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| F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
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| Topic Started: May 21 2007, 09:38 AM (2,837 Views) | |
| Morty | May 21 2007, 09:38 AM Post #1 |
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I don't presume old Scott will be a popular choice with most people here, but he's one of my favorite writers so what the heck. Although I love Hemingway, Fitzgerald - if only for Gatsby - was a better writer than he was. There. I said it. Though he's often looked upon as somewhat of a failed writer, I think he's one of the 20th Century greats and - especially in literary circles - vastly underrated. Here's a great passage from Charles Jackson's excellent novel The Lost Weekend in which the protagonist, a writer, shares his thoughts on Fitz (I've done some editing): He took down The Great Gatsby and ran his finger over the fine green binding. 'There's no such thing,' he said aloud, 'as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it... Don't be fooled by what the Sunday reviewers say of the jazz-age, Saturday Evening Post popularity, etcetera. People will be going back to Fitzgerald one day as they now go back to Henry James... The writing is the finest and the purest, the most entertaining and most readable... Apart from his other gifts, Scott Fitzgerald has the one thing that a novelist needs: a truly seeing eye....Fitzgerald never swerves by a hair from the one rule that any writer worth his salt will follow: Don't write about anything you don't know anything about. |
 
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| Cave Hinds | May 21 2007, 10:18 AM Post #2 |
Destroyer of Virginity
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I love Fitzgerald (specifically GATSBY, as it's the only one I've read though I have THIS SIDE OF PARADISE on my shelf... there was a short story or two though I can't remember which ones) and grin whenever I hear the Gilmore Girls refer to a vomit-stained backpack as the Zelda Fitzgerald bag. You ever of the graphic novel LEFT BANK GANG by Jason? Features Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, and Joyce as struggling comic book writers who are broke so they hatch a plot to remedy their situation. Decent read. |
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| Morty | May 21 2007, 10:25 AM Post #3 |
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This Side of Paradise is an excellent novel. Kind of like a Bildungsroman. I highly recommend it. |
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| Cave Hinds | May 21 2007, 10:49 AM Post #4 |
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Destroyer of Virginity
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Thanks for the recommendation. Gatsby is such a giant that I fear picking any up of his other books, but I'll probably read it before the end of summer. |
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| johnnywalkitoff | May 21 2007, 01:39 PM Post #5 |
making bets on kentucky derby day
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Yeah of course he won't be popular around here. He didn't write a 700 page book that you need a PH.D. to read. But he isn't underrated overall. There's a quote about Fitzgerald that he was a writer with talent but no genius, and that Thomas Wolfe was a genius with no talent. Whatever. There are some excellent letters between the two writers in the book, The Crack-Up. Anyways, Fitzgerald is a wonderful writer. His first two books, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned, are great, but they are nothing compared to Gatsby and Tender is the Night (what a great, underrated book). |
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| Morty | May 21 2007, 06:53 PM Post #6 |
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Thank you. |
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| Funhouse | May 22 2007, 06:41 AM Post #7 |
Perpetually Lost
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Maybe more popular than we might have thought. I for one adore Gatsby, undoubtedly a great work. I don't see any contradiction between revering Fitzgerald along with the likes of Joyce/Pynchon etc. In fact, if there's one thing this forum has demonstrated, it's how really wide and varied people's tastes are... |
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| Morty | May 22 2007, 08:06 AM Post #8 |
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Erh...? |
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| Funhouse | May 22 2007, 08:42 AM Post #9 |
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Perpetually Lost
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What, you don't agree? In this 'Other Modern Writers' section there are 180 different topics and counting. Suzanahhh and others sound like they are going into serious debt from all of the recommendations given in this forum. Although many writers could be grouped together under terms such as 'modernist' or 'postmodernist' this is far from true of all the writers that have been mentioned here. |
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| suzannahhh | May 22 2007, 09:10 AM Post #10 |
Forum junkie
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not going into serious debt, Funhouse I only use a debit card! and I don't spend money on clothes cable TV nights out just the necessitites of rent utilities broadband car insurance food very occasional techno-needs every once in awhile cds and BOOKS |
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| Cave Hinds | May 22 2007, 09:35 AM Post #11 |
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Destroyer of Virginity
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I always felt clothing was a need.... For everyone except nudists, though I find it hard to believe they refuse clothing in winter |
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| suzannahhh | May 22 2007, 09:45 AM Post #12 |
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well I do have some [clothing] most of it is either 10 years or older and the rest I made from whole cloth or knitted from my handspun fleece |
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| onefatman | May 22 2007, 11:46 AM Post #13 |
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Go to hell. I love Tender is the Night very much. Reread and rereread. Don't care so much for Gatsby. |
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| WilliamTwellman | May 22 2007, 07:15 PM Post #14 |
skull-walker
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I've been meaning to check out Tender is the Night, but yeah I'd prefer him is he was a bit more literarily complex, such is my taste. The worship of Fitzgereld and Hemmingway and others strikes me as similar to the love of say, old jazz recordings from the 30's and 40's. Sure the music got more complex, far beyond what those originators could have imagined, but it is classic American stuff and there's something about the feel, the groove if you will, that can't be dismissed and similarly can't be reproduced. |
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| kline19 | May 22 2007, 07:19 PM Post #15 |
worker bee
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I think this is a great line. kudos to you johnnywalkitoff :lol: |
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| Morty | May 23 2007, 05:57 AM Post #16 |
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Fitzgerald had more natural talent than most writers ever have. No one could write a paragraph like he could. Take for example this one at the end of This Side of Paradise: Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.... Absolute brilliance. |
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| johnnywalkitoff | May 23 2007, 09:02 PM Post #17 |
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making bets on kentucky derby day
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Hell is other people. Not my quote, don't know whose it is. So strange that I willingly wallow here. I agree though that Tender is the Night is his masterpiece. Writing is not a game played with words. It must be a matter of life and death. The best ones write their own. |
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| obliqueone | May 23 2007, 11:59 PM Post #18 |
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Literary lunatic
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...is from one of Sartre's plays. No Exit, I think. I read Gatsby a long time ago and really enjoyed it...I think it's rightly considered a classic of American lit. |
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| onefatman | May 24 2007, 05:07 AM Post #19 |
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Yes (horrible translation of l'enfer c'est les autres, though.) |
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| onefatman | May 24 2007, 05:14 AM Post #20 |
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Oh you have a strange idea of complexity in literature. Just because I cram my book full of references like DFW does in The Broom of the System and someone else, like hemingway, opts more for a bare-boned aproach doesn't make TBotS a more complex novel than The Sun also rises. Hemingway is easily one of the most complex writers I've read. His style is so highly charged that it functions on many many levels. Reading TSAR I've always had the impression of two or three variants of a novel compressed into a single novel... |
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5:47 PM May 22