The Notebooks
of F. Scott Fitzgerald
(I) Ideas
695
| People Born in - | Childhood | Youth | Y.M | |
| 1840 | Cleveland | 40s | 50s | 60s |
| 1850 | Father | 50s | 60s | 70s |
| 1860 | Wilson & Roosevelt | 60s | 70s | 80s |
| 1870 | Coolidge & Harding | 70s | 80s | 90s |
| 1880 | (Mencken) | 80s | 90s | 00s |
| 1890 | Max P. | 90s | 00s | teens |
| 65 | 10 in 75 | 20 in 85 | 30 in 95 | |
| 70 | ” “ 80 | ” “ 90 | “ “ 00 | |
| 75 | ” “ 85 | ” “ 95 | ” “ 05 | |
| 80 | ” “ 90 | “ “ 00 | “ “ 10 | |
| 85 | ” “ 95 | ” “ 05 | ” “ 15 | |
696
Play in which revolutionist in big scene “Kill me,” etc. displays all bourgeoise talents hiterto emphasized, paralyzes them with his superiority and then shoots them.
697
Lois and the bear hiding in the Yellowstone.
698
A person perfectly happy succumbing to the current excitement and looking for trouble. Each time he or she is rescued except the last. Begin with her attempt to achieve real point with her husband—end with her losing it because of this superimposed excitement hunting. One scene where she’s pathetic Zelda-Gimma natural—another where you want to wring her neck for ignorant selfishness.
699
For Play
Personal charm.
Elsa Maxwell.
Bert.
Hotels.
Pasts—great maturity of characters.
Children—their sex and incomprehension of others.
Serious work and worker involved. No more patience with idlers unless about them.
700
Helpmate—Man running for congress gets hurt in line of other duty and while he’s unconscious his wife, on bad advice, plans to run in his stead. She makes a fool of herself. He saves her face.
701
Family breaks up. It leaves mark on three children, two of whom ruin themselves keeping a family together and a third who doesn’t.
702
A young woman bill collector undertakes to collect a ruined man’s debts. They prove to be moral as well as financial.
703
Sam Ordway running away from it all and finding that new menage is just the same.
704
Man wants to see Bermuda. Goes there and is sick the whole time and sees it only as he leaves.
705
Widely separated family inherit a house and have to live there together.
706
Fairy who fell for wax dummy
707
Three people caught in triangle by desperation. Can’t resolve it geographically, so it is chrystallized and they have to go on indefinitely living that way.
708
Evelyn’s tragedy: Vagabonds and Debut
709
Plot—if I were rich. He became such Dream (not told) starts with who he wouldn’t help, unsympathetic. Goes through schemes Princeton, etc. People that he wouldn’t help become more and more sympathetic in bad place. Other schemes fail. Wakes up disillusioned. Would now help—those people
710
Early Contacts —When I was young I had the opportunity of meeting a very few great men anonymously. They were all in varying degrees unconscious of the fact that they were meeting one of the—but no, let that pass it has no place in a perfectly serious piece which is to describe the influence of big people on a once pure and sensitive— plasm.
711
Caruso
A. D. Hurt (Alger boy)
W. J. Bryan
Hobey Baker
Stuart Hienzeman
Taft (?)
Duc de Richlieu and Lord Aberdeen
Freddy McLaughlin
712
Andrew Fulton, a facile character who can do anything is married to girl who can’t express herself. She has a growing jealousy of his talents. The night of her musical show for the Junior League comes and is a great failure. He takes hold and saves the pieces and can’t understand why she hates him for it. She has interested a dealer secretly in her pictures (or designs or sculptures) and plans to make independent living. But the dealer has only been sold on one specimen. When he sees the rest he shakes his head. Andrew in a few minutes turned out something in putty and the dealer perks up and says “That’s what we want.” She is furious.
713
A Funeral—His own ashes kept blowing in his eyes. Everything was over by six and nothing remained but a small man to mark the spot. There were no flowers requested or proferred. The corpse stirred faintly during the evening but otherwise the scene was one of utter quietude
714
Story about man trying to live down his crazy past and encountering it everywhere.
715
Ballet Story —Baseball-Lifar
716
Movie talk-back idea
717
A tree finding water pierces roof and solves a mystery
718
Father teaches son to gamble on fixed machine; later the son unconsciously loses his girl on it.
719
A criminal confesses his crime methods to a reformer, who uses them that same night.
720
Girl and giraffe
721
Marionettes during dinner party meeting and kissing
722
Play opens with man run over
723
Play of gangster—balloons
724
Play about a whole lot of old people—terrible things happen to them and they don’t really care.
