of the large literary pattern of the
early thirties from the v ewpoint of Gurko's description of
that pattern:
The stagnation into which America had passed during the
early thirties sho ed up more plainly 1n some places
••• and there were lite.rary chroniclers on hand to
study 1ta effects on the people who lived there •••
Writers all over merica, proletarian and sophisticate,
employing the old methods of fiction or the new stream
of consciousness, were hacking away at the successive
waves of wreckage beached~ the ori inal crisis since
1914 Q.taiice not in the original •
Writers such as Faulkner and Farrell wrote of the American
scene, of the social decay" ••• that overtook the slums
of the big cities and the perishing villages of the deep
south.
ttl8
• • •
Fitzgerald's concern in Tender Is the
N1gh1 was with the restless instability and the moral decay
18 Leo Gurko, The Angry Decade (New York: Dodd, ea.d.
and Company, 1947), 30bpp.
91
of American wanderers in Europe, part of the "wreckage"
of 1914 .
Another chief cause of the decline of critical in
terest i n Fitzgerald after 1927 can be traced to a move
ment of reaction among several of the critics of the late
twenti~a . These critica sought a return to conservative
stqnd~.ras i n their search for literary value.
of the cri t ics were reacting against the "new style" and
the "younger generation" could be seen as early as 1927.
Frank Swinnerton com plained in The Saturday Review of Lit
erature that "Literature is no longer a labor of love. It
is a fashion ; and it is a career." Narcissism reigned, he
felt, and writers were writing of themselves and picturing
their own small struggles rather than the larger conflicts
around them . 19 Paul Elmer M ore admitted only Dreiser and
Anderson to the honor of being great novelists in the real
istic manner , and he recognized only Cabell as a great
"aesthete . "
2
0 G r anvil le Hicks, writing in 1930, complained
that during the twenties t here had been little in the field
of the novel" ••• t o w hich we can point with pride ... There
19 Frank Swi nnerton, "The Younger Generation," The
Saturday Review of Literature, 4:421-22, December 10, 1927.
20 Paul Elmer M ore, "The Modern Current 1n American
Literature," The Forum, 79:127-36, January, 1928.
-- ---
92
had been no real "renaissance" in American literature after
all, and" ••• today we listen to wails of despair ••
• •
ti
Hicks admitted that the twenties were promising on the ba
sis of the good literature produced, but the writers of
that decade had failed to develop.
21
Filith Wharton, in
1934, attacked the trend of the easy commercial success won
by writers who habitually followed mere whim and taste from
year to year. Great literature was not being produced, she
felt, because writers lacked psychological insight into
their characters' personalities, and people who were inter
esting, real, and complex were not to be found in the lit
erature of that time.22
Alfred Kazin, in his book, On Native Grounds, looked
___ , _
back upon the trends in literary criticism of the thirties.
Certain of his views help to make clear why a work so rich
as Tender Is the Night failed to impress the critics at the
time. After 1930 criticism took on a distinct new charac
ter, according to Kazin. This change was revealed in
ti
• •
.the remarkable intensity and narrowness with which it
gave itself over entirely to the subject of contemporary
21 Granville Hicks , "The Twenties in American Liter
ature," The Nation, 130:183-85, February 12, 1930.
22 Eiith Wharton, "Tendencies in Modern Fiction,"
The Saturdar Review of Literature, 10:433-34, January 27,
1934.
93
crisis." The ne movemen in criticism d1d not merely dis
cuss l iterary values in relation to social cond tions, but
If
• •
.it became a search for fulfillment by the word, of a
messianic drive toward social action bent on liberation by
conquest and extermination." This new criticism represen
ted an extreme leftist view, a Marxist view of literature.
ond extreme po on as ormed at the same t me and
,
was held by a group of literary scholars whom Kazin cal ed
"Formalists." These critics based their literary judgments
entirely upon esthet1c values derived from a study of tex
tual evidence alone, especially in the case of poetry. Ka
zin concluded that both oft ese extremist positions became
narrow and intolerant cults. The middle position was best
r epresented by the criticism of Edmund ilson, who followed
a saner and more liberal view, studying 11 terature in rela•
tion to its historical basis and to problems of civiliza
tion. Wilson did not associate with any special cause or
doctrine. s a modernist and a scholar, he represented
the ideal school of literary cr1t1c1sm.23
That Tender Is the Ni5ht, with its absence of arxist
proletarian struggle or "message," its frequent sloppiness
and textual errors, and its loose structure, should fail to
2
3 Alfred Kazin, On ative Grounds (New York: Reynal
and Hitchcock, 1942), pp:-400-52.
94
impress either of the two extremist groups of critics re
ferred to by Kazin, does not seem unreasonable.
Fitzgerald's place 1n the general l iterary discus
sions of the period from 1927 to 1934. Aside from the re-
views and comments already mentioned , almost nothing was
written about Fitzgerald during the period concerned . By
1934 his reputation as a serious writer of major impor
tance was clearly threatened, not by any combination of
critical disfavor and evidence, but by the lack of critical
interest in his work. As an example of this "negative evi
dence" which reveals the changed state of his reputation ,
Harry Hartwick's The Fo eground .Q_ ction 1s typ-
ical. This work purported to examine" ••• the forces and
fashions, literary creeds, technical experiments--and social
trends ••• " reflected in the American novel from Stephen
Crane to Dorothy Canfield and William Faulkner. Fitzgerald
received only two extremely short , perfunctory references ,
and these were in connection with 1920 and the "Jazz
Age."24
In a review of t he literary twenties , ark Van Doren ,
in 1928, listed the great names of the novel , including
24 Harry fartw1ck, The Foreground of American Fic
tion ( ew York: American Book Company , 1934) .
95
Upton Sinclair, Zona Gale, and James Branch Cabell . Yet ,
Van Doren claimed the dec~de " ••• belongs to those who
are finding themselves in it." This latter group included
Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Dos Passos.25
A part of the great vogue during the twenties for
statistical studies and rating scales, "American 1~0 el1sts
Ranked," a study by Jor.u1 .f. Stalnaker and Fred Fggan in
1929, found a specific critical niche for Fitzgerald .
group of thirty-one critics (many others had refused to
participate) was selected to rank the"• •• outstanding
contemporary A m erican novelists." The critics included
both sexes and were representative of the newspaper, maga
zine, university, and other fields. A long list of con
temporary novelists were ranked by these critics by means
of an independent scoring system. The authors were divided
into ten large classes or ranks, and a composite table of
the rankings was published. The criterion of selection was
evidence of "literary merit," acco ing to the individual
critic's Judgment of what that term was composed of. Fitz
gerald was placed in group five, the result of a fairly
uniform agreement among the twenty-eight critics who rated
him. If the "best" novelists were given a grade of "A", ·
25 Mark Van Doren, "This Decade," The English Jour
nal, 17:101-8, February, 1928.
96
Fitzgerald would thus have scored a "C".26
Vernon Louis Parrington reserved a few sharp epi
t hets for Fitzgerald 1n his Main Currents in American
Thought. Parrington placed Fitzgerald in a class of writ
ers which he termed "Youth in Revolt." Thia group, he not-
ed,
,Jg Cl ff
;-;_,..., . .
.quicY to espouse new causes; enthusiastic for
revolt a.s a profession~ " The gl!'oup had not "as yet" done
anything seriously creative. Turning directly to Fitzger
ald, Parrington wrote:
A bad boy who loves to smash things to show how
naughty he is; a bright boy who loves to say smart
things to show how clever he is. Precocious, igno
rant--a short candle already burnt out.27
Another stat1st1 a study, th s one by Irving H.
Hart of the most popular fiction works of the post-war
period, has already been mentioned.28 Published in 1933,
this study named the books of highest popularity, based on
popular demand and measured by statistical summaries of
26 John.M. Stalnaker and Fred :Eggan, "American Nov
elists Ranked ,
11
The Englisp. Journal, 18:295-307, April,
1929.
27 Vernon Louis Parrington , The Beginnings of Criti-
cal Realism i n America . Vol. III. Main Currents
Tho1ryht, 3 vols. {New York : Harcourt, Brace and
1930, p . 386. (Parrington placed Ben Hecht in
group, another "burnt out" writer. Floyd Dell,
felt, was abler t han Stephen Vincent Benet, but
were shallo and of no consequence.)
28 Irving H. Hart , supra.
in American
-----
Company,
this same
Parrington
both writers
97
booksellers from 1919 to 1932. The most popular hundred
books were listed, comparing the rankings for each year
with the rank for the whole period of the study and also
for a larger period, that of from 1895 to 1932. This study
incluied no work of Fitzgerald's, but it did incluie novels
by such contemporaries as Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway , Pearl
Buck, and Thornton Wilder. The list also incluied certain
names which might well prove to be obscure to the present
generation of stu1ents of American literature. Names such
as Curwood, Keable, Train, Barnes, and Morgan would stimu
late few associations in the young literary mind of today.
~ Farewell to Arms ranked fourth for the year 1929, and
sixty-fourth for the thirteen-year period, but it did not
appear at all in the thirty-seven-year stuiy. The Good
Earth was first in the thirteen-year study and second in
the thirty-seven-year stuiy.
Fitzgerald's literary reputation, if considered at
all by the critics during the period under discussion, was
usually seen in retrospect. He was the writer who had giv
en the jazz age its name, the writer who had best described
the flaming youth of one decade. With the passing of that
decade, it was felt by many, Fitzgerald's subject matter
and his raison d'etre had also passed. From this point of
view, his contribution to literature was already regarded
98
as being antique, and his possibilities as a writer during
the thirties, practically non-existent . A few critics in
sisted that Tender Is the Night had revealed Fitzgerald's
new leve l of maturity, both as a literary historian and a
craftsman. These few believed that he had within his power
further literature of first importance to offer the Ameri
can reading public. Their faith in Fitzgerald was not
wrongly placed. It as his physical powers, rather than
his imaginative genius, which finally deserted him and pre vented his realizing a literature the power and maturity of
which time permitted hi only to suggest rather than ful
fill.
CHAPTER V
1935-1944: THE YEARS OF CRITICAL DECLINE
The conditions underlying the further decline of
Fitzgerald 's literary reputation, and the critical recap-
ton o The obstacles which confronted
Fitzgerald, threatening personal disintegration and artis
tic oblivion, only gr ew more fearful during 1934 and 1935.
The problem of earning enough money to support his family
through his writing was growing acute. There was no thought
of earning money for luxuries and excesses. It was probab
ly this financial factor more than any other which finally
forced Fitzgerald to go to Hollywood in 1937. Zelda's con
dition was growing slowly worse , with her recoveries more
widely spaced and more definitely partial. From about 1934
the two actually lived separate lives. Although Fitzgerald
resisted it , his alcoholism was both chronic and deep-seat
ed by 1935, and he was subject to periods of nervous insta
bility and emotional depression . An old tubercular condi
tion finally became aggravated early in 1935, drawing heav
ily upon his slight reserve of physical strength. His
physical collapse was inevitable, and it was during 1935
that he realized how close he was to a complete am lasting
breakdown . Arthur M izener has pointed out that one of the
100
worst effects of this breakdown was the blow to Fitzger ald's morale, h1s fundamental belief in his own creative
powers •
1
oat of this evidence was set down by Fitzgerald
1n his ttcrack-up" articl, .. s for Esquire, written at the end
of 1932.
2
He beca e increasingly absorbed with the analy
sis of hie crack-up and the attempt to adjust to his al-
tered physical condition, which ta.s to
his physical, mental, and social activity for the rest of
his life. "Pasting It Togetheru became the main theme of
the several short stories and realistic character sketches
he attempted during the next few years. His writing came
in short spurts, and he seemed unable to channel his crea
tive energy along a large, sustained pattern. Many of his
shorter pieces ere rejected, while those which ere sold
e rned the lowest prices of Fitzgerald's career.
Early in 1935, before his breakdown, he had worked
with Maxwell Perkins in collecting a group of stories for
Taps at Reveille, hich was published in February of that
year. This collection included some of his best work, moat
of it written between 1928 and 1932. A few of the stories
revealed his absorption in the physical and nervous deteri-
1 Arthur Mizener, 2.E• cit., pp. 252-62.
2 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-up (Edmund ilson,
editor, Ne York: e Directions, 1945), pp . 69-84.
101
oration which had been rapidly indicating his collapse.
According to Mizener, "The book sold only a few thousand
copiea ."3 It attracted scant critical notice, and those
revi ewers who paused to comment on Fitzgerald, wrote in a
mood of funereal retrospect. Fitzgerald seemed a ghost
from another age, wandering through the thirties without
much ~rasn of the altered realitv of American life. His
- . ~
subject matter was seen as a faded recall of the once
bright phantasmagoria of the "Jazz Age," an extension of
the manners and mores of that era.
Taps at Reveille held memories of the "Great Kissing
Era" and of "flaming youth" of the twenties, according to
Elizabeth Hart , writing for the New York Herald Tribune.
Much of the collection of stories showed Fitzgerald in a
transitional mood , however, since he had made use of new
materials and ideas among the old. The stories were valid
studies of their times, since Fitzgerald could "now" see
the past " . • .in the li ght of the present ." The reviewer
suggested that in the future Fitzgerald should write about
the people he knew, and that he should interpret them
"• •• in full relation to the contemporary scene."4 Thia
3 Arthur Mizener, 2.£• cit., p. 258 .
4 Elizabeth Hart, "F. Scott Fitzgerald, Looking
Backward,' New York Herald Tribune Books, March 31, 1935,
p . 4.
102
review might be interpreted as a challenge to Fitzgerald to
accept a theme based upon the social and economic conditions
of the thirties, using characters who were basically in volved in these conditions.
Ed.1th alton revie ed the book for The ew York
Times and commented on the publisher's claim that Fitzger
ald had chosen his best stories from tne previous decade .
"It is a curious and rather disturbing admission ••• from
a writer of Scott Fitzgerald's stature . " The critic felt,
too, that Fitzgerald's usual brilliance too often" •
• •
splutters off ••• into mere razzle-dazzle." He frequently
had very little to say, and Tap~ at Reveille" • •• is simp
ly not good enough," considering Fitzgerald's ability .
It has become a dreadful commonplace to say that Mr .
Fitzgerald's material 1s rarely worthy of his talents .
Unfortunately ••• the platitude represents the truth .
Scott Fitzgerald's mastery of style ••• is so complete
that even his most trivial efforts are dignified by his
technical competence.5
Scarcely bothering to review either the book as a
whole or any of the stories in it, T. s. Matthews struck
directly at Fitzgerald with an exaggerated sarcasm 1n his
review for The aw Republi,2.. Taps at Reveille was
11
• • . a
collection of avo ed pot-boilers." As for Fitzgerald,
ft
• •
. he signs his moniker to all and sundry, and even col-
5 ID:iith Walton "Scott Fitzgerald's Tales,u The New
York Times Book Review, arch 31, 1935, p . 7.
103
lects t he offerings of his lower nature in a book." Mat
thew s t hen proceeded to attack the artistic immorality to
be fo und in Fitzgerald's writing for the commercial market.
Turni ng finally to the book itself, the critic concluded
that al l of the characters were similar in that they longed
for maturity and could not find it; "• •• in their middle
thirti es t hey are hurt and puzzled children.
11
6 This re
view was perhaps the harshest and most hostile that Fitz
gerald had yet received. It would seem that this attack
contained m or e than mere critical disapproval of Fitzger
ald's use of story material, in that Matthews was hinting
at a baseness of character in the author as a person. Per
haps somethi ng of the desperateness of Fitzgerald's personal
situation had communicated itself to the reviewer through
certain of the l at er stories of the collection.
An earnestly written and well-balanced review of the
book was written by W illiam Troy for The Nation. Troy sug
gested that Fi tzgerald's main concern with his characters
was to show them in a search for "'the perfect life.'" In
this sense they all showed" ••• a common effort at regen
eration . " The author's method of depicting character was
ff
• •
. the arrangement of experience accord i ng to some
~ T. s. M atthews, "Taps at Reveille," The New Repub
lic, 82:262 , April 10, 1935.
104
scheme of developing moral action." His concern with moral
conflict and crisis gave his stories, even the weaker ones,
a continuing interest. Enlarging upon this idea, Troy sug
gested the underlying vein of thought and vision which
Fitzgerald needed to make his fiction truly memorable.
The moral interest in all these stories is acute, but
the moral vision is vague and immature. If r. Fitz
ge.ald could enlarge his vision to correspond to his
interest, he would do much ••• for the amelioration
of current American fiction wr1ting.7
Henry Seidel Canby and Alfred Dashiell considered
one of the stories from this collection, "Babylon Revisit
ed," to be sufficiently worthy to include in their repre
sentative anthology of contemporary short stories, A Study
of the Short Story1 published in 1935. Looking back over
the previous decade, Canby wrote that Fitzgerald's Tales of
the Jazz Age had given a name to the period. In 1934 had
come "Babylon Revisited," the story which marked the "fan
tastic end" of the era . Canby recalled the new developments
in the short story which had come during the twenties.
These new trends were to be found in autobiography written
along sociological and psychological lines. Fitzgerald's
stories were, in many cases, representative of the new short
7 William Troy, "The Perfect Life," Th~ Nation,
140:454-56, April 17, 1935.
105
fiction .a With this review, Canby had limited the impor
tance of Fitzgerald's short fiction tc the social history
and literary experimentation of the twenties. In terms of
literature , Fitzgerald had both opened and closed this era.
Taps at Reveille received less critical attention
than any of Fitzgerald's earlier books. The comments it
did receive ranged in tone from bored indifference to flat
distaste . Yet, as with the earlier works, the critics were
impressed with one element or another of Fitzgerald's tech
nique , his gifted style or his power of creative invention.
Malcolm Cowley summed up the critical reaction to Taps at
Reveille with the single statement that the book was" • ••
underestimated by the reviewers.
0
9
Further evaluations of Fitzgerald's place in Ameri
can literature, to the time of his death. Even though
Fitzgerald 's literary reptitation, so far as wide popular ap
peal and critical interest were concerned, declined steadily
during the thirties , it did not sink into a complete eclipse
8 Henry Seidel Canby and Alfred Dashiell,~ Stud} of
the Short Story (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935,
p . 81 .
9 F. Scott Fitzgerald , The Stories of F. Scott Fitz
gerald (Malcolm Cowley, editor, New York:Charles Scrib
ner's Sons , 1951) , p. xxiii.
106
at any time during the period. Whereas the critics for the
large circulation magazines and newspapers showed little
or no interest in Fitzgerald, other critics, writing liter
ary history and interpretation, revealed increasing inter
est in him as one of the chief post-war writers.
Harlan Hatcher, in his 1935 study of the modern Amer-
suggesting that they were closely similar in their aims and
techniques. Hatcher saw the two writers as linked to the
single short era in hich they had written.
Floyd Dell and F. Scott Fitzgerald are not great in
the total sweep of humane letters, but they are both
vivid figures ••• and they are significant in the cre
ation of the American novel which has int rpreted for
us the age in which we live.
Hatcher felt that Fitzgerald's characters were not truly
great because they were" ••• hard and cold ••• flippant
and blase ••• 'problem children' ••• they are self-centered
individualists." Of This Side of Paradise, Hatcher wrote:
---------
It is difficult to read the novel now, and after the
revolution in conventions since the War one is amazed
to recall the stir it made in 1920 ••• It was • •• ul
tra-modern in technique, utilizing the impressionistic
style then in its first flavor.
The novel had enjoyed its long success largely because its
interest was historical, and it offered a challenge to pre
vailing social conditions.
"In The Beautiful and Damned," Hatcher wrote,
107
" ••• the despairing mood ••• had grown sharper and more
brittle." In this sense Fitzgerald's second novel was
merely an extension of hia first.
Hatcher considered The Great Gatsby to be the best
of the novels, since it transcended a single era and place.
This work
••• has some qualities that survive the period. Its
pace and drive, its proportion and firmness of struc
ture, its vividness of character-drawing, its feeling
for rhythm, its mastery of the material ••• combine
to give this novel an tmcommon distinction.
The critic felt that this book was one of the outstanding
American novels of the century. During the late twenties,
he wrote , the "-vein" of younger generation material"• ••
ran out on both Floyd Dell and F. Scott Fitzgerald without
enlarging their stature much beyond the limits set by their
first novels .u
Tender Is the Nigh~, Hatcher claimed, dealt with the
n ••• same maladjusted lot with whom he had dealt in the
twenties. • • • " Al though the critic found many evidences
of good writing in this novel, he believed that Fitzgerald
did not ". •
novel form ."
.add to his importance in this return to the
In formulating his conclusions as to the permanent
values of the works of both Dell and Fitzgerald to Ameri
can literature, Hatcher pointed to a basic lack of vision
108
which he felt both writers shared, and which would limit
the continuing importance of their writings. He concluded
that they
11
••• lacked the permanent searching of the soul
which makes one generation read another's novels."10
Hatcher's prediction that the value of Fitzgerald's
works would be limited to a single generation was to some
extent a mistake. The proof of this error will be seen
only as future generation of critics and readers continue
to look back upon the literature of the past. The impor
tance of Fitzgerald's work to the generation of the Second
World ar is discussed later.
Mark Sullivan's historicel study of the first quar ter of the present century, Our Times , frequently referred
to Fitzgerald as a social historian of the twenties . In
The Twenties, the volume published in 1935, Sullivan wrote
of This Side of Paradise, "It was a curiously chaotic and
formless novel, with almost every fault except lifeless
ness."11 Sullivan tended to align his comments on Fitz gerald with the genera consensus of critical opinion of
the twenties.
10 arlan Hatcher, Creating the Modern merican Nov
el (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1935), pp. 74- 81 .
-
11 Mark Sullivan, The Twenties (vol. VI, Our Times,
The United States 1900-1925, 6 vols .; ew York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1935), p. 386.
