CRITICAL COMPANION TO F. Scott Fitzgerald i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd i 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd ii 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM CRITICAL COMPANION TO F. Scott Fitzgerald A Literary Reference to His Life and Work MARY JO TATE Foreword by Matthew J. Bruccoli i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd iii 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work Copyright © 1998, 2007 by Mary Jo Tate All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permis- sion in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 ISBN-10: 0-8160-6433-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-6433-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tate, Mary Jo. Critical companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald : a literary reference to his life and work / Mary Jo Tate ; foreword by Matthew J. Bruccoli. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8160-6433-4 (acid-free paper) 1. Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896–1940—Encyclopedias. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography—Encyclopedias. I. Tate, Mary Jo. F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z. II. Title. PS3511.I9Z459 2006 813’.52—dc22 2006011393 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Cover design by Cathy Rincon/Anastasia Plé Printed in the United States of America VB Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd iv 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM For Forrest, Andrew, Perry, and Thomas i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd v 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd vi 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM CONTENTS Foreword ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv Part I: Biography 1 Part II: Works A–Z 11 Part III: Related People, Places, and Topics 257 Part IV: Appendices 397 Chronology 399 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Works 405 Zelda Fitzgerald’s Works 422 Works about Fitzgerald 424 Adaptations of Fitzgerald’s Works 440 Index 441 i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd vii 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd viii 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM FOREWORD wish that I had written this volume, but I could rigged by critics and professors. Fitzgerald’s restora- Inot have done it better than Mary Jo Tate. It is tion was mainly reader-generated. The readers who the essential reference tool for all categories of F. read for pleasure were ahead of the professional Scott Fitzgerald readers: for the celebrated com- reputation-makers. Nor is it the case that Charles mon reader, students, and teachers. Moreover, it is Scribner’s Sons stimulated the revival in order to a readable reference book. Serious Fitzgerald read- sell books. Scribners reprinted Fitzgerald in cloth to ers will make their own connections by going from meet the demand, but the firm had no paperback entry to entry. Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzger- line and did not make The Great Gatsby available ald replaces shelves of books. in a student edition until 1957. But Scribners did This book also provides a reassuring reminder own a piece of Bantam, which reprinted The Great of the staying power of great writing. At the time Gatsby in 1945. People read Fitzgerald because the of Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, the anticipation of people they knew were reading Fitzgerald. People anything like Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzger- kept reading Fitzgerald because they were excited ald would have seemed a fantasy. The newspaper by what they read. Some new readers who dis- obituaries were mainly condescending. Tributes by covered Fitzgerald after World War II were writers his friends and fellow writers expressed regret that or apprentice writers who have acknowledged the Fitzgerald had been prevented from fulfilling his impact of their first encounters with his prose. genius: from writing as much or as well as he could A concomitant of the rediscovery of Fitzgerald’s have—should have—written. But no one publicly writings was the growth of interest in the author. predicted a Fitzgerald revival, except Stephen Vin- He became an American literary culture hero. The cent Benét in his review of The Last Tycoon: “This is attention to Fitzgerald’s life is inevitable. Admira- not a legend, this is a reputation—and seen in per- tion of a masterpiece triggers curiosity about the spective, it may well be one of the most secure rep- masterpiece-maker—especially when the authors utations of our time.” This prediction was regarded had a romantic or dramatic life embracing tri- as hyperbolic in 1941, and Benét was given credit umph and disaster. A reader who knows nothing for generosity toward an unfortunate writer. about Fitzgerald can achieve a rewarding reading In 1945 the Fitzgerald revival was under way; of Gatsby or Tender Is the Night, but knowledge of in the fifties it resembled a resurrection; and in the connections between his life and work enriches the sixties Fitzgerald achieved his stated ambition the reader’s understanding of Fitzgerald’s trans- to “be one of the greatest writers who ever lived.” muted autobiography. Unhappily, literary history Unlike many literary revivals, the posthumous tends to degenerate into literary gossip, and biog- Fitzgerald comeback that raised him to a stature raphy becomes slander. The belittling anecdotes he had not achieved during his writing life was not about Fitzgerald—founded or unfounded—have ix i-xvi_FSFitzgerald-fm.indd ix 2/8/07 3:02:43 PM x Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald interfered with the proper assessment of his work. ruined victim of Hollywood. Many critics approach Nothing else about a writer matters as much as his Hollywood with the presuppositional bias that it words. was the graveyard of American literary talent. The By the end of 2005, there were more than 100 writers who were destroyed by Hollywood embraced books about Fitzgerald, including collections of destruction along with their paychecks. Metro- articles. Only fully committed specialists are famil- Goldwyn-Mayer was very good to Fitzgerald during iar with most of these volumes, and only the largest his 18 months on the payroll. Moreover, he was research libraries hold all of them. Serious readers an undistinguished screenwriter; his unproduced outside of the academic groves require a Fitzger- screenplay for “Babylon Revisited,” the only one of ald vade mecum to provide the facts and details. his works that he adapted, is disappointing. Fitzger- Indeed Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald qual- ald was a storyteller whose style, voice, and narra- ifies as a trade reference book: a work that serious tive technique were developed for print; these did Fitzgerald readers will read—not just refer to—as not translate to the silver screen—which is why all preparation for a lifetime relationship. the movies made from his books have been unsatis- This is the way to establish that commitment: factory. The morbid interest in Fitzgerald’s work for Read everything he wrote. Everything means every- the studios has resulted in the overrating of the Pat thing. Some of it is uneven; but it is all Fitzgerald, Hobby stories. Ultimately, the chief importance of and it all connects. Then reread his best works—if the Hollywood years is that they provided material necessary with the help of other books to under- for The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western, the great stand the data that Fitzgerald built into his fiction. American Hollywood novel. All great fiction is great social history. Someday While his Hollywood exile was being overex- there will be proper annotated editions of Fitzger- posed, Fitzgerald’s short stories were neglected or ald’s writings. During his lifetime, Fitzgerald’s books disparaged until the seventies. During the fifties and were published in flawed texts. The serious reader sixties, the notion persisted that, apart from a few will obtain the corrected or critical editions to read brilliant stories and novellas, most of the 160 maga- what Fitzgerald expected to have published. (See zine contributions were hackwork and that it was a the entry here for EDITING FITZGERALD’S TEXTS.) kindness to ignore them. Consequently, his “com- Everything Fitzgerald wrote was personal mercial” stories were denied a proper appraisal or because, as he stated, he took things hard. Fitzger- reappraisal because they were not readily available. ald’s letters constitute a superbly readable intro- Malcolm Cowley’s excellent one-volume story selec- duction to his character, mind, and art. The most tion, the only omnibus available from 1951 to 1989, useful reference material for Fitzgerald was assem- included only 28 stories. The publication of After- bled and miraculously preserved by him. Much noon of an Author (1957), Bits of Paradise (1973), and of the data in this reference work draws on his The Price Was High (1979) facilitated a reassessment activities as a self-historiographer. There is nothing of the buried stories and an understanding of the like his Ledger (published in facsimile, 1973) for creative relationship between Fitzgerald’s magazine any other American author. Combining autobiog- work and his novels. The profession-of-authorship raphy, bibliography, and accounting, it establishes approach to literary history provides a corrective the record of his career as a literary artist and a to noncombatant misapprehensions about Fitzger- professional writer.