725
Dolly Wilde
726
Flower shop, Bishop, Malmaison, Constantine, clinics, black men, nurses
727
Caulkins or Eduardo story
728
Snubs—Gen. Mannsul, Telulah phone, Hotel O’Connor, Ada Farewell, Toulman party, Barrymore, Talmadge, and M. Davies. Emily Davies, Tommy H. meeting and bottle, Frank Ritz and Derby, Univ. Chicago, Vallambrosa and yacht, Condon, Gerald in Paris, Ernest apartment.
729
The Tyrant Who Had To Let His Family Have Their Way For One Day.
730
Idea of accidental death of wife husband is tired of. Makes a hero of her after.
731
For Sketch—Memories of the war
How I took the brass band to etc.
732
Story: A man who wanted an elephant, or some such one of the wisest of beasts who could not talk. Then began to try to teach him to talk.
733
The Dancer Who Found She Could Fly
734
Words
735
Boobs Bones Mistaken for John The Baptist
736
There was once a moving picture magnate who was ship-wrecked on a desert island with nothing but two dozen cans of film. (Herbert Howe)
737
Angered by a hundred rejection slips he wrote an extroadinarily good story and sold it privately to twenty different magazines. Within a single fortnight it was thrust twenty times upon the public. The headstone was contributed by the Author’s League.
738
Idea—like in The Gallows Wait (unsuccessful in Fortitude) of a man taking girl for granted and coming back upon girl changed. Unable to understand at first. Examine the situation. In light of previous pop-into-bed spirit.
739
Short Story—man’s admission to himself that he’s no longer in love.
740
Somebody buying an old State car. (suggested by the car having belonged to a president)
741
The man who killed the idea tanks in England—his after life.
742
Play—The Office—an orgy after hours during the boom.
743
Gerald’s story of Clews.
744
Two things. Two parties at Ellerslie Smith and Lois.
745
Unusual death—man pierced by his own belt buckle.
746
Two middle-aged well dressed men meet on bridge where each intends suicide. They exchange stories. One has succeeded too late after terrible struggles, loss of girls etc. The other begins with great dreams, hint frustration, etc. But suprise end is, “No, I got it.”
747
A bat chase. Some desperate young people apply for jobs at Camp, knowing nothing about wood lore but pretending, each one.
748
Man who gives up just before his chance comes—but happy end and girl.
749
Bijou as a girl in Athens meeting German legacy people in secret. Representing her mother.
750
Seven instead of ten (crank’s idea)
751
Idea of husband who had on convention badge and lover on tram who pretends he doesn’t know husband and convinces indirectly of innocence. When he’s gone husband remembers badge.
752
Mrs. William Mitchell robbed.
753
Jesse or Shep, the bootlegger was deaf. W.C.T.U. preaching in St. Petersburg. $67,000 in three months during boom rum running. Girls on the street.
754
Phillip Marshall Brown on train about Buchmanism.
755
Marberry’s story about catcher who threw sweet potatoes.
756
Negro accused of chicken stealing makes up tragic and sympathetic defense—then pockets chickens and goes home.
757
Day with a busy man. Combine the day of Ernest’s pictures, the man of genius episode,
758
To make a study of Japanese humility—with myself as Japanese. Idea of height etc. Sharp differentiation from Jewish humility.
759
Story: Photographer looking for a picture surprised on a man’s face Crook Gambler looking for truth. Man being the one who gained the Sweepstakes. Both have to know the truth and suspect each other.
760
Driving over the rooftops on a bet.
761
Revenge plan: Man hates to vacate apartment. Gets notice must pull down blind while undressing. Plan made, he writes back snootily and at last moment fixes shade so it won’t lower so new tenant will be catch it.
762
Shoes used as man talking to woman. Or in musical comedy cartoon.
763
Story idea: Great man dies in sleep under unusual circumstances. Unusual tribute paid to him—this as main background. (men, women, children, niggers, old men, old women. Pick some vignettes) Story told thru eyes of daughter and beau retelling their affair. She is about 25 and has been her father’s secretary. Perhaps is sick and couldn’t be told. Look out for Browning story or Hardy.
764
Play founded on Highlands:
IT WAS JUST TOO BAD
| Scene: | A drug store. A woman crying. |
| Scene: | A country club. Lover in the distance. |
| Scene: | A hotel—3 in the afternoon. Rain. |
| Curtain | |
| Scene: | A drug store. |
| Scene: | A hotel room. Parting. |
| Scene: | A hotel room showing all involved. |
| Scene: | A drug store. |
| Scene: | The wreck afterwards. |
| Scene: | The drug store. |
765
The going to the Riviera. The 35,000 a year. The table at Villa Marie. The attempt at adjusting swimming time. The aviation field. The garden in the morning. The Seldes. Night in St. Maxime. Feeling of proxy in passion strange encouragement. Costume—shaved legs. Invitation from the (Humersteins). Pictures of the picnic. The trip to Avignon. Down the street. The Rumanian army. He was sorry, knowing how she would pay. Bunny Burgess episode.
