PROOF Contents General Editor’s Preface x Acknowledgements xi Note on Quotations xii List of Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 Part I ANALYSING THE GREAT GATSBY AND TENDER IS THE NIGHT 1 Beginnings 5 Gorgeous Gatsby: The Great Gatsby, pp. 7–8 5 On the Edge: Tender is the Night, pp. 11–12 11 Gatz into Gatsby: The Great Gatsby, pp. 94–6 14 Lucky Dick: Tender is the Night, pp. 130–2 19 Conclusions 25 Methods of Analysis 27 Suggested Work 28 2 Society 29 The Fifth Guest: The Great Gatsby, pp. 19–21 29 The Vanishing Hosts: Tender is the Night, pp. 43–6 34 Gatsby’s Guests: The Great Gatsby, pp. 60–2 40 Quick Odyssey: Tender is the Night, pp. 88–9 48 Conclusions 54 Methods of Analysis 56 Suggested Work 57 vii 9780230292222_01_prexiv.indd vii 6/24/2011 2:56:35 PM PROOF viii Contents 3 Money 59 Buying Power: The Great Gatsby, pp. 29–30 59 Shopping Spree: Tender is the Night, pp. 64–5 64 Courtship and Money: The Great Gatsby, pp. 141–2 68 Marriage and Money: Tender is the Night, pp. 175–8 74 Conclusions 80 Methods of Analysis 84 Suggested Work 85 4 Gender 87 Blocked Energies: The Great Gatsby, pp. 12–15 87 Under Whose Sway?: Tender is the Night, pp. 313–15 94 Lies and Driving: The Great Gatsby, pp. 58–9 100 Dick’s Debacle: Tender is the Night, pp. 303–5 104 Conclusions 109 Methods of Analysis 110 Suggested Work 111 5 Trauma 113 Blood in the Dust: The Great Gatsby, pp. 131–2 114 Blood on the Bed: Tender is the Night, pp. 123–6 118 Death of a Dream: The Great Gatsby, pp. 153–4 126 Cutting the Cord: Tender is the Night, pp. 322–4 132 Conclusions 138 Methods of Analysis 139 Suggested Work 140 6 Endings 142 Dust in the Eyes: The Great Gatsby, pp. 169–70 142 Blessing the Beach: Tender is the Night, pp. 335–7 146 Beating On: The Great Gatsby, pp. 171–2 152 Dying Fall: Tender is the Night, pp. 337–8 157 Conclusions 160 Beginnings 160 Society 161 Money 161 Gender 162 9780230292222_01_prexiv.indd viii 6/24/2011 2:56:35 PM PROOF Contents ix Trauma 162 Endings 163 Part II THE CONTEXT AND THE CRITICS 7 F. Scott Fitzgerald: Life and Works 167 8 The Historical, Cultural and Literary Context 183 The Historical Context 183 The Cultural and Literary Context 189 9 A Sample of Critical Views 195 James E. Miller, Jr. 196 Richard D. Lehan 199 Sarah Beebe Fryer 201 Barbara Will 203 Susann Cokal 206 Conclusions 208 Further Reading 209 Index 213 9780230292222_01_prexiv.indd ix 6/24/2011 2:56:36 PM PROOF Introduction The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender is the Night (1934) are the most highly regarded of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s four completed novels and remain widely read and much studied. Gatsby is the more famous of the two: it has been fi lmed four times, in 1926, 1949, 1974 and 2000, attracting key actors to the lead role – Warner Baxter, Alan Ladd, Robert Redford and Toby Stephens – and a fi fth fi lm is now in the making, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Baz Luhrmann (famed for his William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet). Through the novel and fi lms, Jay Gatsby has become an iconic fi gure in American and perhaps global culture, a symbol of high aspiration, glamorous success and romantic defeat, like Fitzgerald himself. Very much a product of its time, Gatsby also seems to speak vividly to many readers today. But Tender, likewise engaging with aspiration, success and defeat, also continues to fi nd many readers and interpreters and its concern with the traumas of sexual abuse and of war speaks to us perhaps more strongly than ever in the twenty-fi rst century. Both Gatsby and Tender exemplify Fitzgerald’s achievement of a style which might be called ‘romantic modernism’, in which a sustained lyrical grace associated with Romantic poetry (Keats, Shelley) is combined with that unsparing engagement with the fragmentation and abrasiveness of modernity which characterises Modernist writing (Eliot, Joyce). Both novels are rich in complexities and ambiguities; but each is distinctive in terms of its structure and narrative technique. Gatsby is a concentrated fi rst-person narrative which exemplifi es Modernist compression and selection while remaining an accessible and compelling read; Tender is an episodic, extended chronicle with, for the most part, an omniscient narrator, more reminiscent in some respects of nineteenth-century fi ction 1 9780230292222_02_intro.indd 1 6/24/2011 2:57:26 PM PROOF 2 F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby / Tender is the Night than Gatsby but nonetheless fully engaged with the crises of modernity. Both novels represent societies in which the bonds of community and family have been loosened and in which other modes of human association – primarily the party – prevail. Both examine how money and consumerism can intimately shape relationships and behaviour. Both address