109
Books and Battles, Irene and Allen Cleaton's 1937
study of the literary twe .. tiea, praised. Fitzgerald 1n the
glo ing terms which had been so familiar a decade earlier:
••• with the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925
Fitzgerald definitely left the ranks of the experi
menters, the bright young men ••• and gave us a mature,
well-constructed, and evenly written novel.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
For once a novel dAserved the super attv t -
viewers. Gatsby is a thrillingly beautiful book, and
it at once joined Mrs. Eli1th Wharton's Ethan Frome
and Hergeshe1mer's Linda Condon among the great fiction
works of our literature.
The Cleatons asserted that with this novel, Fitzgerald left
,,.
the " ••• poses, limitations, and naivet of the post- ar
generatioijJ behind him.
11
12
Under the editorship of Malcolm Co .ley, After the
Genteel Tradition, published in 1937, was concerned with
outstanding American writers from 1910 to 1930, beginning
with Dreiser and ending with Thomas Wolfe. Many of our
leading literary cr1t1cs, writers such as Hamilton Basso,
John Chamberlain, Robert Cantwell, Lionel Trilling, Newton
•
Arvin, and Louis Kronenberger, contributed chapters to this
work. Peter Munro Jack, in his chapter, "The James Branch
Cabell Period, u claimed that The Great ~a.tsby was
0
the
great legend" of the twenties. "Here for a moment is the
dream of the decade come true ••• The dream ended in death
and disenchantment, as 1 t was bound to end." The dream
12 Irene and llen Cleaton, Qll.
__._ __ t., p. 233.
110
G a t sby represented was in turn symbolic of a larger dream,
a way of life, at the center of which lay the economic and
s oci al pulses and impulses of the age itself. Jack be
lieved hat t he lack of a mature, guiding hand and a help
ful critical tutelage prevented Fitzgerald from achieving
artistic and t hematic greatness in a story of such large
p opo tons as Tender Is the Night. This novel, he wrote,
showed
••• how badly Fitzgerald was served by his contempo
raries. H ad his extraordinary gifts met with an early
astringent criticism and a decisive set of values, he
might very well have become the Proust of his genera
tion i nstead of the desperate sort of Punch that he
is .13
H b t J . Mu l er, in Modern Fiction:! Stuiy of
Values, anothe r critical volume of this year, gave scant
attention to Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby, he wrote,
" ••• is on the w hol e honestly, brilliantly done. Similar
in technique to t he novels of Conrad.
• • •
When Tender
Is the Night appeared in a new social age, however, Fitz
gerald" • •• sounded like a hollow echo." The book was
" •• • a quite ord i nary novel." Summarizing Fitzgerald's
contribution to l iterature in the most general terms, Mul
ler wrote that" ••• if much of his work is as ephemeral
13 Malcol m Cowley, editor, After the Genteel Tradi
tion (New York : w . w. Norton and Company, Inc., 1937),
p. 153 .
111 .
as its material, the best of it outlives its period." M - ul
ler believed Hemingway to be the"• •• most brilliant an~
original artist" of the lost generat1on.14
John Peale Bishop, who had known Fitzgerald during
their early days at Princeton, recalled certain social and
literary members of the twenties in a familiar essay, "The
1sa1ng Al," written in 1937. Fitzgerald had captured much
of the twenties in Tender Is the Night, Bishop felt.
It is an uneven and at times unnecessarily romantic
book; ·yet, crowded with incident, it is as complete
a record as any yet written of the discordant doings
of Americans abroad 1n that decade.15
Bishop, along with several other critics, saw Fitzgerald
as a romant c figure, dramat ca ly recording the social
history of his own times within a realistic frame of refer-
ence.
Harold E. Stearns, who had himself played a part in
the new intellectual liberalism of the post-war era as
thinker, writer, editor, and exile, looked back over the
same era in his 1938 critical study, America Now. Stearns
commented on Van Wyck Brooks' analysis of the state of lit
erature which had appeared in the 1922 symposium, Civiliza-
14 Herbert J. Muller, Modern Fiction: A Stu~* of Val
ues (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1937), pp. 3 -95.
15 John Peale Bishop, "The Missing All," The Virginia
Quarterly Review, 13:106-21, Winter, 1937.
112
t1on 1n the United States. Brooks had shown a gloomy at-
-- - -- ---- ----
t1tude toward any new growth in literature. Sinclair Lewis,
Eugene O'Neill, and Fitzgerald were then beginners, wrote
Stearns, " ••• and as time went on these men seemed to have
staying qualities." The thirties had brought a changed
situation, however, in that it produced no great writers,
nor did it bring any to the foreground. The literature of
the thirties seemed shallow because of a lack of genuine
social consciousness. In terms of the ind1v1dua.l con
science and philosophy, all was uncertainty, and this un
settled and unsure state of mind was commtmicated to the
11terature.16
Henry Seidel Canby had earlier pictured a similar
condition of both the individual and the national state of
mind. He had felt a growing nervousness, a mental unrest
in the Western world, resulting in a race forward to an un
certain future. Fear was a keynote of the literature; fear
of war, of the break-up of democracy, and of the end of
capitalism. The new notes sotmded in the literature were of
brutality and terror, and Hemingway, Farrell, O'Hara, and
Robinson Jeffers were the chief voices of the time. When
the state of mind of the thirties was properly sensed, one
16 Harold E. Stearns, America Now (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1938), pp. 35-7.
•
113
realized that "The heart of the thirties beats in our liter
ature.1117 Canby might well have included Fitzgerald as one
of the representative writers of the thirties, since the
latter had so vividly expressed the "growing nervousness"
and "mental unrest," as well as the personal sense of inse
curity of that era in Tender Is the Night. Even the pos-
sible extensions of fascist brutality and terror were at
least touched upon in this novel.
The very neat and shallow minor pattern within the
story of American literature which was assigned to Fitz
gerald fairly consistently by 1940, was plainly evident in
Fred B. Millett's brief critical summary of Fitzgerald's
short stories in Contemporary American Authors. Fitzger
ald's stories were"• •• more significant for their social
than for their aesthetic values ••• slightly lurid tales
of the post-war jazz age."18
Fitzgerald's period of obscurity. After the publica
tion of Taps at Reveille, Fitzgerald published nothing more
in book form during the remaining few years of his life. So
far as the booksellers' market was concerned, Fitzgerald's
books were soon considered "dated," with the sale of his
works declining steadily to an almost negligible figure.
18 Fred B. Millett, Contemporary American Authors
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940), p. 91.
114
Accordin to a statement from Charles Scribner's Sons, how
ever, Fitzgerald has never been completely out of print .
At his death in 1940, only The Beautiful and Damned was out
of print. This Side of P radise and The Vegetable ent out
of print in 1941; Tender Is the Night and Flappers and Phi
loaophe s, in 1942. A few new copies of Taps~~ Reveille,
Tales of tne Jaz ge, aud 11 vhe Sad Young Aen were sold
as late as 1947. The original tr de edition of The Great
Gatsby lasted until 1945, but the novel itself has never
been out of print.19
itzgerald was worried and. disappointed to the very
end over his d clin1ng popular appeal as reflected in the
low sales of all of his books. In 1940 he rote to Maxwell
Perkins expressing his wish to be in print in several lower
priced editions, so that his writing would remain before the
public after the disappearance of all of the original edi
tions of his books .
20
George Mayberry has described the
sales picture of Fitzgerald's books during the thirties.
Through the last half of the decade one could find in the
bookstores piles of Tender Is the Night and Taps at Reveille
for 79 cents or less, as well as second-hand copies of This
19 Letter to me from Charles Scribner's Sons, Septem
ber 9, 1952.
2
0 Loe. cit.
115
Side of Paradise, Flappers and Philosophers, and others for
Just a few cents a copy. In 1939 The Great Gatsby was
dropped from the odern Library series because of the poor
sales of the edit1on.21
By 1937 Fitzgerald felt ell enough to consider go ir1g to ork on a full-time, regular basis. His income had
never before been so lo, and he was heavily in debt. This
financial need was perhaps the chief motive for his attempt
ing to locate a job riting in Holly ood, where he had
worked on individual assignments during the late twenties
and early thirties. He finally completed a contract with
-C-, which later as to be extended to an eighteen-month
Job. Through sheer force of will, he had overcome his al
coholism sufficien ly to per it him to complete his assign
ments. He worked on several of M-G-M's most impressive pro
ductiona, but he was angrily dissatisfied with the film pro
ducer's traditional habit of never accepting anything with
out partial or complete revision.22
tlhen his contract with M-G- was not renewed, he
turned again to the short story market, selling most of his
21 George ayberry, "Love Among the Ruins," The Ne
Republic, 113:82, July 16, 1945. As late as 1945 I bought
several first-edition copies for about 1.50 each. By 1949
the same volumes, when available, were priced at 10 and
higher.
22 izener, .Q.E• cit., p. 278.
116
work to Esquire. At the same time he began to concentrate
in earnest on the comple~1on and organization of his notes
for a projected new novel, The Lat Tycoon. He had allowed
himself several periods of drinking since 1937, to the ex
tent that his physical stamina and energy had suffered un
til, in 1939, he was unable to complete a day's work and
J • ~ •• • • • ~ .. - ... ,.. ... ""'"'11/,.. • .,... ...
wrove mucn 01 vne ~ime in oeu. in vna 1aii 01 i~~u ne
worked steadily and slowly on the novel. He was inwardly
excited about 1t, for he had rediscovered his talent, and
it seemed richer and more promising to h1m than ever. He
as confident of his ability to master a complex theme and
structure with consistent po er .23 He had found his "line"
and, reaching for a power he no longer possessed, he surged
out into the deepest waters of his life. And then one
night, smiling, and with a smear of sweet chocolate across
his lips, he brushed life aside and gave his being the rest
it craved more than all else.
Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, 1n the late
evening before the greatest war of history, a new decade, a
new national consciousness, and an economic system which
was changing from the depression cycle at a rate which made
it almost a revolution. The news of international intrigue
surrounding the gathering foreign cr1s1s was superimposed
23 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-up. p. 185.
117
over former reading patterns and tastes. The story of th
emb ttled individual caught up in the larger frustrations
and disillusionments of the thirties no longer gathered
-
interested readers. Fitzgerald's literary reputation, both
popular and critical, was perhaps at its lowest ebb at his
death. "Although seven of his books were still in print
.
10Lody - as buy .1.11g and 111
·· s _,_o-·
Wc:::I. d,..LW l:jl,;
wrote alcolm Cowley; " ••• no he was settin out to re
gain his place in literature."24 Cowley here referred to
the writing of The Last Tycoon. Arthur Mizener pointed out
that at Fitzgerald's death, "• •• the reputation in which
he found his Justification was only a faint echo of what it
had been. • .He died believing he had failed utterly.
11
25
If we accept this statement of Mizener's as true, at least
regarding Fitzgerald's opinion of the success of his past
writings, it still should be understood that Fitzgerald
died believing in his basic ability as a writer and in his
ability to produce greater literature in the future. That
he did not live to complete what might have been his finest
novel, and to see his reputation finally made secure, was,
24 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Stories off. Scott Fitz
gerald, p. xx1ii.
25 Arthur Mizener, "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tormented
Paradise," Life, 30:82-101, January 15, 1951.
as Mizenor put 1 t, ". •
life."
2
6
.one
...
118
of the final ironies of his
The critical reception of "The Last Tycoon," and the
early evidence of renewed critical interest in the Fitzger
ald canon. Two estima tea of Fitzgerald' a place in Americart
f ction, which were published after his death and before the
publication of The Last y~oon, are ~orth notin. Writing
of the literature of the twenties in merican Mirror, a
study of American literature to 1940, Halford E. Luccock
asserted:
Social upheavals have always had a bad effect on es
tablished riters ••• Sherwood Anderson, Theodore
Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Scott itzgerald ••• are only
a few who for various reasons have become 'dated."
Luccock believe that the crises of the depression forced
these writers into the background of literature.27
Oscar Cargill, in his impressive study of advancing
social ideas and their relationship to American literature,
Intellectual America, attempted to explain certain causes
of Fitzgerald's lack of wide popularity. One chief reason,
he felt, was that much of Fitzgerald's work was sadly defi-
26 Arthur izener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 300.
-
27 Halford E. Luccock, American irror {New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1941), p. 4o.
119
c1ent in real depth of thought.
This Side of Paradise ••• has n historical permanence
not only be'cause it was the first novel of the Jazz
Age, but also because it represents so perfectly what
passed for thought in this country between 1919 and
1929.
The Beautiful and Damned was even less impressive. This
novel " ••• is duller than its predecessor ••• possibly the
greatest piece of balderdash ever penned by a capable au-
thor.
• • •
The Great Gatsby, Cargill felt, made
11
• • .a
ff
major contribution to Primitivism and a minor one to litera
ture.11 The novel was a perfect picture of the twenties.
"Its speed and its hard surface polish should have mad it
more popular with a generation which was fond of quick ac-
celeration.
• • •
If
The book was not popular with the pub-
lie because of Tom Buchanan's affair with Mrs. Wilson, which
was "too muddy." Also, no one could attack" ••• the pop
ular conception of the ex-football player ••• and expect
a wide audience." Cargill claimed that this least read of
Fitzgerald's novels had been the most influential on other
writers. It was only a step from The Great Gatsby to Bur
nett's Little Caesar, published 1n 1929, and to Hemingway's
To Have and Have Not, published in 1937. Cargill summar-
- --
ized his impression of The Great Gatsby: "Fount of a kind
of degeneracy, the novel is still better than many of the
120
books t has influenced . n28
According to Fitzgerald's secretary, the author had
taken "several" years to gather and organize hie notes for
The Last Tycoon, while the actual writing time of the al
most six chapters he completed took only about four months ,
sick though he was.
2
9 M1zener wrote that Fitzgerald had
wood, the totality of these reflections constituting
••• an inexhaustibly perceptive portrait of a place
and time hich is far richer than the relatively small
portion of these notes Fitzgerald got organized in the
six ch~pters of the novel he completed before he
died .30
There can be no doubt that Fitzgerald had written enough
preliminary material for at least the one novel he as
working on, and probably enough material for another novel
about Hollywood. IDimund 1lson selected meaningful and
well-shaped portions of this mass of material for his edi
tion of The Last Tycoon, which was published in the early
fall of 1941 by Scribner's. Included in the same volume
were The Great Gatsby and five of Fitzgerald's finest and
28 Oscar Cargill, Intellectual America (Ne York:
The Macmillan Company, 1941}, pp. 343-46.
29 Arthur Mizener, .Q.E• cit., p. 288.
30 Ibid., p. 287.
121
most famous short stories. The Last Tycoon was not a pop
ular success , but for an unfinished novel , it sold well.
According to allace Meyer , of Charles Scribner's Sons,
the book has sold some 14,000 copies since 1941, and the
volume is still available, its sale slowly continuing.31
This novel created a high amount of critical interest,
however, and its publication migrt ell be c nsidered the
starting point of the later widespread revival of interest
in Fitzgerald.
Elimund Wilson, in his critical volume on Western nov
elists, The Boys in the Back Room, wrote of the novel :
••• Fitzgerald, by bringing us inside and making us
take things for granted like insider, 1s able to create
a kind of interest in the mixed fate of his Jewish pro
ducer which lifts the book quite out of the class of
this specialized Hollywood fiction and attaches it to
the story of man in all times and all places . 32
"The Last Tycoog is thus, even in its imperfect state ,
Fitzgerald's most mature piece of work," commented 1lson
in his brief but penetrating foreword to the novel . It was
the author's first creative attempt to deal seriously with
"a profession or business." Most of the characters in his
earlier works gathered at big parties" . ~ .at which they
go off like fireworks and which are likely to leave them
31 Letter to me from Charles Scribner's Sons , Sep tember 9, 1952 .
32 Elimund Wilson, The Bors in the Back Room (San
Francisco: The Colt Presa, 1941, pp . 71- 2 .
122
in pieces." Monroe Stahr, however, was connected with and
symbolized a giant industry, and" ••• its fate will be
implied by hi tragedy." Considering that Fitzgerald had
not yet brought his story into a final focus,
11
It is re
markable that ••• the story should have already so much
po er and the character of Sta.hr emerge 1th so much inten
sity and reality." Stahr represented Fitzgerald's most
completely "thought out" character.
His notes on the character show how he lived with it
over a period of three years or more, filling in
Stahr'e idiosyncrasies and tracing the web of his rela
tionships with the various departments of his business.
Comparing the conception of Stahr with that of other memor
able characters of Fitzgerald's, Wilson rote:
Amory Blaine and Anthony P&tch were romantic projec
tions of the author; Gatsby and Dick Diver were con
ceived more or less objectively, but not very profound
ly explored. Monroe Stahr is really created from with
in at the same time that he is criticized by an intel
ligence that has no become sure of itself and. knows
how to assign him to his proper place in a larger
scheme of things.
Wilson went on to compare the technique of The Last Tycoon
with that of The Great Gatsby. In the former, ". •
.he
had recovered the singleness of purpose, the sureness of
craftsmanship, which appear in the earlier story."
In his closing paragraph Wilson expressed his opin
ion about the place of Fitzgerald in American literature
with such force and clarity, that partial quoting or para-
123
phrasing of the passage would detract from 1ts expression.
In going through the immense pile of drafts and notes
that the author had made for this novel, one is con
firmed and reinforced in one's impression that Fitzger
ald will be found to stand out as one of the first-rate
ftgures in the American writing of this period . The
last pages of The Greai Gatsby are certainly, both from
the dramatic point of vie and from the point of view
of prose among the very best things in the fiction of
our generation. T. s. Eliot said of the book that Fitz-
___ .... ,..::a h-..:a ..__, ___ ... ,.,_ __ ~ .. __ ... •---~""'-n· -"'--- .1,.,.,,... ,.,_,...,.. "" ...... ,.._
~ v .L 0. ..LU. L. O.U. \I a.AC .u v lJ.\:1 J.. .J. .L" 0 v .I. W ,1J V .1 v c:u \I t, v C ,1J \I u.a. \I L .I.CLY. •.• n;::; a U
made in the American novel since Henry James. And cer
tainly, The Last Tycoo~, even in its unfulfilled inten
tiont takes its place among the books that set a stand
ard.-'3
It is interesting to note the effect of the publica
tion of The Last Tycoon on Margaret Mars all's estimation
of Fitzgerald's literary merit. To do so, I have interrupt
ed a strict chronology in placing both of Marshall's com
ments together, though they were published nine months
apart. Her first piece, written for The Nation of February
8, 1941, was based upon her re-reading of Fitzgerald's
chief works.
Fitzgerald published his only enduring novel, The Great
Gatsby, in 1925 on the cres,t of that first wave of d1s-
111usion which was a form of belief. This book and a
few short stories--w111 continue to be relevant because
they caugh. t and crystallized the underlying
0
valuesu
of a period.
This critic continued by ~tating that most of Fitzgerald's
work seemed " • •
.as quaint ••• as the evening dresses of
33 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last !Ycoorr (Edmund 11-
son, editor, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941),
pp. ix-xi.
124
1921 . " He had never fulfilled his early promise. Attempt
ing to place Fitzgerald's stories in the fiction between
the ars, she wrote:
••• one cannot rad his books ••• without feeling that
his was a fair-weather talent which was not adequate to
the stormy age into which it happened, ironically, to
emerge.34
This review was typical of he thinking of those critics
who believed that Fitzgerald's talent and vein of material
had faded into obscurity with the last echoes of the Jazz
age. One gathered, from reading Marshall's article, that
she had not much enjoyed her re-reading of Fitzgerald.
After reading The Last Tycoon, Margaret arshall
wrote a second article on the literary merit of Fitzger
ald's works. , Whether consciously or not, her sense of ap
preciation and ability to praise had increased greatly.
She declared that The Great Gatsby was a great accomplish
ment. Tende~ Is the Night" ••• contained some of the most
glamorous writing Fitzgerald had ever done," but it still
was" ••• the work of a man who had relapsed into self
pity." The Last Tycoon returned to the greatness of The
Great Gatsby. The book was" ••• a tribute to his stamina
as an artist and a man.I! More than this, "Fitzgerald's
Hollywood ••• is integrated with the larger world, of which
34 Margaret Marshall, "Notes by the Way," The Na
tion, 152:159-60, February 8, 1941.
125
it is at once end-prod.uc+. and monstrous reflection." Turn
ing to the short stories in the same volume, Marshall
ceased to qualify Fitzgerald's talents and reported that
the stories u. • .are fu1· 1 of insight and humor; they are
also intensely moving as the intimate remarks to himself
of a sensitive and highly giftad human being.
0
35
- fe days earlier £-il ton Rugoff had written tl1at
The Last Tycoon"• •• held promise of being his best book."
The character of onroe Stahr ". • .stacks up as the most
authoritative fictional study of the kind of man that
helped formulate America's chief entertainment." Of the
tone of Fitzgerald's style as revealed in this volume,
Rugoff stated that the author
••• knew how to write. Many of his books were sown
with penetrating perceptions epigrammatically turned
and The Last Tycoon abounds in these seed-grains. One
reads them and then their gro th begins.
Commenting on the earlier critical opinion of Fitzgerald as
a talent limited by his short life, Rugoff claimed that
••• however much the bulk of Fitzgerald's writings may
now appear to have been only a matter of literary fash
ion, such selected pieces as these are something much
more--rich and rewarding enough to warrant the atten
tion of another generation besides his own.36
35 argaret arshall, "~Totes by the Way, " The Na
ti on, 153:457, November 8, 1941.
36 M11 ton Rugoff, "The Last Tycoon," Ne York Herald
Tribune Books, October 26, 1941, p. 18.
126
Aside from Frlmund ilson, Rugoff was probably the first
critic to conclude, after Fitzgerald's death, that the
latter's writings were wo1thy of a future generation's
study. The way was being prepared for the critical revival
of interest in Fitzgerald as a major writer of his time .
In his review of the volume, J. Donald Adams, too ,
attempted to re-evaluate the place of some of Fitzgerald's
earlier novels in contemporary literature. Adams rote that
Tender Is the Night had brought great disappointment to
those who thought that Fitzgerald, on the basis of The
Great Gatsby, had the talents of a major novelist . Tender
Ia the 1ght w s a.n mbit OU book. but it was also "a
,
brilliant failure." The Great Gatsby had captured the
" ••• feel of the •.• Twenties" better than any other book.
Of Fitzgerald's career Adams wrote:
••• from the outset his perceptions were keen, his
feelings for words innate, his imagination keen and
strong. There was vitality in every line he wrote .
But he had to get his own values straight before he
could properly do the work for which he was fitted .
• • •
As a novel hich was mature in philosophic viewpoint and
conception, The Last Tycoon would have been Fitzgerald's
best work. Adams wrote in part of this work,
11
••• it is
plainly to be seen how firm was his grasp of his material,
how much he had deepened and grown as an observer of life."
The critic concluied his review with this terse summary of
127
Fitzgerald's worth: "I think he 111 be remembered in his
generation."37 Adams saw Fitzgerald as a riter of infin
ite possibility, who had only begun to reach lasting great
ness at the time of his death.
Clifton Fadiman added his voice to the critical
chorus which was declaring that Fitzgerald's work had out-
lived a single generation. Writing for The Ne Yorker,
-
Fadiman expressed the hope that Edmund Wilson would ".
• •
one day do a monograph on this man ho hardly deserv s to
be ticketed as the laureate of the Jazz Age and then for
gotten." Fadiman believed that Fitzgerald, at the time of
his death, " ••• as on the point of becoming a ma or Ameri
can novelist." The Last Tycoon was clearly an "advance"
over The Great Qa tsby, and had the author finished it,
11
It
mi ht have turned out to be his masterpiece."38
John Chamberlain offered high praise of both Fitzger
ald and The Last Tycoon in a revie for Harper's Magazine.
Chamberlain claimed that Stahr transcended a purely local
environment and time; " .•• he is the talented American
business executive in any sphere." Fitzgerald could claim
a distinction which set him apart from other serious writers
37 J. Donald Ada.ms, "Scott Fitzgerald's Last Novel,"
The New York Times Book Rev1e, November 9, 1941, p. 1.
38 Clifton Fadiman, ttBooks," The New Yorker, 17:87,
November 15, 1941.
128
of hie time, in that" • • _.almost alone among his contempo raries, Fitzgerald was curious about the main drives o
American society . " Other riters of the post- ar years
had displayed artistic merit, but" ••• how tangential are
their themes, how marginal their interests." Fitzgerald's
last novel had set a standard of excellence in theme and
craftsmanship for Amerio n novelists.
Even in its unfinished form, The Last Tycoon is an
example of what the American novel should be • • •
If only he had lived, if only his constitution had
served him better, what fiction he mi ht have done!
sit is, he was the best of the lot italics not
in the original --and I forone-can
1
t understand why
more useful sermons haven't been preached over his
grave.39
The Fitzgerald that Chamberlain here was praising was not
the writer who had risen in ability to compete with the
major names of his generation; rather, he stood alone in
advance of the others. Cham~erlain, then one of the chief
literary critics in America, wrote this judgment a full
year after Fitzgerald's death. The question of whether or
not one year is sufficient time to permit the necessary con
ditions of detachment and esthetic distance in judging a
work of art, remains a moot one.
On December 6, 1941, Stephen Vincent Benet rote a
panegyric on Fitzgerald in The Saturday Review of Litera-
39 John Chamberlain, "The New Books," Harper's Maga
zine, 184:no page, December, 1941.
129
tu.re . Certain of his words have since been quoted repeat-
edly by critics interested in Fitzgerald.
,
Benet attacked
the writers of obituaries on Fitzgerald for using the
latter's death as a cue to review the "Jazz Age" rather
than Fitzgerald's work. Several critics had said that
Fitzerald" ••• had shot his bolt" early and had died in
h A for es. "They were one hundred per cent wrong," wrote
Benet , uas 'The Last Tycoon' shows." Benet felt that Mon
roe Stahr himself was the motive power and the unity of
the novel . The tragedy of the story was thus" ••• implic
it in Stahr himself." As for the unfinished state of the
novel, "Had Fitzgerald been permitted to finish the book,
I think there is no doubt that it would have added a major
character and a major novel to American fiction." Besides
II
• •
wit, observatio~, sure craftsmanship ••• verbal fe-
licity ••• there is a richness of texture, a maturity of
point of view that shows us what we lost in his early
death." In closing his comments on Fitzgerald, Ben6t ad
dressed himself to his fellow critics, writing:
.•• the evidence is in. You can take your hats off,
gentlemen , and I think perhaps you had better. This
is not a legend , this is a reputation--and ••• it may
well be one of the most secure reputations of our
time .40
4o Stephen Vincent Berl6t , "Fitzgerald's Unfinis had
Symphony," The Saturday Review of Literature, 24:10, Decem
ber 6, 1941 .
130
Thus, as early as one year after his death, Fitzgerald was
receiving the kind of unreserved praise and earnest criti
cal appreciation he had always longed for, but had seen
only fleeting glimpses of during his life.
Robert Littell agreed with most of the other critics
when he wrote that if Fitzgerald had finished The Last~-
coon we would have ad ". • a mo st impo.1 tant book . " Vi J.a t
was fini shed was still a great , realistic character study
..
which wa s wholly convincing. Always an artist and a crafts-
man, "Fitzgerald was a master of mood, of emotional weather
in any room where his characters happened to be •••• "41
Although he was vividly impressed with Fitzgerald's
technique and with isolated scenes from his stories, Alfred
Kazin saw the whole of Fitzgerald's literary accomplishment
as a minor ne of his time. Kazin discussed Fitzgerald's
chief works at some length in his 1942 volume, On Native
Ground s . He declared that Fitzgerald did not have to ere-
.,
ate a legend of a lost generation, since he himself was its
"central story" and this legend ". • .actually was his life ."
Living within the disillusioned post-war world ,
••• he became for many not so much the profoundly
gi fted, tragic, and erratic writer that he was , a
writer in some ways inherently more interesting than
any other in his generation, but a marvelous, disap-
41 Robert Littell, "Outstanding Novels," The Yale
Review, 31:vi-viii, Winter, 1942.
131
pointed, and disappointing child ••• staggering in a
void.
Fitzgerald had found importance early because" ••• he was
the younger generation's first authentic novelist," and his
generation had found a "tragic hero" in the plight of Amory
Blaine . This Side of Paradise was "inconsequential
- -- - ----
e
,..,. " u-~ " b nt 1 +
11
.uv 01J., - u •
•• had a taste of the po1gnance that was
to flood all Fitzgerald's other books." Kazin asserted
that Fitzgerald was fascinated by the single theme oft e
rich and their difference from others.
one of the other
writers of his generation ". •
.felt the fascination of the
American success story as d1d Fitzgerald, or made so much
of it." His characters touched tragic depth; as Kazin put
it, "His people ere kings; ••• They were always the last
of their line, always damned, always death-seekers." With
in this line of development, The Great Gatsby was ••. • .one
of the most moving of American tragedies." But even though
this novel showed a pitch of genius,
The book has no real scale; it does not feast on any
commanding vision, nor is it in any sense a major trag
edy. ut it is a great flooding moment, a moment's
intimation and penetration; and as Gatsby's disillus
ionment becomes felt at the end it strikes like a chime
through the mind.
Kazin felt that Fitzgerald reached his peak with The Great
Gatsby, and that what came after was" ••• a fever glow,
a neurotic subtlety." This critic's later statement on
132
The Last Tycoon ould seem almost to contradict his esti
mate of what followed Gatsby. "here is an intense brood
ing wisdom, all Fitz erald's keen sense of craft raised and
burnished to new power, in The Last Tycoon that is unfor
gettable." With this novel, one came to understand and
ti
• •
.appreciate how much closer Fitzgerald could come than
most modern American novelists to ru1r111ment, of· a kind . n
As he looked back across the span of twenty years of Fitz
gerald's writing, Kazin concluded that
••• Fitzgerald's world is a little one, a superior
boy's world--precocious in its wisdom, precocious in
its tragedy, but the fitful glaring world of Jay Gats
by's dream, and of Jay Gatsby's failure, to the end . 42
pparently Alfred Kazin agreed with alcolm Cowley that
Fitzgerald was much too involved in his own fiction to es
cape the limitations such involvement must impose. Fitz
gerald did not achieve gre t literature, therefore, because
his own world was too "little" and limited in maturity of
experience.
In reviewing The Last Tycoon for The tlantic onth
il Fiiward Weeks claimed that this last novel represented
the high point of the steady upward development of Fitz
gerald's literary art. "1th The Great Gatsby, that superb
short novel .•• Fitzgerald came to the peak of his first
42 Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (New York: Reynal
and Hitchcock, 1942), pp:-316-22 . -
133
period," Weeks wrote. In the novelist's later ork, in
cluding Tender Is the Night, " ••• one saw the author
struggling toward maturity. He arrived fully with The
Last Tycoon, which lacks only in degree of completion, not
qual1t· y." Monroe Stahr was Fitzgerald's greatest character,
and Hollywood's studio ltfe was ". • • shown to us without
the exaggeration or vindictiveness that has ruined so many
a novel. n43
The above reviews, which represent the chief criti
cisms of The Last Tycoon written about the time of its pub
lication, share a single tone of genuine praise and deep
felt appreciation. Taken together, they give some indica
tion of the renewed high level of Fitzgerald's reputation,
and they also hint at the coming revival of interest in him
both as a personality and as an author. A few general crit
ical studies and comments about Fitzgerald were written dur-
•.
ing 1944. His work again was seen as a minor contribution
to literature, the value of which was limited to the period
described by it.
J. Donald Adams again considered the Fitzgerald canon
in his volume, The Shape of Books to Come. Adams described
Fitzgerald as
11
• • .the Narcissus of his generation, who was
43 Edward Weeks, ,.The Atlantic Bookshelf," The Atlan
tic Monthly, 149:xv, January, 1942.
134
on his way to maturity when he died . " There as no que s t i on of Fitzgerald's creative ability , but he early lacked
a coherent point of view . "Talent , Fitzgerald had i n abtm
dance • • • There was vitality in every line he wrote , but
his early material was trivial ••• and he himself rudder-
1
fl
ess ••••
I
""" ,,.,he G- at Gn + sbn 'T'o·yv~ O'Y' IO 'f- h
0
T., crbt s:n,rl The
.a. 4 .L. .1 .L c;;.1, u ,1 J v • ·~ v • ~ v ..., .a.• ,._ Q _. ,.; J -··- • • • - •
Last Tye on •• . he won through to a greater measure of
object ivity • •• The Great Gatsby is the fable of its
period , and I believe it will be read when most of
the novels of the Twenties are entirely forgotten .
The stories which came after 1925 and before 1934 were of
little consequence, mostly of a "pot- boiling" nature .
Adams felt that Tender Is the _ight was" • .. a disappoint
ing book," but it grappled with" • • • an ambitious theme . "
It failed largely in its attempt to analyze and treat human
nature through the human relationships developed in the
story . (This latter aspect of the novel has been the very
point other critics have most highly praised.) In The Last
Tycoon Fitzgerald talked of American life in larger terms
than before . Had he finished the book," ••• he would have
ended ••• by bringing it clearly into focus as a world of
its own within the larger pattern of merican life as a
whole . "44
- 44 J . Donald Adams, The Shape of Books to Come ( ew
York: The Viking Press, 194z:-y:- pp . 87-90 .
135
Charles Weir, Jr., studied the whole of Fitzgerald's
literature at aome length in an article for The Virginia
Quarterly Review. Although "There was always in Fitzger
ald's work a sense of tremendous possibilities," he was
unable to cope with a single large weakness.
This, ". • •
ironically, was that he was so completely of his time and
of his country." He was from the beginn1ng a maste of t he
smaller details of his craft, but one could not make a case
for him as an American Flaubert.
After all, a novelist must be judged by whole novels,
and only in The Great Gatsby did Fitzgerald succeed
in putting any amount of material into a form which
was truly s i gnificant and expressive.
His greatest talent could be found in his delineation of
"A certain class , rich, easy-living, selfish ••• hollow yet
beautiful ••• along with its habitats and pastimes--" Weir
wondered why all of Fitzgerald's thematic outcome was es
sentially tragic . "All of it recounts aspiration, struggle,
failure . " The answer to ·this question could perhaps be
found in the failure pattern a3 it was repe ated in Fitzger
ald's own life . He had sought success in terms of visible
evidence in seeking the fullest life , . a life which must
hold riches.
Fitzgerald 's theme in its full complexity--the futility
of effort and the necessity to struggle--seems to me a
noble one and one which perhaps forms the basis for all
reat tragedy .
136
Even so, his work fell short of truly great tragedy . He
simply did not master his human relationships exactly e
nough. Precisely why, for example, did Dr . Diver lose his
battle for an ideal life of humani y and service? "here
1s his weakne ss?" Wit many possible answers before him , .
Fitzgerald did not define the reason for Diver's failure
clearly. as1cally, .tc•itzgerald suffered from !! •
J ..
• -e,ne
lack of a view of life, a set of standards in which both he
and his readers can share.t In this respect, according to
Weir, Fitzgerald as like Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway , and
Faulkner . 45 One is impelled to ask ei what more he could
de mand of an author than the truthful and dramatic repre
sentation of the major intellectual and social drives and
the key attitudes toward life of his own age. The convin
cing portrayal of an age of doubt and uncertainty surely is
as commendable as the stooy of an age of belief and accept ance of positive values. It would seem that ¥e1r was at
tacking the mental outlook and society of post-war American
life rather than Fitzgerald's dramatic portrayal of that
life.
alcolm Cowley rote in 1944 that Fitzgerald had
11
••• fathered the school of social historians that is best
- 45 Charles Weir , Jr., "An Invite with Gilded Edges,"
The Virginia Quarterly Review, 20:100-13, inter, 1944 .
137
represented today by John O'Hara, and his books are being
read by young men in the army."46 Cowley here pointed to
an indica ion of Fitzgerald's appeal to the younger men of
a second World far generation. In terms of moral uncer
tainty and the questioning of the "eternal verities," the
situation of the young men who found themselves displaced
and transplanted during orld War II was parallel to the
situation of the previous generation in the midst of its
gre t war. Perhaps the mental and psychological insecurity
of the 1944 soldier was even greater than that of the 1917
soldier. At any rate, it is certain that many of the new
students and critics of life and 1 tera ure were reading
Fitzgerald, whose writings of moral crisis and conflict had
thus reached a new age.
Leo and iriam Gurko apparently were unaware of the
continuing influence of Fitzgerald's writings when they
officially pronounced his works "dead" in April,. 1944, in an
issue of College English. They regarded Fitzgerald as a
minor writer associated with his own short era as its "em
balmer." The era was completely dead in 1944. "The heroes
of Fitzgerald's five novels ••• are variations upon a single
person with a set of moods and attitudes that changed little
46 alcolm Coley, "The Generation That asn't
Lost," College English, 5:372-76, pril, 1944.
138
from book to book." His protagonists merely grew older s
Fitzgerald himself grew older. His single theme was that
" •• • people are almost predestined to unhappiness and that
there exists between the1.r hopes and illus ons and the real ization of them a bridgeless gulf." This theme was related
solely to the aftermath of orld War I. The resulting nar-
row range of ideas made Fitzgerald a minor writer.
,.,,~
.rne
Last Tycoo~, however, was an exception. Here he had welded
tf
• •
.a full-grown adult into a full-grown man-sized adult
world." With this Ylovel, Fitzgerald had given the critics
reason to suspect that he was breaking all confining bonds
and was developing into a major riter. He ould have be
come a major writer had 110 lived, for he contained " • • •
the seeds of greatness ."47
Summary of Fitzgerald's year~ of critical decli~ .
Although Fitzgerald's popular and literary reputation de
clined steadily after the publication of Tender Is the
Night, until his death in 1940, reaching a point of near
obscurity during the period from 1937 until 1940, the ear
liest stirrings of a reviving critical interest in his
work ere to be seen as early as 1941, with the publica
tion of The Last Tycoon. Critical interest in Fitzgerald
47 Leo and Miriam Gurka, "The Essence of F. cott
Fitzgerald," College English, 5:372-76, April, 1944 .
139
continued through 1944, dominated for the moat part by a
new sense of appreciation of the writer's literary talents
and an admiration of the growing maturity and complexity
of his thematic materi 1. fe critics felt t hat while
his talent was undeni bl, his place in American litera
ture was necessarily limited to the brief age within which
he had lived and died. During the years of orld ar Il
he began to receive a larger popular and critical reading
audience. In fact, his work was never completely out of
print. The publication of two new volumes in 1945 was to
excite a widespread revival of interest in all of his work .
CHAPTER VI
1945--1952: THE FITZGERALD REVIVAL IN
NE GE
The nature and extent of the revival. The renewed
-- ---- ----- - --
interest in Fitzgerald as a legendary personality and a ma
jor writer reached its greatest peak during 1950 and 1951.
as "the Fitzgerald revival." he revival took form in three
directions: publishing, --- cr1 ti cal, and popular . As has al
ready been indicated,. revived critical concern about Fitz gerald began shortly after his death, with the publication
of The Last Tycoon . The critics retained their interest
during the forties, and found an outlet for it 1 1945,
1950, and 1951, with the publication of several works by or
about Fitzgerald. Popular interest, meanwhile, remained
relatively slight until 1950 and 1951, the period when crit
ic and publisher alike, for a while, seemed unable to print
too much about the author.
The publishers' attention to Fitzgerald apparently
became widespread in 1945. In September of that year Pub
lisher's Weekl~ printed a short article on "The F. Scott
Fitzerald Revival," naming the publication of The Crack-up
as the primary cause of t he new interest in the author .
141
The Last Tycoon was mentioned as a contributing factor . l
The article also referrea to the "forthcom1ng
11
publication
of The Portable f. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Dorothy Par
ker for the Viking Press.2 This latter volume was pub
lished in September, 1945, and although the sales figures
for it were not made available for this study, it apparent-
ly so quite wel compared with the several other titles
issued in "Portable" editions by the Viking Press. This
publisher has stated that the itzgerald volume was pub lished at a time when
••• most .•• of ••• Fitzgerald's work was out of
print. The attention which it received, including a
review in The New York Times, has been credited with
• ?
the revival of interest in Fitzgerald's works . ~
If the publisher has perhaps exaggerated the influence of
this volume somewhat, it still can be claimed that the Vi
king edition of Fitzgerald's works played a stimulating
part in the revival.
The Great Gatsb~ was issued in two very successful
and inexpensive editions in 1945 and 1946, an indication
of the publishers' new interest in Fitzgerald. The first
1 "The F. Scott Fitzgerald Revival," Publisher's
Weekly, 148:965, September 8, 1945.
2 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Portable f. Scott Fitz
gerald, (Dorot y Parker, editor, New York: The Viking Press ,
1945) •
3 Letter to me from The Viking Press, July 29, 1952 .
142
of these , t he N ew Classics edition, contained an introduc
tion by Lionel Trilling. _ _ The second edition was in pocket
book format, published by Bantam Books. Publisher interest
i n Fitzgerald f ound a rich outlet in 1950 and 1951, the
period of the widest popular appeal of Fitzgerald. Public
curiosity was partly created by the best-selling novel by
Budd Schulberg , The Disenchanted, a fictionalized account
of the H ollywood years o( Fitzgerald' a life am his ". • •
struggle for survival and regeneration· .
11
4 In 1951 Arthur
M i zener's biography of Fitzgerald, The Far Side of Paradise,
was published by H oughton M ifflin Company, receiving nation
wi de attention . By t his time dozens of articles on various
aspects of Fitzgerald's life and works were being written
both f or the lar ge circulation m agazines and the literary
and scholarly quar t erlies and journals. Charles Scribner's
Sons , i n 1951 , publ i shed The Stories of!• Scott Fitzgerald,
edited by Malcolm Cowley, and containing several hitherto
tmpubl i shed Fitzgerald stories. Scribner's also published
a reissue of t e origi nal version of Tender Is the Night,
which was withdrawn aft e r t he r evi sed version of t he novel
as published under the editorshi p of M alcolm Cowley; and
4 Budd Schulber g , The Disenchanted (N ew York: Random
House , 1950 ) •
143
finally , a reissue of This Side of Parad1se.5 Other re-
---- - ----
prints of Fitzgerald's novels published during the period
1950-1951 inclu:le t he following , all of which were issued
i n inexpensive editions: The Great Gatsby and This Side of
-
Paradise, published by Grosset and Dunlap; Tender Is the
Night, published by Bantam Books; and The Beautiful and
Damned, published as a "Permabook" reprint by Doubleday
and Company.
The sale of' mos t of t he Fitzgerald editions listed
above is still continuing, and while the total sales fig
ures for m os t of them are not available at this time , some
f i gures are available f or a general comparison with earlier
Fitzgeral d editions . According to Whitney Darrow, of
Charles Ser bner's Sons, each of the Bantam Book editions
had sold about 500 , 000 copies by the middle of 1952 . 6
Doubleday and Com pany r eported that their Beautiful and
Damned edition sold about 275,000 copies during the first
year of its publication.7 New Directions, in a sales analy sis of The Crack- uE , stated that this volume had sold
20,300 copies by July of 1952. Som e 2,000 copies were sold
5 Lett er t o e from Charles Scribner's Sons , Septem-
ber 9, . 1952 .
6
Letter to m e from Whitney Darrow, July 22, 1952 .
7
Letter to m e f r om
Doubleday and Company, July 10 ,
1952 .
144
during a one-month period after the publication of The Dis
enchanted in December, 1950. Another thousand copies were
sold immediately after the appearance of The Far Side of
-
Paradise.
8
Charles Scribner's Sons estimated that 14,000
copies of The Last Tycoon had been sold by July, 1952.
The Stories of.[. Scott Fitzgerald sold approximately
of the original version of Tender Is the Night sold some
5,000 copies before it was withdrawn, while the revised
edition of this novel had sold 3,500 copies by July of
1952. Scribner's reissue of This Side of Paradise had sold
7,000 by that date.9 Thus, well over one illion copies of
all the various recent editions of Fitzgerald's works have
been sold since 1945, this figure representing only a con
servative estimate.