questions of gender at a time when feminine and masculine roles and possibilities are especially in fl ux. Both unsparingly examine physical and psychological trauma (war, murder, manslaughter, suicide, incest, bereavement, disappointment, dissolution, disintegration) and move towards the status of modern tragedies. Both have memorable, haunting endings which reverberate in the reader’s mind. Both raise many questions and have generated a huge amount of criticism and commentary. The aim of this book is to look closely at the style of the two novels and relate its distinctive features to their structures, themes and broader implications. In Part I, Analysing The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night, we select short extracts for close analysis, examining them in terms of the kinds of sentences of which they consist, their diction (their choice and use of words), their imagery, their handling of time, their use of point-of-view, and, where appropriate, their intratextual relations (the links between different parts of the same text) and their intertextual relations (the ways in which they allude to and invoke other literary and cultural texts). We shall consider how such elements contribute to the topics of each extract and relate those topics to the wider themes of the novels, steadily expanding our knowledge and understanding of them. In Part II, The Context and the Critics, we shall explore the bio- graphical, historical, cultural and critical contexts of the novels. There is a summary of Fitzgerald’s life and works, a survey of the relevant aspects of the history and culture of Fitzgerald’s times, a sample of key critical views, and suggestions for Further Reading to help readers navigate the vast and fascinating critical and cultural territory which now forms the hinterland of Gatsby and Tender. 9780230292222_02_intro.indd 2 6/24/2011 2:57:27 PM PROOF Index Alger, Horatio, 204 Twenty-First Amendment (1933), 189 Allen, Louisa (FSF’s grandmother), 168 Wall Street Crash, 83–4, 162, 186, 188–9, America (USA) 193 American Dream, 27, 159, 161 women’s role, 186–7, 201 American Expeditionary Force (AEF), 54, World War One (First World War), 172, 183–4 173, 183–4, 187, 191 California, 65, 67, 185 Arbuckle, Roscoe (‘Fatty’), 119, 121 Chicago, 65, 67, 185 economic growth, 183, 185–6 Barron Collier advertising agency, 173 Eighteenth Amendment (1919), 184, 189 Baughman, Judith S., 212 fl appers, 187 Baxter, Warner, 1, 177 gangsters, 183, 185 Belasco, David, 44 Great Depression, 188, 189, 192 Benét, Stephen Vincent, 182 immigration, 183, 187–8, 205 Benét, William Rose, 195 Midwest, 9, 144, 153, 175, 210 Berman, Ronald national identity, 27, 161, 168, 205–6 The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s World National Origins Act (1924), 187–8 of Ideas (1997), 211 National Prohibition (Volstead) Act The Great Gatsby and Modern Times (1919), 184 (1994), 211 New York City, 9, 30, 32, 41, 44, 47, 59, Bible 60, 62, 70, 74, 83, 103, 114, 116, Genesis, 23 143–4, 146, 153, 154, 173, 174, 175, Luke, 19 180, 184, 185, 192, 210 Bishop, John Peale, 171 New York State, 159, 169, 180 Blazek, William Nineteenth Amendment (1920), 186 Twenty-First Century Readings of Tender is Prohibition, 57, 183, 184–5, 189, 193 the Night (2007), 212 Quota Law (1921), 187 Book of Common Prayer (1662), 116, 140 Teapot Dome scandal, 183, 185 Brooke, Rupert, 170, 172 213 9780230292222_13_index.indd 213 6/22/2011 2:25:57 PM PROOF 214 Index Bruccoli, Matthew J., 77 Douglas, Aaron, 192 The Composition of Tender is the Night Dreiser, Theodore, 175 (1963), 212 An American Tragedy (1925), 192, 210 Reader’s Companion to Tender is the Night (1996), 212 Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, 189 The Romantic Egoists (1974), 210 Einstein, Albert, 189, 190 Some Sort of Epic Grandeur (1981), 210 Eliot, Dr Charles W., 149 Bunyan, John Eliot, George, Middlemarch (1871–2), 159 The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678–84), 131 Eliot, T. S., 1, 191 Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 34, 37 The Waste Land (1922), 33, 57, 190, 191, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), 37 193 The Secret Garden (1911), 37 Ellington, Duke, 192 Burton, Robert, 181 Esquire (magazine), 181 Etty, William, 45 Callahan, John F., The Illusions of a Nation Europe, 21, 22, 35, 38, 54, 57, 64, 77,153, (1972), 211 157, 159, 173, 175, 177, 178, 179, Capone, Al, 185 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192 Carlyle, Thomas, 164 existentialism, 130 Cather, Willa A Lost Lady (1923), 194 Fadiman, Clifton, 59 My Ántonia (1918), 194 Fall, Albert B., 185 Cézanne, Paul, 191 Fay, Father Sigourney, 170, 173 Chicago University, 85 Fitzgerald, Annabel (FSF’s sister), 169 Cokal, Susann, ‘Caught in the Wrong Story’ Fitzgerald, Edward (FSF’s father), 168–9 (2005), 206–8, 212 Fitzgerald, F.