The above figures give some indication of the extent
of the publisher interest in the Fitzgerald revival, as well
as the wide popular response to recent editions. The ques
tion of tracing the basic causes of the renewed critical
interest in Fitzgerald has been partially answered by sev-
8 Letter to me from ew Directions, July 7, 1952.
9 Letter to me from Charles Scribner's Sons, Sep
tember 9, 1952.
145
eral writers. Many critics have given Arthur Mizener, and
to a lesser degree, Budd Schulberg, full credit for bring
ing about the Fitzgerald revival. That the judgment of
these critics is too narrow is at once evident when the full
history of the revival is known. In order to facilitate
the discussion of the growth and influence of Fitzgerald's
renewed critical reputaulon, it has been necessary to aban
don a chronological presentation in favor of explaining re
lated trends of thou ht.
Ftlw1n S. Fussell, writing in The Kenyon Review in
1950, credited the high state of Fitzgerald's reputation to
Mizener's efforts.
There seems little doubt ••• that Fitzgerald's
high reputation is assured, and for this major reval
uation Arthur Mizener is primarily to be credited.
The current revival of interest in Fitzgerald is not
spurious, and it is certain to havE• permanent effect
on the way we regard American literature.10
Fussell felt that Fitzgetald's very subtle and complex tal
ent had escaped his readers until M1zener brought it to
light. Fussell's testimony would perhaps carry more con
viction if he admitted that he was speaking for himself
rather than for literary critics as a group.
A. J. Liebling reported in The New Yorker that the
publication of The Far Side of Paradise and The Disenchanted
--------
10 F.liw1n s. Fussell, "The Statlre of Scott Fitzger
ald," The Ken:y;on Review, 13:530-34, Summer, 1951.
146
had greatly boosted the Fitzgerald revival and had stimu
lated the sale of the several editions of his novels. In
contrast, a decade earlier, This Side of Paradise had been
----· -
the one book" ••• newspapermen remembered when they rote
his obituaries."ll
In a letter to the editor of the London Times Lit-
e ·ar·y .:,upplemen , lviizen r, early .L 1952, gave his view of
the growth of the Fitzgerald revival. It was not merely an
undergraduate affair, Mizener suggested, since the interest
in Fitzgerald included many literary people in their for-
t es. Also, he said that the revival had occurred well
before either The Far Side of Paradise or The Disenchanted
appeared.
12
Granville Hicks, in a 1951 article on "Our Novelists'
Shifting Reputatione,
0
wrote that there had been a growing
interest in Fitzgerald's work all through the forties, and
that" ••• something that might be called a Fitzgerald cult
has developed." Part of the revival, he felt, was due to
an unproductive literary period during the forties, and
also, : part of it was due to the lack of a post-war literary
renaissance. "In retrospect Fitzgerald's virtues are more
11 A. J. L1ebl1ng, uAmory, e're Beautiful, .. The ew
Yorker, 27:113-17, May 19, 1951.
12 Arthur Mizener, "F. cott Fitzgerald," The Times
Literary Supplement, January 25, 1952, p. 77 .
147
clearly seen, and there is great and deserved respect for
his craftsmanship.' Hicks felt that" ••• many critics who
would brush aside Caldwell or Steinbeck take him serious
ly. u13
lfred Kazin, in his introduction to his volume of
critical essays on Fitzgerald, traced the critical revival
back to the period immediately fol owing itzgerald's
death.
After hie death in 1940--specifically, with the publica
tion of The Last Tycoon in 1941, and, in 1945, the per sonal documents Elimund ilson assembled in The Crack-up
along with the title essay--the critics again began to
do hi Justice on a wide scale •••• 14
This latter judgment would seem to be more in line with the
mass of available evidence related to the pattern of Fitz
gerald's reputation after his death.
John W. Aldridge, one of the youngest critics of the
post-War II generation, made several very pertinent com
ments on the changing shape of Fitzgerald's reputation dur
ing and after the war years, in his recent volume, After
the Lost Generation. Aldridge rated Fitzgerald as a writer
belonging to the first war group, one" ••• whose work has
had the most lasting influence on the young writers of to-
13 Granville Hicks, "Our Novelists' Shifting Reputa
tions," The English Journal, 40:1 7, January, 1951.
14 lfred Kaz n, f. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and
His ork, p. 16.
148
day." Fitzgerald, Hemingway , and Dos Passos, in Aldridge's
opinion, had had much greater influence on literature than
any of the writers of the thirties except Thomas Wolfe.
For some reason, those of us who began to take a
serious interest in literature in the first years of
the second war felt an immediate kinship with the
Lost Generation . We acknowledged them as our true
literary forbears, even though a whole new genera
tion ••• stood between them and us .
Aldridge described a new age of discovery, transition, and
revolt during and following World War II which was in many
ways parallel to the situation during and after the first
war, and which was a basis for the kinship between the writ
ers of the two war generations . Of the earlier generation,
Aldridge rote, ' ••• the marks of war nd of tensions and
of its aftermath are clear in their work . " The theme of
the effects of war upon the individual and upon social
groups served as a connecting link between the writers of
the first war and the reading public of the second . Hence
the widespread revival of interest not only in Fitzgerald ,
Hemingw y, and others, but also in the entire epoch of the
twenties .
1
5
,
Katherine B egy found other parallels between the
post-war eras of the first and second great wars . Our
"present" age, she felt, was parallel to the former in its
15 John
1
• Aldridge , After the Lost Generation { ew
York: c Graw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1951) , pp . viii-ix.
149
uncontrolled craving for material and physical pleasures
and excesses. This relationship, she indicated, was r es
ponsible for the renewed interest in Fitzgerald and the
t enties.16
Writing in The New York Times ten years after Fitz
gerald's death, Burke Wilkinson suggested that the author's
revival was not a passing him or entertainment, but a dur
able and worth hile chapter in American literature . The
reasons for the revival ere to be found in the quality of
Fitzgerald's ritings, primarily, for" ••• he had the pure
narrative gift." He always told a real story, and his
characters were real people who advanced the story by hat
they were. "His themes were the big ones." They included
happiness in work, marriage, money, and loneliness. ilkin-
son felt that Fitzgerald's literary talents would sustain
his revived place in literature.17
It seems fairly evident that the critical revival of
interest in Fitzgerald began with the publication of The
Last Tycoon, gained considerable momentum with the publica
tion of The Crack-up and The Portable f. Scott Fitzgerald,
16 Katherine Bregy, "F. Scott Fitzgerald--Tragic
Comedian," The Catholic World, 173:86-91, May, 1951.
17 Burke ilkinson, "Scott Fitzerald: Ten Years Af
ter," The ew York Times Book Revie, December 24, 1950,
p. 8, 10.
150
and reached its high point of the current cycle of interest ,
in 1951, after the appearance of The Disenchanted and The
Far Side of Paradise. The curve representing popular inter-
est in Fitzgerald followed approximately the same pattern,
starting at a lower level and rising perhaps to a higher
peak about the middle of 1951, hen Fitzgerald's name was
linked with best-selling literature about him.
The reasons for the widespread popular revival of
interest in all of Fitzgerald's writings are not quite so
evident. Apparently, the revival was not limited to itz
gerald alone, but extended to the whole post-War I era.
The attempt of this nation to readjust to the demands of an
enlarging civilian economy was parallel in many ways to the
same situation after the first war. This parallel was es
pecially true in the case of personal psychological adjust
ment and maladjustment in the face of a mobile and shifting
economy, with its inflationary trends and mushrooming pro
duction. After World War I the economy itself furnistad
a fertile field for the growth of corruption in big busi
ness and its related fields, political interests, racket
eering, and gangsterism. A similar pattern can be traced
in this country during the past seven years. The individ
ual physical and psychological hunger, almost amounting to
a hysterical fixation, for financial ealth and for the ex-
151
cessive accumulation of material goods, which was described
1th such bitter and rich irony by Fitzgerald, . has its
parallel in the American life of the past five years. The
basic characters, struggles, and themes of Fitzgerald's
best writing are as characteristic of the present age as
they were of the twenties. It can scarcely be denied that
Jay Gatsby is walking up the busiest streets of ew York
and Hollywood today. The symbolic extensions of his per
sonality, touching upon both the spiritual hollowness and
the empty materialism of the success-driven elements of
our population, probe and disturb us as deeply as ever be
fore. Thus, Fitzgerald has been and is being read not only
for the sparkling entertainment ralue of his fiction, but
also for his depth of penetration into certain areas of
the American personality as it reacts to moral conflict
and crisis. "Fitzgerald has become a legend," wrote Alice
B. Toklas in 1951, "and the epoch he created is history . "18
The critical response to "The Crack-lip" 4nd
11
The
Stories of E• Scott Fitzgerald.
0
The publication of The
Crack-up in 1945 was met by a considerable amount of crit
ical comme :~
4
• This reaction was probably due in part to
the natural curiosity which always attends a famous man's
18 Alice B. Toklas, "Bet een Classics," The New York
Times Book Review, March 4, 1951, p. 4.
152
self-rev· elat1on in the form of his diary or informal es
says . Then, too, the critics were impressed with the for
m i dable array of distinguished literary persons whose writ
ten comments about and to Fitzgerald were collected in
t his volume. While many of the reviewers fell back upon
old ar guments that found much to disapprove of in the au
thor ' s work, others suspected seriously that they had per
haps overlooked something of real importance in his stor
ies .
M ark Schorer, writing in The Yale Review, found
meaning in Fitzgerald's life, and even more meaning in the
literat ur e which reflected it •. "This cool analysis of a
nervous breakdown and the emotional exhaustion which fol
lowed i t is already a classic of literary self-revelation."
According to Scherer, Fitzgerald had achieved fulfillment
in his writing .
The Cra·ck-up, . like almost everything else Fitzgerald
w r ote , is excellent in the degree by which it trans
cends mere pathos. This comes in part from the writing
itself, which is marked by a colloquial ease that per
sistently achieves genuine poetic effects ••• His life
was an allegory of life between two world wars, and
his gift lay in the ability to discover figures which
could enact the allegory to the full.19
To Scherer The prack-up r evealed Fitzgerald's underlying
seriousness of purpose along with the struggle to know him-
19 Alfred Kazin, £2• cit., pp. 169-71, citing an
article by M ark Scherer in The Yale Review, 1945.
153
self and the world within which he moved.
The reviewer for Newsweek felt that this book did
11 ttle e1 ther to establish or to deny F:1.tzgerald' s claim
to greatness. This critic wrote that the author had failed
to record in his notebooks "the significant." What he did
record was revealing, but the omissions were "startling."
Nevertheless, even in his notebooks, Fitzgerald had"• ••
caught the peculiar evanescence of an era." The question
of whether or not Fitzgerald was important only in relation
to hie own brief historical era, this critic believed, was
still an open matter.20
There was no doubt in Charles Jackson's mind that
The Crack-up served to remind Fitzgerald's readers of his
genuine greatness as a serious writer •
• • • Wilson's collection has raised Fitzgerald (if we
ever needed to be reminded of the fact, which most of
us who love writing do not) to the forefront of Amer
ican literature where he belongs.
Jackson regarded The La.st _!ycoon, which was only briefly
referred to in The Crack-up, as
••• the book which once and for all removes Fitzgerald
from the realm of "promise" and placef~ him solidly
among the American literary great ••• Fitzgerald reveals
a mastery of technique, a wit of' observation, an under
standing and grasp, and a wider, deeper ra11ge than •••
20
"F . Scott Fitzgerald, Jazz Age Prophet , Still
Placed This Side of Greatness," ewsweek, 26:76,78, July 9,
1945.
154
even in. • • The Great Gatsby. 21
George Mayberry, writing in The New _Bepublic, was
most impressed with the letters collected in The Crack-up,
letters whose authors had included Gertrude Stein, Edith
Wharton, T. s. Eliot, John Dos Passos, and Thomas o.lfe.
!~ayberry found the essays impressive and distinguished.
Although this critic did not venture an opinion on the
durability of Fitzgerald's reputation, he suggested that it
was wrong to overlook Fitzgerald's prestige among his con
temporaries.
It is still too early to attempt to place Fitzgerald,
but it 1s doubtful whether more than one or two other
authors of his generation ••• could have commanded such
praise from their contemporaries.22
J. Donald Adams used The Crack-up as a starting point
to review again the whole of Fitzgerald's major work. Some
of these opinions will be treated later, but of The Crack
~ he wrote:
The book as a whole ••• is interesting and valuable,
even for those who, if they do not share the belief
of some of us that Fitzgerald was one of the most gif
ted wr1 ters of his generation, are not indifferent to.~
the general problem of the writer 1n relation to his
21
Charles Jackson, "F. Scott Fitzgerald--From the
Heart," The Saturday Review of Literature, 28:9-10, July
14, 1945. -
22 George Mayberry, "Love Among the Ruins," The New
Republic, 113:82, July 16; 1945.
155
environment . 23
Adams felt that this bo0k revealed the very close relation ship between Fitzgerald and his environment. This bond
gave the author importance as an objective and vivid social
historian of his own time.
Although The Crack-up was regarded by the critics as
an interesting literary scrapbook, of minor importance in
its content, the book served to focus attention once more
on the whole of Fitzgerald's writing, in the midst of a
new age . In this manner, the volume acted as a catalyst
in producing a continuing critical attention to the ques
tion of Fitzgerald's place in literature . Thus, The Crack ~ deserves a large amount of credit in the stimulation of
the Fitzgerald revival.
Some of the same observations can be made of the
critical reception of The Stories off • Scott Fitzgerald,
published in 1951 . The reviewers were not too favorably
impressed with the range of the twenty-eight stories col lected by Malcolm Cowley . Indeed, some of the stories were
scarcely more than brief character sketches, and although
they had the distinction of never having been published
before, it seems evident that Fitzgerald had not intended
23 J. Donald Adams, "F . Scott Fitzgerald," The Amer
ican Mercury, 61:373-77, September, 1945 .
156
certain of them for publication, at least, not in their
existing form. This book contains some of his finest stor
ies, which had earlier established their reputation as
"classic" pieces of short fiction, but it also contains
some of his worst writing, pieces which, in all probabili
ty, Fitzerald would not have permitted to be published
had he been alive.
Malcolm Cowley, 1n his introduction to the volume,
felt that Fitzgerald's short fiction had made an important
contribution to American short story literature , not onl!y
because the author's stories were artistically satisfying,
but also because they interpreted the American social scene
with which they were concerned. The importance of his
best stories, Cowley wrote, was that they" ••• compose an
informal history of two decades in American life, or rather
one decade and its aftermath." They did more, however,
than merely" ••• speak for their time, since they form a
sort of journal of his whole career." Fitzgerald's career
held an importance of its own because it was
.•• above all the struggle against defeat and the
sort of qualified triumph he earned by the struggle .
Fitzgerald remains an exemplar arid archetype, but not
of the 1920
1
s alone; tn the end he represents the
human spirit in its permanent forms.24
24 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Stories off . Scott
Fitzgerald, p. xxv.
157
Cowley, along with Arthur izener and others, clearly saw
the inextricable relationship between Fitzgerald's personal
and social life and his work. Not only did the author's
short stories trace the idenin web of his own life, but
also they extended, through him, to the many larger social
roups of which he was a part . It could be said that Fitz gerald's personal history of revolt, struggle, and final
loss wa·s symbolic of that whole group of trliberated" intel
lectuals, poets, writers, and artists, who followed a sim
ilar pattern after World ar I . Cowley felt that Fitz
gerald's stories, taken together, were important in their
sharp, clear representation of an age in American life.
Alpert Hol1is , in his 1951 review of the Cowley col lection for The Saturday Review of Literature, wrote that
the wide attention Fitzgerald was receiving was worthy and
well placed.
It has taken a novel, a biography , and "Life's" some
what sensational article to excite wide interest in
Fitzgerald . Mr . Cowiey's selection, which occasion
ally sacrifices excellence in favor of representative
ness, proves how amply deserved in this attention . 25
Hollis felt that on the whole the publication of this vol
ume added to the importance of the Fitzgerald canon .
Daniel Seligman, too, felt that the stories in this
25 lpert Hollis, "The Lost Generation Revisited, '
The Saturday Review of Literature, 34:13-14, rch 10, 1951 .
158
book" ••• range from very good to very inconsequential.u
Seligman made use of an old criticism of Fitzgerald, &~au
ing that the author always" ••• thought of the novel as
his metier and the short story as an instrument for paying
off his personal debts." The shorter pieces revealed oc
casional high quality, however, since "At his best, Fitz
gerald was an immensely suggestive writer, a wizard with
the language and. • .a humorist." His main weakness lay
i~ the negativism of his themes. He was unable to write
about anything but weaklings and failures. Seligman traced
this preoccupation to Fitzgerald's father, whom Fitzgerald
"
• •
.admired enormously but whom he regarded as a hopeless
failure. "
2
6
Despite the frequent mediocre quality of the stories
in the Cowley collection, wrote John J. Mahoney for the
New York Herald Tribune, Fitzgerald's best work still
touched greatness. Of these twenty-ei ht stories, the
critic wrote: "They are not, with several exceptions, great
by any means. They are naive, hurried, at times even mere
tricious. • • •
11
Even so, "Fitzgerald was. • • the truly
'born' artist.
"
He had created some truly fine stor-
ies, including "May Day," "Absolution," and "The Rich Boy."
26 Daniel Seligman, "Books," Commonweal, 53:595,
arch 23, 1951.
159
In Mahoney's opinion, "Babylon Revisited""• •• must be
ranked ~1th the ten best stories ever produced by an Ameri
can writer . "
2
7 If this volume of Fitzgerald stories served
to remind the critic of the author's weaker moments and
minor capabilities, it also reminded him that Fitzgerald
had created some great and enduring short fiction.
Henry Dan Piper, in a review of the book for The New
Republic , claimed that eighty percent of Fitz erald's stor
ies were in reality" • •• potboilers intended merely to
satisfy ••• popular magazines ." Fitzgerald had learned
" ••• the hard way, to depend on his magazine hackwork for
the money that would give him the leisure so necessary for
his longer and more ambitious fict ion." Still , the Cowley
edition included much of u •• • the writing , the complicated
emotional intensity, the clean dialog and the bright sensu
ous imagery that make his novels such good reading.u28 Al
though he admitted the obvious quality of many of Fitzger
ald's short stories, Piper still considered t heir chief
importance to be that of offering a training ground or a
sketch pad for their author's chief talent, that of novel-
27 John J . Mahoney , "Fitzgerald's Stories, a Long
Time Later," ew York Herald Tribune Book Review, March 25,
1951 .
28 Henry Dan Piper , "Fitzgerald Once ore," The ew
~public, 125:20, July 2 , 1951 .
160
1st.
Generally the critics felt that The Stories of F.
Scott Fitzgerald had turned up no new depths of creative
expression in Fitzgerald's behalf. The best stories 1n
the volume were those which had already received high
praise many times in the pat, and which still produced
favorable comments. Malcolm Cowley alone found a connected
pattern running through the twenty-eight stories, but that
pattern was to be seen not within the subject matter so
much as in its reflection in the life of its creator.
s has already been mentioned, the only other Fitz
gerald work published after the writer's death (besides re
print editions) was the revised edition of Tender Is the
Night, which was printed in the fall of 1951. Fitzgerald
had rearranged and, in some instances, slightly altered
certain parts of the novel. He had also begun a careful
editing and proofreading of it before he died. His revis
ion was never finished, but through Malcolm Cowley's editor
ial efforts, the text achieved a clear-cut neatness, omit
ting the many minute technical errors which had filled the
earlier version. Although this revised version presented
an altered structure which gave it a unity of movement and
a clarity of content superior to the first version, the
critics apparently did not consider the changes sufficient-
ly important to warrant fresh critical studies.
161
alcolm
Cowley's article on the development of Tender Is the Night,
in The New Republic, explained the circumstances of the
writing of the novel, but offered little critical comment .
Cowley claimed that the revised version"• •• sacrificed
a brilliant beg nning and all the elements of mystery, but
he ended with a better constructed and more effective nov
e1.1129 No other reviews of any importance were available
at the time of the writing of this study.
Critical re-evaluations of Fitzgerald's place in
American literature. From 1945 until 1952, a vast amount
of critical literature was written about Fitzgerald's life
and writings. Most of the articles appearing during this
period were not based upon any single work or phase of the
author's writing, but upon the general review of all of his
work, along with its influence on and importance to modern
American fiction. In almost every case, Fitzgerald was
treated with serious and earnest consideration, and his fic
tion was judged more for its own merit than in relation to
the puzzling and unstable patterns of his personal life.
John Dos Passos' short essay, "A Note on Fitzgerald,"
which was written some time after the author's death and
29 i• Jalcolm Cowley, 'Fitzgerald's 'Tender' --The Story
of a ovel," The New Republic, 125:18-20, August 20, 1951.
162
first published in The Crack-up, was sharply critical of
those reviewers and other ·~ men of letters who had written
about Fitzgerald without a genuine understanding either of
his life or of his work. Dos Passes was dj_agusted with the
"silly yappings" of those critics who had written obituar
ies without having read or refreshed t heir readings of
Fitzgerald's works. "Fortunately there was enough of his
last novel already written to still these silly yappings ."
Referring to the author'& · work on The Last Tycoon, Dos Pas-
sos wrote:
The fact that at the end of a life of brilliant worldly
success and crushing disasters Scott Fitzgerald was en
gaged so ably in a work of such importance proves him
to have been the first-rate novelist his friends be
lieved him to be.
This critic felt that even the completed fragments of The
Last Tycoon were" •• • of sufficient dimensions to raise
the level of American fiction to follow in some such way
as Marlowe's blank verse line raised the whole level of
Elizabethan verse."30 High praise, this, from one of the
keenest and most gifted literary minds of the century . Dos
Passes ' essay was not a panegyric on Fitzgerald, but a
simply stated comment on the merit of the author's chief
works, especially The G reat Gatsby and The Last Tycoon .
30 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-up, pp . 338-43.
163
Mark Scherer, in his article for The Yale Review, in
1945, was aware of the close link between Fitzgerald's per
sonality and the characters and themes of his fiction. The
result, however, was neither narrow nor introverted, Schorer
claimed, as it was with many who wrote autobiographical fic
tion.
The basis of his work was self-scrutiny, but the actual
product was an eloquent comment on the world ••• the
force of his best work always transcends its subject
matter . 31
Schorer felt that the large amount of self-revelation 1n
Fitzgerald's fiction did not limit its scope, because the
author could view life objectively and establish a symbolic
and allegorical connection with a wider world of meaning.
Charles Jackson firmly believed that Fitzgerald be
longed at the front o the g eatest American authors. In
this critic's 1945 article for The Saturday Review of Lit-
erature , he ventured to predict:
••• his work survives and will survive so long as we
care about writing. One feels confident that mer1cans
will someday return to the stories of Scott Fitzgerald
as they now return to Henry James.32
Jackson's article was typical of most of the essays praising
Fitzgerald which were written after 1945, in its assertion
31 Alfred Kazin, 2£• cit., p. 169.
32 Charles Jackson, 2£• cit., p. 10.
164
that Fitzgerald's r1ting would survive and that his repu
tation as a serious writer of first importance was finally
secure. In reading such critical essays, one detects much
ore than honest critical praise. This additional quality
present is that of deep personal appreciation which is
shown by an almost emotional loyalty, a feeling akin to
idolization. The reason for this new feeling can perhaps
be found in the absence of Fitzgerald himself from the
scene. The author's unstable personality, which was both
troubled and troubling, antagonistic, and, at times, dis
ruptive, was no longer of primary concern to the critics,
who could now devote their full attention to the author's
works. In other ords, the death of Fitzgerald probably
removed a significant element of personal bias in the at
titude of many critics toward him.
J. F. Powers considered The Last Tycoon to be the
great triumph of Fitzgerald's literary career. In an ar
ticle for Commonweal 1n 1945, Powers wrote that
11
••• every
body found out ••• that ••• this book ••• contained more
of his best writing than he had ever done, and Fitzgerald's
best had always been the best there was.
11
33 Power's essay
shared the tone of intense admiration described above, and
33 J. F. Powers, "Dealers in Diamonds and Rhine
stones," The Commonweal, 42:408-10, August 10, 1945.
165
was only one contribution _to the growing critical movement
of championing Fitzgerald.
Lionel Trilling, who was to reveal a consistent ad
miration of Fitzgerald, wrote in a 1945 article for The
Nation, that The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the ~ight were
Fitzgerald's two great mature novels. Trilling believed
that even though the latter novel was not a success in every
way, n ••• it is another step and it embodies the great
conception of the novel to a degree that few American books
can match." The critic described Fitzgerald as a romantic,
and made some comparisons between the intensity of his lit
erature and that of the great men of the past: Goethe,
Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Trilling felt that there was no
disproportion between Fitzgerald and these great writers.
All the author lacked was "prudence" and ". • • that blind
instinct of self-protection which the self-fulfilling writ
er needs."34 In the finest romantic tradition, Fitzgerald
had died too soon in life, before the realization of his
"self-fulfillment."
J. Donald Adams, in his review of The Crack-up (des
cribed earlier in this chapter), discussed the whole prob
lem of Fitzgerald's literary attitudes in relation to his
34 Lionel Trilling, "F. Scott Fitzgerald, .. The Na
tion, 161:182-84, August 24, 1945.
166
writing, after The Great Gatsby. Adams made much of Fitz
gerald's admiration of Hemingway s talent, suggesting that
it had been Fitzgerald's desire to let Hemingway have all
the glory for great serious achievement. Fitzgerald, dams
suggested, simply could not play second fiddle. The critic
felt that this situation was partly responsible for Fitz
gerald's long silence after the writing of Th~ Great Gatsby.
dams did not agree with Fitzgerald in his opinion of him-
self as a lesser writer than Hemingway.
Actually, and most ironically, Fitzgerald had, in my
opinion, the finer equipment of the two. In sensi
tiveness and imaginative force, he was Hemingway's
superior ••• He had delicacies of perception Hemingway
can never reach.
Adams went on to rate Fitzgerald's talent as superior in
relation to other writers of the subjective school, because
of his ability to view situations with objective detach
ment. Th6 writings of Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner,
Thomas Wolfe, and Fitzgerald all showed "overwhelming sub
jectivity," but Fitzgerald alone came close to escaping
from it. The Last Tycoon served as the main evidence in
Fitzgerald's favor. This novel showed
••• that he had definitely crossed the threshold of
artistic and even pers·onal maturity. More than in
The Great Gata~, much more than in Tender Is the Night,
he had succeeded in being at the same time one with
his subject and yet able to see it in relation to the
sense of proportion, of values, to which he himself
167
had won through.35
William Embler attempted to find a unifying motive
underlying the thematic questions running through all of
Fitzgerald's serious ork. His essay in the Autumn, 1945,
issue of Chimera assured his fellow critics that Fitzgerald
"• •• was something more than a perennial sophomore. He
was more than a writer symptomatic merely of a restless
deoade.u Fitzgerald's chief thematic concern would insure
the enduring worth of his main works. "F. Scott Fitzgerald
will endure as an artist and writer because he wrote beau
tifully and lyrically about a timeless subject--the self."
His constant concern as with the key question,"Who am I?"
He as driven to become aware of an inner self. Such a
quest readily leads through stages of frustration and even
desperation, to destruction. The inevitability of the de
struction of sensitive self-seekers ran through moat of his
work. In Tender Is the Night the one flaw that drove Dr.
Diver to spiritual collapse was"• •• his quest of individ
uality ••• a longing t or a unified aelfhood, and everywhere
was disunity •••• " In The Last Tycoon, too, the theme of
destruction prevailed. "All is evil, all must be destroyed
before the self can reign again pure and alone." Embler
35 J. Donald Adams, 2.E• cit., pp. 374-77.
168
concluded that for Fitzgeral the crucial question of "iho
am I?" could not be answered. "And to destroy is the oldest
and easiet:3t way of asserting one's self. u36 Hence, the
persistent theme of failur~ and tragic destruction of even
the noble mind and spirit in Fitzgerald's fiction.
William Troy, too, sensed the meaning and importance
of the theme of struggle and failure to Fitzgerald . In a
1945 article for Accent, Troy pointed out that the author
was seeking a Platonic realization of perfection and suc
cess in his own life, and this"• •• was too much for him
to realize. His failure was the defect of his virtues."
His own life had been a clear example of the failure theme,
when seen from the viewpoint of the quest for perfection and
ultimate absolute values. Troy declared that Fitzgerald's
works stood as much chance" •• • of survival as anything of
their kind produced in thi~ s country during the same period."
Compared with his first novel, The Beautiful and Damned was
••• a more frayed and pretentious museum-piece, and
the muddiest in conception of all the longer books •••
{1t is a study .] of a world 1n which no moral decisions
can be made because there are no values ••••
In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald achieved a more objective
view, since he was able to define and criticize his own
work as an artist. Gatsby, Troy felt, became" ••• a symbol
36 ~eller Embler, "F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Fu
ture," Chimera, 4:48-55, Autumn, 1945.
169
of America itself, dedicated to 'the service of a vast,
vulgar, and meretricious beauty.'u Troy wrote that he had
found certain confused ideas in Tender Is the Night which
marred its greatness.
We are never sure whether Diver's predicament 1s the
result of hie on judgment or the behavior of hie neu
rotic wife. At the end we are strangely unmoved by his
downfall because it has been less a tragedy of will
than of circumstance.
The Last Tycoon contained some even more "unfortunate writ
ing" and was even more unclear. "It is evident that Stahr
is supposed to be some kind of symbol--but of what it would
be hard to determine." Troy wrote little of the short fic
tion, concluding that "Absolution" was
O
••• perhaps the
finest of the short stories." In his conclusions on the
literary importance of Fitzgerald, this critic felt that
the author lacked true greatness, and that the explanation
lay in his" ••• distinct intellectual limitations, which
he shared with the majority of American novelists of his
time.
11
Troy went on to explain his insistence on the in
tellectual element in great art. "Art is not intellect
alone; but without intellect art is not likely to emerge
beyond the plane of perpetual immaturity."37 William Troy's
was one of the few dissenting voices amidst the general
critical approval of Fitzgerald at this time. It 1a int r-
37 illiam Troy, "Scott Fitzgerald: The Authority of
Failure," Accent, 6:56-60, Autumn, 1945.
170
eati ng to note that many of his points of deviation from
other critics in his ana ya1s of Fitzgerald's chief works
were the very points which had been and were yet to be
chosen by others as the basis for high praise . The under
lying causes of Diver's downfall, for example , had been
well analyzed and clarified before . ThP, symbolic exten sions of The Last Tycoon were not puzzling to most of the
other critics, who had seized upon this novel's theme to
prove that Fitzger ld had reached a high level of maturity
and insight into social and economic problems .
For his collection of essays on Fitzgerald , Alfred
Kazin selected an article he had written in 1946 for The
Quarterly Review of Literature. Kazin described Fitzger
ald's long and often discouraging struggle upward toward
a maturity of conce p and artistic power which he at last
found in his work on The Last Tycoo~ . Kazin considered
Monroe Stahr to be one of ' the greatest characters 1n Ameri can iction •
• • • in Hollywood he found onroe Stahr--the sad,
skilled, burned-out genius of manipulation who as
as much the refracted image of himself at forty as
Gatsby had been at twenty- five . Stahr is unquestion
ably the greatest of Fitzgerald's achievements; even
in the half-pages of the unfinished [novel] he has a
depth, a variety of human knowledge, that were missing
from the young dancers of the twenties , the nostalgi a
of Gatsby, or the arbitrary breakdown of Dick Diver •••
Fitzgerald did something deeper and more enduring . Out
of the heart of the American dream, at the top- most
pinnacle of merican success, he plucked an alien, a
171
0
mere" producer, and gave him back to us as one who
might have been with White-Jacket and Huck Finn, Lam
bert Strether and Sister Carrie.38
The tone of intense admiration is unmistakable here, ut in
describing Stahr as the "refracted image" of Fitzgerald at
forty, Kazin differed from most critics, who had felt that
in Stahr the author had at last achieved a superbly objec
tive portrait of a man struggling in an adult world. It is
by now a well known fact that the character of Stahr was
inspired by the personality of the Hollywood producer, Irv
ing Thalberg, whom Fitzgerald greatly admired.39
Arthur M1zener's contribution to the 1946 publica
tion, The Lives of Eighteen from Princeton, was a chapter
on Fitzgerald, entitled, in part, "The Poet of Borrowed
Time." Mizener felt that Fitzgerald had written with a
poet's outlook and talent, since" ••• every one of his
books is an attempt to recreate experience imaginatively,"
rather than a mere recording of the life of his time. M1z
ener found three chief elements apparent in the author's
writing. First, Fitzgerald consistently demonstrated his
"historical objectivity." Then, he wrote with" ••• a
Proustian minuteness of recollection of the feelings and
38 Alfr d Kazin, 2.E• cit., pp. 180-81, citing an
article by himself in The Quarterly Review of Literature,
1946.
39 Arthur izener, £.E· cit., p. 282.
172
attitudes which made up t:he experience as it was lived ."
And finally, over all of his work was a "glow of pathos . "
Mizener went on t6 evaluate Fitzgerald's novels .
He felt that Etlmund Wilson's judgment of This Side of Para
dis~, " ••• made at the height of its fame, is perfectly
just." The novel was"• •• in many ways a very bad book."
The author's "judgment and technique" were u . • . 1nadequa te
almost everywhere in the book, but the fundamental, almost
instinctive attitude toward experience which emerges.
• •
1s serious and moving . n The Beautiful and Damned was a
great improvement,
••• more than anything else because Fitzgerald , though
he has not yet found out how to motivate disaster , has
a much clearer sense of the precise feel of the disas
teI" ' he senses in the life he knows .
Although this novel was more unified in every way, it fell
short of genuine tragedy because the characters were not
seeking the good life . "They are pitiful, and their pathos
is often brilliantly realized; but they are not tragic."
The Great Gatsby was a major step forward .
Because of the formal perfection of The Great Gatsby ,
this eloquence 1s given a concentration and intensity
Fitzgerald never achieved again. The art of the book,
in the narrow sense, is nearly perfect .
Mizener felt that this novel realized literary greatness as
• • . a kind of tra.gic pastoral, with the East the ex
emplar of urban sophistication and culture and cor
ruption, and the West, "the bored, sprawling, swollen
towns of the Ohio," the exemplar of simple virtue.
173
Tender Is the Night, " ••• though the most profoundly mov
ing of all Fitzgerald's books, is a structurally imperfect
book." Even so, this novel remained
••• his most brilliant book. All his powers, the
microscopic observation of the life he describes, the
sense of the significance and relations of every detail
of it, the infallible ear, the gift of expression, all
these things are here in greater abundance than ever
before ••• all the people of his book lead lives of
"continual allegory" and its world is a microcosm of
the great world.
Fitzgerald's enlarging and maturing talent reached the point
of complete command of his material and structure with The
Last Tycoon.
The writing, even though none of it is final, is as
subtle and flexible as anything he ever did, and so
unremittingly disciplined by the bqok's central in ten
tion that it takes on a kind of lyric intensity.
In summing up the importance of Fitzgerald's writing,
Mizener claimed that nsuch an undistorted imaginative pene
tration of the particular American world Fitzgerald knew
had hardly been made before." The author had found his
key moral problem in the life among the rich, " ••• the
conflict between the possibilities of their life and--to
give it no worse name--their insensitivity."40 In pointing
out in the clearest terms the evidence that Fitzgerald had
gone far beyond the mere romanticizing of the social era
40 Alfred Kazin, 2.E• cit., 333-53, citing an essay
by Arthur Mizener 1n The Lives of Eighteen from Princeton,
1946 .
174
~
he had observed, and that his most serious writing held al-
legorical meaning which was universal in its application to
human life, Arthur Mizener did more, perhaps, than any
other critic to advance Fitzgerald's literary reputation to
a permanent high level.
In his essay on Fitzgerald for the Winter, 1946,
issue of The Kenyon Review, John Berryman declared that the
author" ••• had been forgotten when he died,., although he
had not deserved such a fate. Berryman considered The Great
Gatsby to be Fitzgerald's best novel; in fact, u ••• it is
a masterpiece." This critic defined his conception of a
masterpiece as
••• a work of the literary imagination which is con
sistent, engaging, and dramatic, in exceptional degrees;
which exhibits largely mastered a human subject of first
importance ••••
The Great Gatsby qualified in every respect. Fitzgerald's
earlier books, however, were not in the same class. They
were" ••• fluent and gaudy, vague and self-indulgent, a
little embarrassing now." Tender Is the Night failed not
because of the lack of sharp, even brilliant writing, but
because of the poor architecture of the whole structure.
This novel was
••• diffuse , lush, uncertain, and badly designed.
There are admirable things in it, a few scenes, some
description, some epigra s; but it is hard to believe
that anyone ever found it as a story anything but a
failure.
175
Berryman's comment on this novel serves to remind us that
it has probably been the most controversial work of all
Fitzgerald's writings, so far as attempting to establish
any dominant critical attitude about it is concerned . Ber
ryman concluded that Fitzgerald's shot stories had no last
ing value as literature and that the author revealed little
of his true talent after 1925; "• •• he no longer had it •
.
He had sold it for money."41 Berryman argued his case
skillfully. By ignoring The Last Tycoon, making little of
Tender Is the Night, and dismissing Fitzgerald's some 160
short stories with a line or two, the critic made The Great
Gatsby alone appear to be Fitzgerald's claim to lasting
importance. When the full facts of Fitzgerald's life are
understood , and the breadth and depth of his literary tal
ent, which never deserted him, ful: .y appreciated, the char
ges that he "sold out
11
for the soul-destroying goal of mon
ey seem unkind and unfair.
In his impressive and provocative study of the Amer
ican novel and novelists from 1915 to 1925, The Last of the
Provincials , Maxwell Geismar wrote what is probably the
most extensive critical analysis of Fitzgerald's chief works
that has yet appeared in literary criticism. Although Geis-
- ·-------
41 John Berryman, "F. Scott Fitzgerald," The Kenyon
Review, 8:103-12, Winter, 1946.
176
mar was largely concerned with the new spirit in American
literature during the decade described above, his criticism
went beyond the year 1925 whenever the writer's works were
com pleted beyond that date. Geismar suggested that certain
novelists, including Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and Fitz
gerald, had written in reaction to the industrialized, ur
ban civilization which was growing up around them. This
new condition in American ~ life had created a "malaise"
w hich led these three on "spiritual pilgrimages" during the
twenti es. The work of the three shared the element of the
quest for spiritual meaning.
Geismar described Fitzgerald as "Orestes at the
Ritz ," whose first novel, This Side of Paradise, had re-
---- - ----
vealed his literary skill without saying very much abo t
life . The Beautiful and Damned" ••• is by all odds a bet-
ter work."
Thi s maturing step 1ri Scott's craft carries him rather
too swiftly across the line of maturity ••• Where This
Side of Paradise marked the first brilliant flaring of
Scott-r's talent, The Beautiful and Damned is in some
respects the sputtering away of the bright flame. The
two brief years which have elapsed between the two nov
els appear to have encom passed two decades of bitter
experience ••••
The theme of struggle and failure played against a back
ground of adult human relationships was plainly established
in this second novel. Tales of the Jazz Age was a rather
ordinar y col lection which contained two "notable" pieces.
177
The first of these was "May Day," which" ••• almost sum
marizes in 60 pages, the drama of the post-war decade."
The second story of high merit was "The Diamond as Big as
the Ritz." A brilliant allegory, this story was"• •• a
Kubla Khan of modern materialism." In 1t the Washingtons
had become corrupt and inhuman to maintain their position,
their story signifying ". •
American propertied class."
.a fascinating parable of the
Geismar commented briefly on the play, The Vegetable,
attempting to suggest the chief reason for its failure both
as a professional production and a literary piece.
The political material in The Vegetable certainly has
possibilities for satire ••• But Fitzgerald's little
comedy too clearly shows his own bias. He is not at all
concerned, as Dos Passes is, with the human implica
tions of our cultural patterns. He represents merely
the distaste of the moneyed elite for the bourgeois
makers of IItoney.
The satire was neither pointed nor well-founded enough, and
the comedy was not sufficiently robust to make the play a
hit.
Geismar felt that The Great Gatsby made a lasting
contribution to our literature. This novel " ••• prefigures
the eloquent and mature Fitzgerald." Gatsby was both an
individual and a symbol •
• • • almost the equivalent of a proletarian protagon
ist. Yet, as the Great Gatsby, he is more than a class
symbol. He is a sort of cultural hero, and the story
of Gatsby's illusion is the story of an age's illusion,
too.
178
The lasting qualities of the novel derived from the fact
that" ••• the deepest inner convictions of the writer have
met with and matched those of his time and place." Fitz
gerald's style had matched his conception. "The spell of
Fitzgerald's writing in these passages, the delicate evoca
tion of a story behind a story, are quite stunning."
Geismar, along with so many others, was not satis
fied with the structure of Tender Is the Night, although he
praised both the theme and the style of the work. The novel
presented
••• a full-sized theme ••• But why is it that the parts
are always better than the whole--that the novel,
filled as it is with fascinating insights, written very
often with all of Fitzgerald's grace, still seems curi
ously off center?
Although the story contained many fa~iliar Fitzgerald ac
cents of dissolution and destruction, whicl1 had echoed all
through most of his serious work, "It is more intense be
cause it is pictured within that European Riviera which
has always been . • .a last hope of refuge.
11
Geismar per
ceived a cracking up in the craft of the novel itself,
hich matched that of its theme. "The wavering motivation,
the artistic confusion in the last sections ••• make it
-
really seem to be the diary of a collapse ••
• •
tt
In sum-
marizing the importance of Fitzgerald's writir.gs up to the
completion of Tender Is th~ Night, Geiamar wrote: "Fitz-
179
gerald's entire story to this point 1s a post-script to our
baronial days ••• 'The Great American Fortune--F1fty Years
Later.'" The stories in Taps at Reveille were part of this
same history. His characters were" ••• descendants of the
American ruling class," and they" ••• combine their ances
tors' social irresponsibility with their own personal ir
responsibility •••• " Other stories could be linked to
Fitzgerald's own life, especially the Basil and Josephine
sketches, in which Basil experiences a sense of sin, "•
• •
with fantasies of crime and fears of insanity, and with the
conviction of being morally alone."
Geismar linked The Last Tycoon with The Great Gatsby
as a "social" novel. It was
••• very skilful, often superb technically, and yet
curiously hollow at times, and in a sense quite "unreal"
underneath, since they reflect without carrying through
the real emotions of Fitzgerald's writing.
Of Monroe Stahr, the critic wrote: " ••• this gifted and
tragic despot is Fitzgerald's most appealing hero." Stahr
represented genuine energy, natural talent, integrity, and
positive values, unlike Fitzgerald's earlier protagonists.
The Last Tycoon, the critic concluded, was" ••• the clos
est an American novelist has got to the truth about the
histri onic home of the Success Story ."
Geismar attempted to describe the philosophical ba
sis which served as the core for all of Fitzgerald's main
180
work. Through all of the novels, the critic traced" •
• •
Fitzgerald' s underlying revolt against not only money but
social position itself." These values were key goals in
life, but the r attainment was never a triumph, since the
penalty was a do'Wilward course of decay, with the loss of
personal or moral integri~y. In part , Fitzgerald's impor
tance to American literature was rooted in the regional and
social milieu which ran through his novels. His writing
••• 1s a dramatic design for our whole literary move ment in the nineteen--~wenties and ni neteen-thirties •••
It telescopes the history of our literary exodus and
return during the last half-century from Henry James to
Ernest Hemingway .
In summing up his entire study of Mencken, Lewis ,
Cather, Anderson, and Fitzgerald, Geismar wrote: "And
didn't F. Scott Fitzgerald have more talent than the rest
of the Younger Generation put together, as Gertrude Stein
was reported to have said?" Fitzgerald, Geismar felt, along
with Dos Passes, Faulkner, Hemingway, and, a ulittle later,"
Wolfe and Steinbeck, formed the first line of native talent,
so far as the novel form was concerned.42
Martin Kallich contributed an essay on Fitzgerald to
the Summer, 1946, issue of the Universi I of Kansas City
Review, in which he praised The Last Tycoon as being Fitz-
42 Maxwell Geismar, The Last of the Provincials
(Boston: Houghton :Mifflin Company, 1947), pp . 297-356 .
181
gerald's finest and most enduring contribution to litera
ture.
Fitzgerald's almost scientific precision in analyzing
the tragic struggle that envelops and finally subdues
the heroic Stahr gives ••• penetration to The Last 1:{_
coon, making it his most objective work. Fitzgerald
••• has grown in stature ••• he has gained the broad
and integrated vision of a social scientist. Yet he
has ••• always been a creative talent compelling res
pect.43
The combination of creative power and certainty of thematic
content and intent in The Last Tycoon was, to Kallich, clear
evidence of Fitzgerald's maturity and mastery of his art.
John P. Marquand, in a 1949 article on This Side of
---
Paradise, as the first critic of the revival to defend
that novel as holding literary qualities which would make
it endure. The story had lost little in thirty years, he
felt, other than its sensational quality.
It still remains ••• an exceptionally brilliant piece
of work by a precocious young Princeton graduate who
was perhaps a genius ••• it now possesses a certain
element of timelessness.
The elements of plot and character alone were not respon
sible for the story's enduring qualities. The writing held
other fine points which might
11
••• save it from oblivion
for many years to come, and ••• may even put it on a perma
nent shelf o American literature." The merits of the book
43 Martin Kalli ch, ·uF. Scott Fitzgerald: Money or
orals?" University of Kansas City Revie, 15:271-80,
summer, 1949.
182
w ere reflected in the original genius of its author.
It was written by a great author, the most naturally
gifted and sensitive of any of hie generation •••
There is beauty, there is epigram, there is a pre
cocious plumbing of emotional depth ••• There is a
breathtaking quality of language ••• He wrote as
splendidly as anyone ever has of his own youth.44
Looking back over the reviews of This Side of Paradise,
of w hich there were few enough a year after its publica
tion, one might conclude that Marquand's comments represent
the moat favorable the book had ever received. Marquand
was almos t alone in his belief that this novel would hold
a permanent place in American literature, as a great study
of youth .
H enr y Steele Comm.ager, in his recent interpretation
of modern American thought, The American Mind, wrote only
briefly of the twenties, but he accorded Fitzgerald a very
high posit i on 1n the literature of that era. Commager
pointed to the cynicism and disillusionment of the period.
Nothing happens, nothing ever pans out; life is in
finite boredom , futility and frustration. It is. the
theme , t oo, of Scott Fitzgerald, the most gifted of
all the novelists of the twenties, the incomparable
historian of gilded youth ••••
Fitzgerald's writing was re presentative of the dominant
literary mood of hi s tim e: the sense of alienation from
44 John P . M arquand, "Fitzgerald: 'This Side of Para
dise,'" The Saturday Review of Literature, 32:30-31, August
6, 1949 .
183
society, and the frustrated quest for value. The author's
chief claim to fame and an enduring reputation, Commager
felt, was his clear, sharp portrayal of the social history
through which he livea..45
In a passing reference to Fitzgerald and Arthur Miz
ener's biography of him, Bennett Cerf, in a 1950 issue of
The Saturday Review of Literature, wrote: "If you've never
read Tender Is the Night, you've missed one of the great
American novels of the century. "46 This was perhaps the
first time this novel had been alluded to by a critic with
out certain inevitable qualifications as to its limitations
and inadequacies.
Burke Wilkinson's article, "Scott Fitzgerald: Ten
Years After," reinforced the claim that Fitzgerald was a
major novelist of his time. Wilkinson agreed with John
O'Hara's comment that Fitzgerald'" ••• was our best novel
ist, one of our best novella-ists, and one of our finest
writers of short stories.'" The totality of Fitzgerald's
maturity and artistic mastery was evident in The Last !,l
coon. This novel" ••• 1s the supreme example of the dura
bility of his gifts." Wilkinson referred to the "present"
45 Henry Steele Commager, .2.E• cit., pp. 265, 274.
46 Bennett Cerf, "Trade Winds," The Saturday Review
of Literature, 33:4, 6, October 14, 1950.
-
184
time 1n literature as one of "small talents,u and" ••• the
big ones loom large ."47
John w . Aldridge, the young critic already mentioned
as the writer who so clearly sug ested the reasons for the
revival of interest in Fitzgerald and the entire post-War
I generation, had more to say about the lasting impression
Fitzgerald' s works had made upon our literature . The Beau
tiful and Damned, Aldridge wrote, marked a high point of
maturity of outlook in Fitzgerald , for he had realized the
end of an age with it. "The crumbling structure is not
only a marriage . It is Fitzgerald's vision of Paradise
as well, going down in the dissolution of an age ." iith
thi s ideal destroyed, " ••• Fitzgerald's Jazz Age romance
came to an end." Aldridge considered The Great Gatsby to
be" ••• by all odds, Fitzgerald's most perfect novel . "
Tender Is the Night was what Fitzgerald had called"' • ••
the novel of deterioration.'" The story was written w~th
" ••• neuroti c subtlety, crammed with tortured images and
nvoluted patterns. It is something out of a mental pa tient's diary. . • • "
In summarizing Fitzgerald's position in the literary
history of two decades, Aldridge asserted that the author
47 Burk~ Wilkinson, .2.E• cit . , pp. 9-10 .
185
••• reproduced the design of an entire literary move
ment. But Fitzgerald was more than merely ,ypical
of that movement: he was its most sensiti-ve and tor
mented talent and the prophet of its doom.
He gave us not only the surface vision of life, but also
-
the underlying visions of its truth.
What matters and what continues to matter is that we
have before us the work of a man who gave us better
than anyone else the true substanc~ of an age, the
dazzle and the fever and the ruin.48
Aldridge considered the present post-war age to be parallel
to that of t he first war, and predicted that so long as
future age s continued to ahare the feelings and doubts of
this one or the last, Fitzgerald's writing would continue
to seem m eaningful and valuable.
In hi s i ntroduction to The Stories of F. Scott Fitz-
------ - -
gerald, Malcolm Cowley dealt briefly with the author's lit
erary accomplishment, in very general terms. Cowley indi
cated that Fitzgerald's characters shared a common element
of similarity in that they were related to their creator •
• • • like himself his heroes would be exemplary. The
story, of whatever length, would be concerned with
how they prospered in the world, how they fell in love
and how t hey made or failed to make an adjustment with
life . It is the story that Standahl told in The Red
and the Bl ack and Dickens told in Great Expectations
••• Fi t zgerald laid the story in his own time and his
social ob servation was not much inferior to that of the
masters .
Evidently Cowley considered Fitzgerald's greatest talent
48 J ohn W. Aldridge, _ .2£• £1_£., pp. 47-48.
186
to be that of the shrewd and clever social observer, in the
sense that Proust or Dickens were observers of the social
climate surrounding them. Of This Side of Paradi!!!,, Cowley
wrote: " ••• for all its faults and borrowing it was held
together by its energy, honesty, and self-confidence and it
spoke in the voice of a new generation." Apparently, Cow
ley felt that this work would have sustaining interest only
with respect to the study of the new literature of that
period. This critic claimed that The Great Gatsby was the
turning point of Fitzgerald's career, because "He was work
ing on a deeper level of experience than he had attempted
to reach in the past, and he continued to work on it in
the best of the stories that followed."49
Harold Gardiner was the editor of an interesting
collection of essays on the American novelists of the first
half of the twentieth century, FiftI Years of the American
Novel. A chapter by Riley I-Iughes entitled, "F. Scott Fitz
gerald: The Touch of Disaster," was part of this work.
Hughes' view of Fitzgerald as the "spokesman" of progress
in his short stories appears to be a unique contribution to
the Fitzgerald criticism:
Most of Fitzgerald's short stories are negligible as
art, but they achieve significance in terms of the
49 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Stories of E• Scott Fitz
gerald, pp. xviii, 4.
187
American myth of progress, for which he was, 1n his
moments of acceptance, spokesman.
It would perhaps be more realistic to call Fitzgerald the
spokesman of the cynical view of progress. Certainly the
author was frequently the satirist of the spoils of mater
ial progress. Hughes agreed with many critics in naming
The Great Gatsby ". • .the fable for which Fitzgerald will
always be known.
• • •
ti
Fitzgerald achieved his most con-
sistent philosophical statement in this novel.
Jay Gatsby's tragedy escapes triviality and sordidness
through its allegorical power. The book is a juxtapo
sition of scene and symbol from beginning to end; it is
"metaphysical" in the modern sense.
This critic disagreed with most of the others in his denial
that The Last Tycoon represented" ••• a framework for a
masterpiece," in the sense of achieving" ••• a meaningful
oneness . " He felt that the novel had not been sufficiently
worked out to give it such a Judgment. He termed Fitzgerald
". • • the self-dispossessed heir to all the ages," one who
was most impressed with the social world in which he lived.
In his last t,wo novels, " •• • the very syncopation of the
nervous 'thirties'. • • " was 1n his style. Hughes as an
other critic who expressed a dissenting view regarding the
permanence of Fitzgerald's works and high reputation.
The verdict of time on Fitzgerald's work will never
permit it to be en irely lost to us. Much of it will
be forgotten ••• bee -use Fitzgerald was a profoundly
unoriginal riter ••• Few of his writings ••• other
188
than The Great Gatsby and a handful of short stories~
will be remembered as anything more than period piec
es . SO
Hughes was probably the only critic of the Fitzgerald re
vival to accuse the author of having been "profounily un
origi nal . " Wha t ever defects other critics found in his
work , they seemed to a gree that his style was distinguished
by its originality, and that although his subject matter
was at the center of t he "new" movement of revolt during
the twenties, Fitzgerald was in the foreground of the liter
ature and was not an i mitator of other writers of his era.
A second recent work treating the development of the
modern novel in America was the 1951 volume by Frederick J.
Hoffman, The Modern N ovel in America. Hoffman considered
-----
Fitzgerald , Faulkner, and Hemingway to be t he outstanding
novelists of modern times. These three had succeeded in
combining the problems of literary technique with the form
of the novel . Thi s cri t ic wrote that
Fitz erald 's nove l s have a significant place in modern
American fiction , and this not only because, like Hem
ingway, he worked consciously toward the perfection of
his art • •• He had neither t he security of background
nor the balance of subject ••• of James and Wharton
• • • •
Fi zgerald ' s m ain defi ci ency lay in his lack of interest in
50 Riley Hughe s , "F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Touch of
Disaster," Fifty Y ears of t he American Novel (Harold c.
Gardiner , editor; New Y ork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951),
pp . 135-49 .
189
what Hoffman termed "the life of the mind," or the 1ntel-
lectual plane of art. Fitzgerald, however, had kept" •••
his work free of the pretentious intellectual faking that
has handicapped so much of American fiction since Norris and
Dreiser." Fitzgerald's lack of intellectual depth could be
traced to the fact that he was" ••• immersed in the pres
ent," and unable to advance beyond it. He never attained
sufficient objectivity, partly because of his sentimental
ism.
Hoffman went on to discuss what he considered to be
Fitzgerald's three major works. The Great Gatsby, he
claimed, was the author's
••• artistic center ••• the "line," the core of his
achievement ••• He had ••• brought into clear focus
all of the preoccupations and experiences less capably
treated in his earlier novels; and he never treated
them so well again.
If Fitzgerald was not to treat his earliest themes again
with such mastery as he revealed in this novel, as Hoffman
suggested, he was, nevertheless, to develop more subtle and
complex themes of human relationships and moral crisis, in
Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon. Hoffman felt that
Tender Is the Night was not a successful novel, largely be
cause it lacked tightness and unity; " ••• this novel is
huge and sprawling." He objected to the story's point of
view passing from Rosemary to the Divers, and then to an
190
omniscient position. This was evidence of Fitzgerald's
"
• •
.fumbling concern over form." The basic flaw of The
Last Tycoon was again Fitzgerald's poor choice of his point
of view, that of his story teller, Miss Brady. In this
novel, " ••• he is defeated by the richness and complexity
of his theme, which the r~ther weakly delineated sensitivi
ty of Miss Brady is scarcely equipped to cope with."
In summarizing Fitzgerald's position in American
literature compared 1th that of his contemporaries, Hoff
man also commented briefly on the revival of interest in
James, Wharton, and Fitzgerald. This rene ed interest
• •
. has at present a very limited influence on what fie-
tion is being published." The revival as of far more int
erest to the critics than to the novelists, Hoffman felt.
As for new signs of interest in certain older novels,
No novel of the last ten years has succeeded quite as
well as The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and The
Sound and the Fury ••• Nor have the best achievements
of Henry James and FA.1th Wharton been equaled.51
Hoffman believed that the nineteen-forties had produced no
outstanding American novelists, that Fitzgerald, Hemingway,
and Faulkner were the major writers of their on generation,
and that no American writer had ever produced a novel that
could compare in mastery of form and t chn1que to the ~ajor
51 rederick J. Hoffman, The Modern Novel in America
(Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1951), pp . 120-202.
191
works of Henry James and Edith Wharton.
That Arthur Mizener's excellent biography of Fitz
gerald has been an invaluable reference source in the writ
ing of this entire paper, goes without saying. However,
certain of Mizener 's critical judgments of Fitzgerald prop
erly belong in this chapter, since the revival was height
ened by this critic's contributions to the literature about
Fitzgerald .
Mizener, who probably knew Fitzgerald's short stor
ies better than anyone else, with the possible exception of
Malcolm Cowley, concluded that Fitzgerald compared very fa
vorably with both Hemingway and Faulkner as a writer of
short stories . "Of Fitzgerald's one hundred and sixty
stories, at least fifty ••• are serious and successful stor
ies, and perhaps half of these are superb."52
Of This Side of Paradise, Mizener wrote: "He had a
fine ear, and the speech 0f the characters ••• is complete
ly convincing." If the scenes laid in Princeton were guilty
of being occasionally over-dramatized and much too senti
mental, they still" ••• trace very penetratingly the in
visible pressures of a eociety."53 It is interesting to
to compare these views with those expressed by t he cr1ti
52 Arthur Mizener , The Far Si de of Paradise, p . xx.
-- - ---
53 Ibid . , p . 101 .
192
five years earlier , in The Lives of Eightee~ from Prince-
ton. Although h still saw the faults of the novel, he
was now much more t olerant and sympathetic about them .
Also, his over-all praise of the work had increased som e
what.
Compare with This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful
~;}£ Damned was" •• • a painstakingly thought- out book , and
for that reason a much less effective one . " izener sug-
gested that Fitzgerald had self- consciously adopted the lit
erary purpose of demonstrating a superior irony like that
of George Jean N athan . This effort had hurt the novel's
real purpose. Even so, there was an undeniable quality
about it. "Fitzgerald got into it his acute sense of dis
aster and his ab ility to realize the minutiae of humilia
tion and sufferi ng . " Mizener sustained his earlier Judg
ment of t he work in stating that it had fallen short of gen
uine tragedy. Fitzgerald's ability for a wholly objective
Judgment of his materials was not yet mature . 54
M izener's comments on The Great Gatsby generally
repeated wha t he had written five years earlier, and his
judgment of the work was closely in line with what most of
the other critics had written.
the Night, wi th all its faults,
54 Ibid., pp . 138- 42.
He believed that Tender Is
-
as Fitzgerald's best work .
193
••• if Tender 1.! the Night falls to make its central
character completely coherent, and if its structure 1s
damaged by a failure to solve the problem of point of
view and by inadequate selection ••• The book's defects
are insignificant compared to its sustained richness of
texture, its sureness of language, the depth and pene
tration of its understanding--not merely a small class
of people, as so many reviewers thought, but of' the
bases of all human disaster. With all its faults, it
is Fitzgerald's finest and most serious novel.55
Mizener here was consistent with his earlier opinion of
this novel , but he devoted a more extensive criticism to
the work in supporting his claim that it was Fitzgerald's
major work and his finest.
Although this critic did very little analysis of
The Last Tycoon in The Far Side of Paradise, possibly be
cause the novel was still in a very earl y stage of develop
ment at Fitzgerald 's death, his enthusiastic praise of the
author's technique was clearly expressed. "Fitzgerald's
writing is finer than any he had ever done before, and he
had not made his final revision of any of it." The author's
objective grasp of his characters' lives and emotions was
an indication of the certain high quality of the work.
"The feelings always belong to t he people and the events;
they are never forced on =hem, never asserted for their own
sake.
11
56
55 Ibid., p . 241.
56 Ibid., pp . 296- 97 .
194
Mizener's conclusions about the permanence of Fitz
gerald's literary reputation were stated very briefly. The
careful and honest writing of the biography was in itself
plain evidence that the critic believed in the permanent
worth of Fitzgerald's literature. Reflecting on the ''faint
echo" of the writer's reputation at his death, Mizener wrote:
"Now, a decade after ••• more of his work 1s in print than
at any time during his life, and his reputation as a seri
ous novelist is secure. "57
In a January 29, 1951, review of Mizener's book, the
critic for Newsweek commented on Fitzgerald's place in lit
erature. The renewed interest in his life and literature,
this critic felt, was part of a" ••• general revival of
interest in the Years Between the Wars. • • • " As for Fitz
gerald's literary talents:
••• somehow the point is missed that this man ••• was
neither a symbol of his time nor the classical tragic
artist, but simply the greatest talent that ever
brought lyricism to fiction.58
The central question of the Fitzgerald revival should have
been, according to this critic, not how dramatic, tragic,
or sordid Fitzgerald's life was, but merely how great a
natural genius he was.
57 Ibid., p. 300.
58 "Life of a Lyricist," Newsweek, 37:92-3, January
29, 1951.
195
Lionel Trilling continued his analysis of certain of
the author's works in an essay for The New Yorker, February
..
3, 1951 . One unannounced function of this essay was to
answer flatly certain critical judgments which had been con
sistently directed against Fitzgerald since his death. Ten
der Is th~ Night, according to Trilling, was" ••• one of
the best American novels of the decade.
11
The Las1 Tycoon
had shown Fitzgerald to be" •• • a novelist of superb and
developing powers ••
• • "
The Crack-up" ••• put it beyond
question that he was an intelligence of the greatest ser
iousness . " Thus, with a few strongly worded lines, Tril
ling a11swered the familiar old charges that Tender Is the
i ght was of minor importance, that Fitzgerald's crack-up
had destroyed any further creative power in him, and that
hie greatest lack was an intelligent mind interested in
intellectual questions. This critic went on to link Fitz
gerald with the great poets of the Romantic Age. The
strongest element of this relationship was found in the
ever-present sense of wonder. Considering both the Romantic
poets and Fitzgerald, Trilling wrote:
What they wondered at was, above all, the self, and
as our epoch more and more denies the value and even
the possibility of the self, Fitzgerald seems to have
ended what they began, to be as far off as they, and
to shine with their light.59
59 Lionel Tr1111ng, "Fitzgerald Plain,u The New York
fil:, 26:79-81, February 3,1951.
196
In considering Fitzgerald to be a direct descendant of the
Romantic line of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, ani united with
them in his persistent quest for the place of the self in
t he larger scheme of existence, Trilling further clarified
his view of the author as a Romantic, a view he had first
expressed in The Nation, in 1945.
60
Burts . Struthers, a writer and critic who had known
Fitzgerald from his earliest days as an author, wrote what
is in some ways the most penetrating and fascinating study
of all those that appeared between 1920 and 1952 dealing
with the fundamental attitudes and motives of Fitzgerald's
innermost mind. Struthers asserted that Fitzgerald was
fundamentally a poet, and that his novels were" ••• the
works of an unreconciled poet . But like so many Americans
destined to be poets, he denied his medium; feared and evad
ed it ••• Scott was a novelist by tour de force.'' Fitzger
ald's love of Keats and the Romantic poets, and his con
stant desire to create the delicacies and richness of poetic
diction in his prose, were indications of his poetic nature.
Struthers went on to condemn those critics who had claimed
that the author had nothing to say. On the contrary, he
••• had an enormous thing to say. The paramount state
ment . Also an ancient one, repeated in every generation
since the begiil1,1ng of man. It is what all poets have
to say ••• It has to do with the 1rreconc1lib111ty of
60 Seep . 165.
197
life. What, in modern terms, could be called 1ts
schizoid quality. · ..
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
• • • how do you reconcile beauty and horror? How o
you reconcile God with what happens?61 .
Struthers' analysis of Fitzgerald's outlook on life fur
nishes an important clue to the understanding of the nature
of the latter's tragic sense in his writing . It would seem
that the inevitable result of the conflict of romantic
idealism with modern pragmatic realism, along with the lat
ter's literary extension, naturalism, should be disappoint
ment, frustration, and, with those who possess a "height
ened sensitivity to life," ultimate collapse and tragedy.
The conflict of beauty with horror, of the ideal with the
real, and of" ••• God with what happens," is everywhere
present in Fitzgerald's serious work. The attempt to rec
oncile the dominant sense of "self" with the larger pattern
of life around the self, or to find a fixed center for t he
self in relation to the universe and universal truth, al
ways fails, and t he result is the deterioration or the col
lapse of the self. These· basic conflicts, inherent in hu
man relationships, are at the root of all of Fitzgerald's
important works.
R. W. B. Lewis, 1n a 1951 essay for The Hudson Rev-
61 Burts. Struthers, "Scott Fitzgerald, Whose Novels
Are the Works of an Unreconciled Poet," New York Herald
Tribune Book Review, July 8, 1951, pp . 2, 10.
198
iew, attempted to point out various reasons underlying the
hi gh quality of Fitzgerald's best work. Lewis wrote that
Fi tzgerald's stories did more than merely recapture the
spir i t of the past; " ••• they may also be extensions of a
poeti cally just future." This critic felt that if The Last
Tycoon" ••• was potentially h1s richest achievement, it
was lar gely because of what Dos Passes called its 'frame of
refer ence.'" Fitzgerald's style was too often merely ad
mired rat her than analyzed. Lewie pointed out that this
style w a s not self-conscious, but united wit~ the substance
and action. His style was" . •• another mark of F1tzger-
ald's s t a t ure ••
• •
"
Lewis believed that the author's
greatest mastery of his craft could be found in the unity
between the ext ernal statement of his story and the thematic
intent •
• • • Fi tzgerald mastered what must be the supreme prob
lem for t he American 1 1ovelist, in his steadily more suc
cessful aoco mmodat1on of the visible and concrete to
the ideal and ethica1.62
In October, 1951, Lawrence Stallings wrote a stimu
lating and i nfor mative account of the last years of Fitz
gerald 's life f or Esquire. Stallings felt that while Fitz
gerald had an undeniable creative talent, his contribution
to American literatur e was a minor one, of value in rela-
62 R. W . B. Lewis, "Fitzgerald's Way," The Hudson
Review, 4:304- 9, Summer, 1951.
199
t1on to his own social epoch. "No one since Fitzgerald has
written so joyously, so economically, of America's last
fling at adolescence,
11
Stallings concluded, reminding the
reader that Fitzgerald's personal life had been part of
that "last fling." Stallings recounted a conversation
which had been reported to him, in which Hemingway had been
discussing two writers of the twenties with an acquain
tance. Hemingway suddenly"• •• broke off his homily and
said curtly: 'Hell, why discuss them? Scott Fitzgerald can
do more on a page than any of us can do 1n a chapter.'"
Stallings went on to compar& Fitzgerald's writing with
that of Standahl and Balzac. The latter two
••• were giants, and F. Scott Fitzgerald was not. He
was a golden lad who had very little to say, and, how
ever beautifully he said it, there is the possibility
that he left behind him little but the music of the
prose.63
It is in a sense ironic that, ten years after Fitzgerald's
death, a critic should make an evaluation of him in a nat
ional magazine which closely coincided with what m any writ
ers had said about the author at the very start 0£ his lit
erary career, in 1920: that although Fitzgerald had very
little to say, he said it with great beauty of style. No
critic or reviewer had denied the almost magical spell of
63 Lawrence Stallings, "The Youth in the Abyss,"
Esquire, 36:47, 107-11, October, 1951.
200
Fitzgerald's style, with its unfailing power to evoke a
mood, a scene, or an entire era with an ease and brilliance
that distinguished its creator from nearly all of his con
temporaries.
Numerous other articles and essays dealing with
Fitzgerald and various aspects of his work were written
from 1945 to 1952, the period covered in this chapter. It
has been impractical to discuss all of them, especially
since many merely repeat ideas and opinion which have al
ready been discussed. However, since certain of these ar
ticles might hold special interest to readers concerned with
various aspects of the Fitzgerald literature, they are list
ed below, chronologically and in two groups. The first
group includes those pieces the dominant tone of which is
negative; that is, they deny the m~jor importance of Fitz
gerald's works. The second group consists of those ar
ticles which praise his writings as enduring contributions
to American literature.64
64 Those articles which may be classified as "nega
tive" in tone: Isador Schneider, "A Pattern of Failure,"
New Masses, 57:23-4, December 4, 1945; Frederick J. Hoff
man, "Points of Moral Reference: A Comparative Study of
IDiith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald," English Institute
Essays (Alan s. Downer, editor, New York: Columbia Press,
1950, pp. 147-76: Leslie A. Fiedler, "Notes on F. Scott
Fitzgerald," The New Leader, April 9, 1951, pp. 20-21; Perry
Miller, "Departure and Return," The Nation, 173:356-7, Octo
ber 27, 1951; John Clark Abbot, "The Love Song of F. Scott
Fitzgerald," Commonweal, 56:72-3, April 25, 1952.
201
Summary of the main trends of the Fitzgerald revival.
Renewed interest in Fitzgerald, which had begun as early as
1941 with the publication of The Last Tycoon, grew much more
widespread after the end of World War II. The revival took
several years to develop, and was displayed in three ways,
in critical, public, and publisher's attention. The pub
lication of several works by and about Fitzgerald in 1945,
19~0, and 1951, served tc focus the attention of literary
critics on the whole problem of Fitzgerald's writings.
The Crack-up and The Portable!• Scott Fitzgeral~, pub
lished in 1945, created wide critical attention and stimu-
lated renewed popular interest. The Disenchanted (1950),
-
Those articles which may be classified as nfavor
able": Malcolm Cowley, "Third Act and Epilogue," The New
Yorker, 21:49-52, June 30, 1945; "The Jazz Age," Time Maga
zine, 46:90-91, July 16, 1945; William Phillips, editor,
Great American Short Novels (New York: Dial Press, 1946),
pp. vii-viii; Arthur Mizener, "Scott Fitzgerald and the Im
aginative Possession of American Life," The Sewanee Review,
54:66-86, 1946; Martin Ksllich, "F. Scott Fitzgerald: Money
or Morals," University: of Kansas City Review, 15:271-80, .
Summer, 1949; Arthur Mizener, "The Novel of Manners in Amer
ica," The Kenyon Review, 12:1-19, Winter, 1950; Michael F.
Maloney, "Half-Faiths in iv1odern Fiction,' The Catholic
World, 171:344-50, August, 1950; Lionel Trilling, The Liber
al Imagination (New York: The Viking Press, 1950); Malcolm
Cowley, "The Scott Fitzgerald Story," The New Republic, 124:
17-20, February 12, 1951; Malcolm Cowley, "Fitzgerald: the
Double Man," The Saturdai Review of Literature,34:9-10, 42-
4, February 24, 1951; Joseph Warreri Beach,
11
Five Makers of
American Fiction," The Yale Review, 40:750-51, Summer, 1951;
Charles s. Holmes, "Fitzgerald: The American Theme,u The
Pacific Spectator, 6:243-52, Spring, 1952; Harold Strauss,
"The Illiterate American Writer," The Saturday Review of
Literature, 35:8-9, 39, May 17, 1952.
202
The Far Side of Paradise (1951), The Stories of F. Scott
. -- - ---- -- ---- - -
Fitzgerald (1951), and nwnerous reissues of Fitzgerald's
novels, stimulated nationwide interest in the author, the
first two books named having received "best-selling" public
response. Ten years after Fitzgerald's death, more of his
work was in print than at any time during his life, and
more than one million copies of various editions of his
works had been sold since 1941.
Several writers have attempted to analyze the causes
of the renewed attention given to an author whose reputa
tion in 1940 had almost reached the point of obscurity. It
has been suggested that Fitzgerald was not the sole basis
for the revival, although he was its center. Critical and
popular interest alike turned back to the entire post-war
epoch of the twenties. John w. Aldridge and Katherine
~
Bregy felt that there existed striking parallels between the
national moral and economic life of the period following
World War II and that follo wing the first great war. The
influence of wartime experience upon both the individual
and the society served as a connecting link between the two
ages, and thus writers such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway
received far more attention than the younger writers of the
thirties. Burke Wilkinson believed that the high interest
of narrative and character evident in all of Fitzgerald's
203
work, along with other elements of the author's literary
talent, was largely responsible for Fitzgerald's continued
popularity. He would maintain hie popular appeal for years
to come, simply because he was an unusually talented writ
er. Exactly how widely popular his works might have be
come if The Disenchanted and The Far Side of Paradise had
never been published presents a challenging question . The
fact that t wo talented writers such as Budd Schulberg and
Arthur M izener devoted their earnest attention to the pro
duction of two fascinating and ell-written books based
upon t he romantic life and works of an author whose criti
cal reput ation as BLlready secure, probably accounts more
than any other consideration for the great surge of popular
intere st i n Fitzgerald during 1950 and 1951.
The literary criticism written about Fitzgerald dur
ing t he past seven years 1a distinct from that of any other
period of his published work. In 1941 Stephen Vincent
Ben~t had been among the first to claim that Fitzgerald's
reputation as a writer of the first importance was finally
"secure . " By 1945 most of the critics had agreed with
Ben~t, and from that time to the present, the great major
ity of t hem have written, in all, hundreds of pages of ar
nest and enthusiastic praise of the author's major books .
Thi s f avorable criticism may generally be divided into two
204
related schools. The first of thes tended to praise Fitz gerald as a sharp, even brilliant, social observer and his
torian, a writer who mor than any other reflected the es
sential spirit and tempo of his own age. That age, how
ever, was utterly dead, and any revived interest in it was
based primarily upon the historical, and secondarily upon
the literary and philosophical points of view . riters
such as Malcolm Cowley, M~rtin Kallich, Henry Steele Com
mager, and F. J. Hoffman were inclined toward the historical
view of the importance of Fitzgerald's work.
The second attit de expressed in the criticism of
this period was that Fitzgerald, in terms of literary pur
pose and craftsmanship based upon textual evidence, was a
major writer of our time, and his reputation as such was
assured. The critics of this school found thematic implica
tions in most of his serious work which transcended purely
local environs and era. As Alfred Kazin put it, " ••• the
actual product was an eloquent comment on the world •••• "
Those critics who found in Fitzgerald's stories larger sym
bolic and allegorical meaning, pertinent to the life of a
whole class or an entire age, firmly denied that the author
had very little to say, that he was intellectually shallow,
or that he lacked philosophical direction or point of ref
erence. Bennett Cerf, ill1am Embler, Charles Jackson,
205
Alfred Kazin, Arthur Mizener, and Burts . Struthers were
typical of those critics ho believed that Fitzgerald had
made a major and lasting contribution to our literature in
terms of both esthetic and. and thematic richness and state
ment.
A very few writers expressed the idea that Fitzger
ald had never been more than a potential writer of impor
tance, one who had never arrived because of certain tragic
flaws of character. These critics referred to those per
sonal weaknesses and conflicts which had interrupted his
serious work, caused him to "sell out" to sordid commercial
ism, and led to the breakdown from hich he never recovered
his full ability. Such critics usually contended that the
author's stories were ephemeral, "slick" pieces, lacking in
intellectual depth. They often argued that The Great Gata-
'
~ and a very few short stories were his only enduring
work. Almost without exception, however, these writers
agreed that even if Fitzgerald had made no major contribu
tion to literature, he had mastered the problems of tech
nique 1n be oming a competent literary craftsman. This
latter group of critics included such writers as 1111am
Troy, John Berryman, Riley Hughes, and Lawrence Stallings.
A random comparison of the extreme positive end of
the continuum of criticism expressed about Fitzgerald dur-
206
ing the revival period 1th the extreme negative end, indi
cates a range of critical feeling which is evidence of an
amazing controversy. To understand this range of opinion,
it is only necessary to compare Riley Hughes' verdict that
most of Fitzgerald's worY would be forgotten because the
author was"• •• a profoundly unoriginal writer," with
Lionel Trilling's statement that Fitzgerald was"• •• a nov elist of superb and developing powers •••• " at +he time
of his death and that The Crack-up had"• •• put it beyond
question that he was an intelligence of the greatest seri
ousness."
There can be little doubt now that the large majority
of America's serious literary critics consider Fitzgerald to
be one of the great American novelists and short story writ
ers of the modern age. They base this conclusion upon the
brilliance and poetry of his craftsmanship ad upon his
ability to unite his style with the thematic substance of
his work. The subject matter of his writing is of lasting
importance because it vividly portrays the social age of his
own time, and because it deals with the fundamental prob
lems of the human spirit involved in moral conflict 1th a
material civilization. The future popular reputation of F .
Scott Fitzgerald can scarcely be predicted , but it seems
certain that his critical reputation 1a at last secure.
CHAPTER VII
SU~ - ~-~RY OF THE LITERARY REPUTATION OFF. SCOTT FITZGERALD
FR O M .. 1920 TO 1952
During his fi r st two years as a professional author,
from 1920 to 1922, Fi t zgerald published four books: Thia
Si de of Paradise, a romantic novel of young manhood; Flap
pers and fhilosophers, a collection of romantic short stor
ies of young love; The Beautiful and Damned, a tragic novel
of young marr i ed life ; and Tales of the Jaz~ Ag~, a second
collection of short stories, dealing with urban post-war
life and morals. During t his brief period, he became a
popular writer of the first rank, and soon discovered that
he had also become a sort of romantic hero to the rebelli
ous younger generation and to those young writers of the
unew style" of r evolt in l iterature. Fitzgerald's easy com
mercial succes s permitted hi s marriage to the beautiful and
erratic young Zelda Sayer , and the couple rushed headlong
into a social life which w a s gay, careless, and wasteful in
relation to their f uture stability and purpose 1n life. In
two years the author had achieved all of his early rofilantic
dreams except that of becoming a great writer of high pur
pose.
The critical recepti on of Fitzgerald's first four
208
books was mixed, in that it was hesitant, skeptical, and
admiring at the same time. Most critics disapproved of the
theme and the structure of his stories. They felt that
Fitzgerald was still immature, shallow 1n intellect, and,
at times, careless and incoherent. Yet the same writers
praised his creative power, his "graceful and vivid" style,
and his wit and cleverness. "Fitzgerald plays the language
entirely by ear,u wrote Elimund Wilson. Several reviewers
suggested that although the author had shown considerable
promise as a first-rate writer, he had "sold out" to the
commercial formula and had thus submerged his power and
ambition to write fiction of enduring seriousness and
worth. Even though they were clearly impressed by nearly
all of his stories, they did not feel that he had mastered
the larger problems of craftsmanship: structure, unity,
and serious thematic statement.
From 1923 until 1926 Fitzgerald continued to produce
a steady flow of short fiction which reflected the manners,
dreams, and excesses of his age, and which achieved the
highest commercial success. · His satiric comedy, The Vege
table, was a complete failure in its 1923 production, and
Scribner's publication of the play was scarcely more success
ful. In 1925 he completed what he considered to be a
"great" novel, The Great Gatsby. Soon after, Maxwell Per-
209
kins cabled him in Paris, 'SALES SITUATION DOUBTFUL, EXCEL
LENT REVIEWS.u Perkins' judgm nt was accurate. The novel
was not a popular success in a ye r when Elina Ferber's So
Big achieved wide sales. Most o the critics, however,
felt that he had ta ... " ••• a deeper cut t life than
hitherto," and that the unity and the structure of the sto
ry were a most erfect. The novel, they concluded, was
realistic in style, yet poetic in its intensity. everal
reviewers stated that with this book Fitzgerald had entered
into the highest rank of American fiction, claiming that the
novel was an American masterpiece. Gilbert Seldes, for ex
ample, wrote that the author had left behind " •• • all the
men of his own generation and most of his elders." Early
in 1926, All the Sad Young Men, a collection of nine very
successful short stories, was published. This volume con
tained such stories as "Winter Dreams" and "The Rich Boy,"
which were to establish a high claim for their creator's
reputation. The critical reception of the book was gener
ally enthusiastic and appreciative. Several reviewers
found 1n it added proof of Fitzgerald's developing matur
ity, both intellectual and artistic. A few critics con
tinued to attack him for having developed his commercial
talent to the detriment of hie more serious cap bilities.
By the end of 1926, Fitzgerald's iterary reputation stood
210
at a new high point, the majority of critics having agreed
on th merit of his work. Few of them now attacked his
literary craftsmanship, hie undeniable talent for weaving
a compelling story; rather, they attacked his commercial
ambitions, or the excesses of his personal life.
ntil 1934, hen Tender Is the Night was published,
Fitzgerald's literary productivity steadily declined, 1th
the result tha. critical interest in him also aned. The
author had entered into a long period of personal unhappi
ness, intensified by a complex of forces, including Zelda's
growing insan ty, his on increasing financial difficul
ties, and his struggle with alcoholism. That he was able
to rite, originally, almost a half a million words of
Tender Is the
---
ight in the face of his overwhelming handi-
caps, is amazing evidence of his vitality, endurance, and
natural genius. The popular sale of his new novel was a
bitter disappointment, and the critical reception was equal
ly discouraging, at a time when he desperately needed fi
nancial assistance and earnest encouragement. As Arthur
Mizener expressed it, "The reviewers ••• were mostly super
ficial and unfriendly." Faced i th the al tared economic
realities of he th1rties, and a new proletarian litera
ture which reflected the situation, the reviewers regarded
Fitzgerald as a ghostly echo from a dead era, the fabulous
211
twenties. The critical reaction was not uniformly uninter
ested and uninteresting, however, since some writers felt
that t he author had realized even greater intellectual ex
pression and artistic power with Tender Is the Night.
early all of the critics objected to the book's shifting
vi ew point and the structural looseness which resulted.
Many of them complained that Dr. Diver's personal and spir
itual di sintegration was not sufficiently motivated or ex
plai ned. They concluded that Fitzgerald had not mastered
either his basic theme or his narrative structure in this
novel . O n the whole, however, they were still much im
pressed with his insight into human nature and his sharp,
poetic st yle .
By t he end of 1934, his reputation as a first-rate
writer had declined considerably, not because of critical
disappr oval , but because of a falling off of interest in
his work, w hic h was always discussed in retrospect. Fitz
gerald was seen as the clever and precocious young genius
who had romant i cally described the generation of "flaming
youth" as it matured into a "lost generation." Thus, many
critics fel t that with the great depression Fitzgerald's
basic subject m atter and theme had crumbled away before the
harsher reality of what Leo Gurko called The Angry Decade,
with its prol etarian protagonist and its idealized social
212
consciousness. From this point of view, his works were al
ready considered to be dated.
Even though his literary reputation continued to de
cline during the last few years of his life, he clea·r1y
proved that his creative genius had not deserted him. It
was his physical power which finally failed, first turning
him into a semi-invalid, and then causing his death in 1940.
He never truly recovered from hie physical and nervous
breakdown in 1935, and although he continued to write, he
did so at a very limited rate and was unable to sustain and
coordinate all of his energies for the completion of anoth
er major work. In 1935 he published a fourth collection of
short stories, Taps at Reveille, which contained some of
his finest work. The book sold comparatively few copies
and received scant critical attention, most of it unfavor
able. Malcolm Cowley felt that this volume was" ••• under
estimated by the reviewers." By 1940 Fitzgerald, if con
sidered at all in scholarly discussions of American fic
tion, was thought of as a minor light, on the fringe of the
major constellations. His books had almost ceased to sell.
There can be no doubt that his reputation was at its lowest
level at his death, and he died thinking that he had failed.
Even so, he had believed that with The Last ,!Y.coon, the
novel on which he was working at his death, he had con-
213
ceived his finest piece of literature . He had not finished
even half of the work when he died . Published in 1941 , the
book was greatly admired by most of the critics , and 1t
marked the beginning of the critical revival of int erest i n
Fitzgerald • .Edmund Wilson wrote that this novel was the
author's " ••• most mature piece of work . " Late in 1941 ,
.,
Stephen Vincent Benet wrote that Fitzgerald had gained
"
• •
.one of t.,he most secure reputations of our time . "
Fi tzgerald's work was never completely out of print,
and dur ing World War II hie fiction began to receive a much
wider critical and popular audience. The so-called "Fitz gerald revival" gained momentum in 1945 with the publica
tion of The Crack-uE, a collection of fragments , notes, and
letters edited by Ea.mund Wilson from Fitzgerald's personal
papers, and The Portable f• Scott Fitzgerald, the Viking
edition of certain of the author's finest works . The pub licati on of The Disenchanted (1950), and The Far §19:.§!. of
Paradise (1951), a novel and a biography, respectively,
dealing with the author's personal life and works, stimu
lated nationwide interest in his writings, and numerous
re i ssues of his novels followed. In 1951 more of his work
was i n print than at any time during his life, and ell
over a million copies of all of his books had been sold
s i nce 1941.
214
Some critics explained that this revival of interest
extended through Fitzgerald to the entire era of the twen
ties , suggesting that certain striking parallels between
the moral and social life of the two post-war eras were an
'
underlying cause of the revival. Two schools of critical
praise of the author's works are evident. Writers of the
first gr oup felt that Fitzgerald was most important as a
keen, r ealistic social observer and historian of his own
times . The second group considered him to be an author of
major i mportance on the basis of the high quality of his
literary craftsmanqhip, 1n terms of thematic statement,
structure , and style. These latter writers found in his
stories symbolic m eaning which transcended his own time,
and which was pertinent to modern American life as a whole.
small group of critics expressed their belief that Fitz
gerald had never achieved his promise as a mature writer
because of the unstable pattern of hie personal life and
his constant a t tention to the demands of the commercial
market, which had prevented him from completing any work of
major importance .
In conclus i on, it can safely be said that the large
majority of the critics in the period of Fitzgerald's lit
erary revival have considered him to be one of the truly
great figures in A merican literature, not merely because
215
of h1a genius as a literary craftsman, but also because he
was deeply concerned with the search for spiritual faith
and moral value, in an age or materialism, moral conflict, .
and spiritual despair.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, All the Sad Young Men . New York :
Charle s Scribner's Sons , 1926 .
, The Beautiful and Damned. New York: Char les
Scribner' s Sons , 1922.
____ , The Crack- up . ID:lmund Wilson, editor .
New Direc t ions Books, 1945.
ew York:
____ , Flappers and Philosophers.
Scribner' s Sons, 1921 .
ew York: Charles
____ , The Great Gatsby . New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1925 .
____ , The Last Tycoon . Edmund Wilson, editor . New
York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941 .
____ , The Stories of~. Scott Fitzgerald . Malcolm
Cowley, ed i tor . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1951.
, Tales of the Jazz Age.
___ n_ e_ r-'s Sons , 1922.
New York: Charles Scrib-
___ _ , Taps at Reveille . New York: Charl.es Scribner's
Sons, 1935 .
, Tender Is the Tight .
__ S_o_n-s, 1934 . -
ew York: Charles cribner'a
, Tender Is the Night. Revised edition; New York :
___ C_h_a-rle s Scribner
1
s Sons, 1951 .
, This Side of Paradise. New York: Charles Scrib
_ _ _ n_e_r-'s Sons, 1920:-
____ , he Vegetable 2!: from President to Postman . ew
York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923 .
217
SECONDARY SOURCES
CRITICAL EVALUATIONS: 1920--1922
A. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Bailey, Mar gare t Emerson, "A Chronicle of Youth by Youth,"
The Bookman, 51:471-72, June, 1920.
,,
Benet, illiam Rose, ttPlotting of An Author's Curve," The
Literary Review, 3:219, November 18, 1922.
"Books," The Nation, 110:557-58, April 24, 1920.
"Books," The Nation, 111:330, September 18, 1920.
Boynton, H. W., "Flashlight and Flame," The Independent and
eeklx Review, 108:397, April 22, 1922.
____ , "New American Novels: The Individual Bobe Up,"
The _eekly Review, 2:392-94, April 17, 1920.
Canby, Henry S., "The Flapper's Tragedy, " The Literary
Review , 2:463, March 4, 1922.
Colum, Mary M., "Books," The Freeman, 5:162-64, April 26,
1922.
"Fiction," The Bookl1st, 17:31, October 1, 1920.
"A Gui e to the Best ew Books," The Booklist, 16:312,
June, 1920 .
"Here Are Books--and Books," The Independent, 103:53-54,
July 10, 1920 .
"The Literary Spotlight, VI: F. Scott Fitzgerald," The
Bookman, 55:20-25, March, 1922.
Littell, Robert, "The Beautiful and Damned," Th~ !few
Republic , 30:348, ay 17, 1922.
"The New Books ," Jhe Outlook, 126:238, October 6, 1920.
"A Page of F1ct1on,u The New Republic, 32:259, November 1,
1922.
218
Rascoe, Burton, "Novels From the Younger Men," The Bookman,
55:305, May 22, 1922 .
"Reviews of New Novels," The Literary Digest, 74:51-53,
July 15, 1922. _ _
Shaw, Vivian, "Book Reviews , " The Dial, 72:410-21, April,
1922.
"Spring Elections on M ount O l ympus," The Bookman, 55:285-92,
May, 1922.
Stockbridge, Frank P., " The Book.man's Monthly Score," The
Bookman, 55:651, August, 1922 .
"This Side of Paradise," The New epublic, 22:362, May 12,
1920.
Van Doren, Carl, "The Roving Critic," The Nation, 114:318,
March 15, 1922.
B. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
Field, Louise M., "Latest Works of Fiction," The New York
Times Book Review, March 5, 1922, p . 16.
Hawthorne, Hildegarde, book r eview in The New York Times
Book Review, October 20 , 1922, p . 12.
Rascoe, Burton , book re view in New York Herald Tribune
Books, October 1, 1922 , p . 8.
"This Side of Paradi se ," The New York Times Book Review,
May 9, 1920, p . 240.
C. BOOKS
Van Doren, Carl, Cont emporary American Novelists. N ew
York: The M acmillan Company, 1922.
CRI TI CAL EVALUATIONS: 1923--1926
A. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
219
"The A l l -Star Literary Review," The New Republic, 47:158-
63, June 30, 1926.
Beckwith, E. c., "Volume of F. Scott Fitzgerald Stories In
Which 'Absolution' Reigns Supreme," The Literary
Review, 6:4, March 13, 1926.
Benet , W illiam Rose, "An Admirable Novel," The Saturday
Review of Literature, 1:739-40, May 9, 1925.
____ , "Art's Bread and Butter," The Saturdai Revi~w of
Li ter a t ure, 2:682, April 3, 1926.
"Books," The Freem an,
7:430, July 11, 1923.
"The Book Table,
"
The Outlook, 140:341, July 1, 1925.
"The Book Table ,
II
The Outlook, 146:33, May 5, 1926.
"Briefer Mention ,
11
The Dial, 74:311, February, 1923.
--
"Briefer Mention," The Dial, 80:521, June, 1926.
Farrar , John, "Tha Erl.i tor Recommends," The Bookman, 61: 469-
70, June , 1925 . --
----
, "The Eil i t or Recommends," The Bookman, 63:348-49,
M~ay , 1926 .
Field, Loui se M., "Three ·Exhibits of Drifting Americans,"
The Literary Digest International Book Review, 4:315-16,
April , 1926 .
"In This Month ' s Fiction Library," The 1iterary Qigest,
3:426- 27 , ay , 1925 .
"ew Books in Br i ef Review," The Independent, 114:507 , ay
2 , 1925 .
"ew Books in Brief Review," The Indef?endent, 116:335,
March 20, 1926 .
S ldes, Gilbert , "Spring Flight, " The Dial, 79:162-64,
l\ gust , 1925 .
hipple, Leon , "Letters and Life," The Survey, 56:331,
June 1, 1926 •
220
Wilson, Bimund, "Imaginary Conversations. II. Mr. Van Wyck
Brooks and Mr. Scott Fitzgerald," The New Republic,
38:249-54, April 30, 1924.
Yust, Walter, "Jazz Parties on Long Island Beach," The
Literary Review, 5:3, May 2, 1925.
B. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
Book review in The New York Times Book Review, March 7,
1926, p. 9. -
Clark, :Edwin, "Scott Fitzgerald Looks Into Middle Age,"
The New York Times Book Review, April 19, 1925, p. 9.
-- -- --- ---- ---.-..--
"Latest Works of Fiction," The New York Times Book Review,
May 13, 1923, p. 17.
C. BOOKS
Baldwin, Charles C., The Men Who Make Our Novels. New
York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925.
Boyd, Ernest, Portraits: Real and Imaginary. New York:
George H. Doran Company, 1924.
Farrar, John, editor, The Literary Spotlight. New York:
George Ii. Doran Company, 1924.
Rosenfeld, Paul, Men Seen. New York: The Dial Press, 1925.
CRITICAL EVALUATIONS: 1927--1934
A. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Brickell, Herschel, "The Literary Landscape," The North
American Review , 237:569-70, June, 1934.
Canby, Henry s., "In the Second Era of Demoralization,"
The Saturday Review of Literature, 10:630-31, April 14,
1934.
Colum, Mary M ., "The Psychopathic Novel," The Forum,
91:219-23, pril, 1934.
Cowley, Malcolm, "Books in Review," The New Republic ,
79:105-6, June 6, 1934.
221
Loveman, Amy, "Books of the Spring," The Saturday hev1ew
of L1 erature, 10:610, April 7, 1934.
-
Troy, W11 iam, "The orm 1' the Bud , " The ation, 138 :539-
40, ay 9 , 1934.
B. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
G regory , Horace, "A Genera t1on Riding to Romantic Dea th, "
New York Herald Tribune Books, April 15, 1934, p . 5 .
"Scott Fitzgerald's Return to the Novel," The New York
Time~ Book Review, April 15, 1934, p . 7.
CRITICAL EVALUATIO : 1935--1944
A. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Ben~t, Stephen Vincent, "Fitzgerald's Unfinished Symphony,"
The Saturday Review of Literature, 24:10, December 6,
1941. -
Chamberlain, John, "The New Books," Harper's Magazine,
184: no page, December, 1941 .
Dos Passes, John, and Glenway \vestcott, "In emery of F.
Scott Fitzgerald," The ew Republic, 104:213-17,
February 17, 1~41.
Fadiman , Clifton, "Books," The ew Yorker, 17:87, November
15, 1941.
Gurke, Leo and Miriam, "The Essence of F. Scott Fitzgerald,u
College English, 5:372-76, pril, 1944.
Littell, Robert, "Outstanding Novels," The Yale Rev1e ,
31:vi-viii, Winter, 1942 .
222
Marshall, Margaret, "Notes by the Way," The Nation, 153:457,
November 8, 1941.
Matthews, T. S., "Taps at Reveille," The New Republic,
82:262, April 10, 1935.
Mayberry, George, ''Love Among the Ruins, " The New Republic,
113:82, July ~6, 1945.
O'Hara, John, Budd Schulberg, Jr., and John Peale Bishop,
"In Memory of F. Scott, Fitzgerald: II," The New
Republic, 104:311-13, March 3, 1941.
Troy, William, "The Perfect Life," The Nation, 140:454-56,
April 17, 1935.
Weeks, Fliward, "The Atlantic Bookshelf," The Atlantic
Monthly. 169:xv, January, 1942.
Weir, Charles, Jr., "An Invite with Gilded F.dges," The
Virginia Quarterly Review, 20:100-13, Winter, 1944.
B. NEW PAPER ARTICLES
Adams, J. Donald, "Scott Fitzgerald's Last Novel," The
ew York Times Book Review, November 9, 1941, p. 1.
Hart, Elizabeth, "F. Scott Fitzgerald, Looking Backward,"
New Yor-~ Herald Tribune Books, March 31, 1935, p. 4.
Rugoff, Milton, "The Last Tycoon," New York Herald Tribune
Books," 0ctober 26, 1941, p. 18.
Walton, Ed.1th, "Scott Fitzgerald's Tales," The New York
Times Book Review, March 31, 1935, p . 7.
C. BOOKS
Kazin, Alfred, On Native Grounds . New York: Reynal and
Hitchcock, 1942. -
Millett, Fred B., Contemporary American Authors. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940.
Wilson, F.dmund, Th~ Boys in the Back Room. San Francisco:
The Colt Press, 1941.
CRITICAL EVALUATIONS: 1945--1952
A. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Adams, J. Donald, "F. Scott Fitzgerald," The American
Mercury, 61:373-77, September, 1945.
223
Alpert, Hollis, "The Lost Generation Rev1s1 tad," The
Saturday Review 2f Literature, 83:13-14, March 10, 1951.
Beach, Joseph Warren, "Five Makers of American Fiction,"
Th~ Yale Review, 40:750-51, Summer, 1951.
Berryman, John, "F. Scott Fitzgerald," The Kenyon Review,
8:103-12, Winter, 1946.
Brigy, Katherine, "F. Scott F1tzgerald--Tragic Comedian,"
The Catholic World, 173:86-91, May, 1951.
Cerf, Bennett, "Trade Winds," The Saturday Review of
Literature, 33:4, 6, October 14, 1950. -
Clark, John Abbot, "The Love Song of F. Scott Fitzgerald,"
Commonweal, 56:72-3, April 25, 1952.
Cowley, Malcolm, "Fitzgerald: The Double M an," The
Saturday Review of Literature, 82:9-10, 42-2i4'; February
24, 1951. -
, "Fitzgerald's 'Tender'--The St,ory of a Novel,"
--~-
The New Republic, 125 :18-20 , August 20, 1951.
____ , "The Scott Fitzgerald Story," The New Republic,
124:17-20, February 12, 1951.
, "Third Act and Epilogue," The New Yorker, 2:49-52,
----
June 30, 1945.
Embler, William, "F. Scott Fitzgeral d and the Future,"
Chimera, 4:48-55, A u tumn, 1945.
Fiedler, Leslie A., "Note s on F. Scott Fitzgerald," The
New Leader, 34:20-21, April 9, 1951.
, "Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald," The N ew Leader,
__ 3_4_:_23, April 16, 1951.
224
"F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Check List," Princeton University
Library Chronicles, 12:196-208, Summer, 1951.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Image of His Father," Princeton
University Library Chronicles, 12:181-86, Summer, 1951 .
"F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jazz Age Prophet, Still Placed Thia
Side of Greatness," Newsweek, 26:76 , 78, July 9, 1945.
"The F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers," Princeton University
Library Chronicles, 12:190- 95, Summer, 1951.
"The F. Scott Fitzgerald J::tevival," Publisher's Weekly,
148:965, September 8, 1945.
Fussell, Fil.wins., nThe Stature of Scott Fitzgerald," The
Kenyon Review, 13:530-34, Summer, 1951 .
Hicks, Granville, "Our Novelists' Shifting Reputations,"
The English Journal, 40:1-7, January, 1951 .
Holmes, Chi:1.rles s., "Fitzgerald: The American Theme," The
Pacific Spectator, 6:243- 52, Spring, 1952 .
Jackson, Charles, "F . Scott Fi tzgera.ld--F~om the Heart,"
The Seturday Review of Literature, 28:9-10, July 14,
1945.
"The Jazz Age," Time }1agazine, 46:90-91, July 16, 1945 .
Kallich, Martin, "F . Scott Fitzgerald: Money or Morals?"
University of Kansas City Review, 15:271-80, Summer,
1949.
'' a i Lewis, R •• B., FitzgeralA s
4:304-7, Summer, 1951.
ay, " The Hud scm Review,
Liebling, A. J., "Amory, vle're Beautiful," Th~ ew Yorker,
27:113-17, May 19, 1951.
"Life of a Lyricist," ewsweek, 37:92-3, January 29, 1951 .
aloney, ichael F.,
11
Half-Faiths in odern Fiction," he
Catholic World, 171:344-50, August, 1950.
arquand, John P., "Fitzgerald: 'This Side of Paradise,'"
The Saturday Review 2f. Literature, 32:30-31, August 6,
, r'\ , . r'\
J. ~ '"t ::::, •
iller, Perry, "Departure and Return," The ation, 173:
356-57, October 27, 1951.
1zener, Arth1r, "Fitzgerald in the Twenties," Partisan
Review, 17:7-38, January, 1950.
225
____ , "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tormented Paradise," Life
agazine, 30:82-101, January 15, 1951.
____ , "The Novel of Manners in America,'' _Th~ Kenyon
~view, 12:1-19, Winter, 1950
____ , ''Scott Fitz~erald and the Imaginative Possession
of American Life,' The Sewanee eview, 54:66-86, 1946.
Piper, Dan, "Fitzgerald Once More," The ew Republic,
25:20 , July 2, 1951.
__ , ___ , "Fitzgerald's Cult of Disillusion," American
Quarterly, 3:69-80, arch, 1951.
Powers, J. F,, "Dealers in Diamonds and Rhinestones,"
Commonweal, 42:408-10, August 10, 1945.
, "St. Paul, Home of the Saints," Partisan Review ,
__ 1_6_:-714-21, July, 1949.
Schneider, Isador, "A Pattern of Failure," New Masses,
57:23-24, December 4, 1945.
Seligman, Daniel, "Books," Commonweal, 53:595, arch 23,
1951.
Stallings, Lawrence, "The Youth in the Abyss," EsguirEz_,
36:47, 107-11, October, 1951 .
Trilling, Lionel, "Fitzgerald Plain, " The "'ew Yorker,
26:79-81, February 3, 1951.
----
, "F. cott Fitzgerald," The Nation, 161:182- 84,
August 25, 1945.
Troy, William, "Scott Fitzgerald.: The u_ thori ty of Failure,"
Accent, 6:56-60, Autumn, 1945.
---
226
B. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
Maloney , John J., "Fitzgerald's Stories, a Long Time
Later," N ew York Herald. Tribune Book Review, March 25,
1951 , p. 5.
Mizener, Arthur, "F. Scott Fitzgerald," The Times Literary
Supplement (London), January 25, 1952, Pe 77.
O'Hara , John, "Scott Fitzgerald--Odds and Ends," The New
York Times Book Review, July 8, 1945, p. p. 3.
Struthers, Burt S., "Scott Fitzgerald, Who8e Novels Are the
Works of an Unreconciled Poet," New York Herald Tribune
Book Review, July 8, 1951, p. 2.
Toklas , Al ice B., uBetween Classics," The New York Times
Book Review, March 4, 1951, p. 4.
ilkinson, Burke, "Scott Fitzgerald: Ten Years After," The
New York Times Book Review, December 24, 1950, p. 8.
C. BOOKS
Gardiner, Harold C., Fifty Years of the American Novel.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951.
Geismar, Maxwell , The Last Qf the frovincials. Boston:
Houghton M ifflin Com pany, 1947.
Hoffman, Frederick J., The Modern Novel in America.
-- ---- --- - - ·---
Chicago : Henry Regnery Company, 1951.
, "Points of M oral Reference: A Compal''a ti ve st· udy
---o-f-Edith harton a.nd F. Scott Fitzgerald,'' English
Institute Essays . Alan s. Downer, editor . ~ New York:
Columbia Press, 1950.
Kazin, Alfred , editor, f. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His
Wor~ . Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1951.
Mizener, Arthur , The Far Side of Paradise. Boston:
Houghton M ifflin Company, 1951.
Phillps , ~1111am, editor, Great American Short Novels.
Ne York : The Dial Press, 1946.
227
D. UNPUBLISHED MATERIALS
Doubleday & Company, Inc., unpublished letter, July 10,
1952.
New Directions, i1npublished letter, July 7, 1952.
Charles Scribner's Sons, unpublished letter, July 22, 1952.
____ , unpublished letter, September 9, 1952.
The Viking Press, Inc., unpublished letter, July 29, 1952.
____ , unpublished letter, August 4, 1952.
LITERARY MAINSTREAMS
A. BOOKS
Adams, J. Donald, The Shape of Books to Come. New York:
The Viking Press, Inc., 1944. -
Aldridge, John W., After the Lost Generation. New Yo .. 'k:
Mc Graw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1951.
Canby, Henry Seidel, and Alfred Dashiell,~ Study of the
Short Story. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935.
Cleaton, Irene and Allen, Books and Battles. New York:
Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1937.
Cowley, Malcolm, Exile's Return. New York: The Viking
Press, Inc., 1951.
Drew, Elizabeth, The Modern Novel. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1926.
Hartwick, Harry, The foreground of Am~rican Fiction.
New York: American Book Company, 1934.
Hatcher, Harlan, Creating the Modern Amer:1.can Novel. New
York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1935.
Luccock, Halford E., American Mirror. New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1941.
228
Manchester, William, Disturber of the Peace.
--------
~w York:
Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1951 .
Marble, Annie Russell, A Study of the Modern Novel. New
York: D. Appleton-Century Coriipany, 1928.
Muller, Herbert J., Modern Fiction:~ Study of Values.
New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1937.
Quinn, Arthur H., American Fiction. New York: D. Appleton
Century Company, 1936:
B. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Cooper, Frederic 'raber, "The Twentieth Century Novel,"
The Bookman, 65:42-47, March, 1927 .
Pattee, Fred Lewis, "The Present Stage of the Short Story,"
The English Journal, 12:439-49, September, 1923.
Van Doren, Carl, "Post-War: The Literary Twenties,"
Harper's Magazine, 173:148- 56, 274-82, July-August, 1936.
SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND
•
BOOKS
Allen, Frederic Lewis, Only Yesterd5!.Y. New York: Harper
and Brothers Publishers, 1931.
Beard, Charles A. , editor, Toward Civilization. New York:
Longman' s, Green and Company, 1930.
Cargill , Oscar, Intellectual Americ~: Ideas 2.!! the March.
New York: The Macmillan c,)mpany, 1941 .
Commager, Henry Steele, The American Mind. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1950.
·urti, Merle, The Growth of American Thought . New York:
Harper and Brothers Publishers , 1943 .
Gurko, Leo, The n5ry Decade. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company, 1947.
229
athan , George Jean, The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean
Nathe.n . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932.
----
, The New American Credo. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf , 1927.
Page , Kirby, Secant Gains in American Civilization. New
York: Harccurt, Brace and Company,1928.
Shaw, Charles Gray, Trends of Civilization and Culture.
New York: American Book Company, 1932.
Stearns , Harold E., editor, America Now. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1938.
____ , editor , Civilization in the United States. New
York : Harcourt , Brace and Company, 1922.
B. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Allen, Frederic Lewis, "The Spirit of the Times," Harper's
~gazine , 205 : 66-74, July, 1952.
Babbitt , Irving, "The Critic and American Life," The Forum,
79:161-76, February, 1928.
·Bishop, John Peale, "The Missing All," The Virginia Quar
terly Review, 13:106-21, Winter, 1937.
Canby, Henry Sei del , "The Prom ise of Ame-rican Life," The
Saturday Review of Literature, 7:301-8, 1930.
____ , "The Threatening Thirties," The §aturday Review of
Literature , 16:3-4, 14, May 22, 1937.
Cowley, Malcolm, "The Generation That Wasn't Lost," College
English, 5:233-39, February, 1944.
Hart, Irving H., "The Most Popular Books of Fiction Year by
Year in the Post-War Period," Publisher's WeeklI, 123:
364- 67 , January 28, 1933.
Hicks, Granville, "The Twenties 1n American Literature,"
The ation, 130:183-85, February 12, .1930.
Josephson, Matthew, "The Younger Generation: Its Novelists,"
The V1r~inia Quarterly Review. 9:243-61. April, 1933.
-- ----- --------- ---- - - - -
230
More, Paul Elmer, "The Modern Current 1n American Litera
ture," The For~, 79:127-36, January, 1928.
Munson, George B., "The Young Ori tics of the Nineteen-Twen
ties," The Bookman, 70:369-73, December, 1929.
Stalnaker, John M.j and Fred Eggan, "American Novelists
P-anked," The English Journal, 18:295-307, April, 1929.
Stewart, Randall, "American Literature Between the Wars,"
South Atlantic Quarterly, 44:371-83, October, ~ 1945.
Strauss, Harold, "The Illiterate American Writer," The
?aturday Review of Literature, 35:8-9, 39, May 17, 1952.
Swinnerton, Frank, "The Younger Generation," The Saturday
Review of Literature, 4:421-22, December 10, 1927.
Van Doren, Mark, "This Decade," The English Jcurnal, 17:101-
8, February, 1928.
Wharton, Edith, "Tendencies in Modern Fiction," The Saturday
Review of Literature, 10:433-34, January 27, 1934.
C. PARTS OF SERIES
Parrington, Vernon Louis, The Beginnings of Critical Realism
in America. Vol. III. Main Currents in American
- ---- ------ - ----
Thought, 3 vols.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1930.
Sullivan, Mark, The Twenties. Vol. VI. Our Times, The
United States 1900-1925, 6 vols.; New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1935.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Beckett, Ralph Lawrence (author)

Core Title The literary reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program English

Degree Conferral Date 1953-01

Publication Date 01/01/1953

Defense Date 01/01/1953

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