766
About being high up to insure direction.
767
A famous writer fakes his own death but things make him come back.
Or else he can’t.
768
G. men as Samurai class.
769
Life and death of love affairs.
770
Magician: 97 out of 100 things being the same. Says characteristic, really characteristic only of unusualness during honeynoon.
771
Josephine in War
Piggy Back Voyage
Candy Town
The Littlefields
Ball Player Possessed
The Casting Room
Revenge by making a person a dope fiend.
Siren System
The Carmagnole
Hog call
Zelda’s “not Judas.”
Jess old nigger prototype of master
Handshaking, and Pauline’s comment and mine.
Pigs and acorns
His good manners
Davenport moon-making
Tenant who sent his son through Sarycuse
The “Settlement.”
Calling cattle from one range to another
772
Old Ida finds bills and thinks they’re assets, presents and is sued and makes great reputation in her neighborhood.
773
Girl whose ear is so sensitive she can hear radio. Man gets her out of insane asylum to use her.
774
Boredom is not an end product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You’ve got to go by or past or through boredom as through a filter before the clear product emerges.
775
A man hates to be a prince, goes to Hollywood and has to play nothing but Princes. Or a general—the same.
776
He’s got ’em on his arms (Gerald’s Indian.)
777
Jackie Merkle, the mind-reader.
778
Book: It might have been me. My old idea of half truth half lie, including all notes and everything. Shoot the works.
779
I went on one of those Armistice Day bats and the girl I was with drove my car into a hotel lobby and knocked down a major. He really wasn’t hurt but he was shocked and they put me in Leavenworth to see whether he’d die or not. Only a couple of months—the girl’s father was a big man in Kansas and they acted very well about it.
780
A boy who always says about himself “I ain’t got no ker-r-ricketer, I ain’t got no self respect.” He has no confidence. Finally gets it.
781
Famous Drunks of History
782
The [thermometer] [therpapeter] and the man with his head under his arm.
783
Break up of family and mark on children
784
Scribner & Transon.
785
Vagabonds.
786
Machine gun scandal in Balkans.
787
Shooting at the Moon (play idea).
788
Virginia Graham.
789
Boat to Norfolk.
790
Begin with Connie Bennett being nice to Converse who is down and out, nicer and nicer, then jilting him.
Exact reverse of what happened to her.
791
Esquire idea about Othello’s speech.
792
Hand car in story. (Something about Carter Brown)
793
The gypsies at Hopkins.
794
“At Pauline’s”
Pure Gold,
Holy rollers, childrens’ faces, voice of preacher
Gypsies
Toilet
Getting Sherry, Burnsville.
Fitzgeralds vs. Brownells.
Rivierra House
Your property
Zelda’s eyes
Grandfather apostles beard
(con’t)
795
Astonishing story of Kelly; American College in Rome to Harry’s bar and whore-house.
796
Ghost of Vercingetorix crazy man.
797
Comparisons—Europe and America— for New Yorker article. Englishman who can’t get passport.
Cities
| Stockholm | St. Paul and Minneapolis (Twin Cities) |
| London & Paris (their suburbs) | New York and Washington (Long Island) |
| Moscow | Chicago |
| Geneva, Munich | Boston |
| Manchester | Pittsburgh |
| Lyons | Detroit, Los Angeles |
| Berlin | Philadelphia |
| Marseilles | New Orleans, San Francisco |
| Milan | Baltimore, Cleveland |
| Bordeaux | St. Louis |
Towns and Resorts
| Gstaad | Asheville, N.C. Tryon. Lake Placid |
| Oxford | Princeton |
| Hiedelburg | Univ. Virginia, Leland Stanford |
| French Riviera | Palm Beach, Miama (Florida) |
| Italian “ | Coronado, Santa Barbara (Calif.) |
| Monte Carlo | Aga Caliente |
| Hyeres, France | St. Petersburg, Fla. |
| St. Moritz | Western Place |
| Aix Les Bains and Vichey | Hot Springs, Va. and White Sulphur |
| Interlaken | Lake Champlain |
| Deauville and Trouville | The Main Coast (Kennebunkport & the 1000 Islands |
| Biarritz | Newport R. I. |
| Avignon, Aix-en-Provence | Charleston and Mobile |
| Valence (Provence) | Montgomery |
| Brighton | Atlantic City |
798
Story—What becomes of old whores
799
Man has perfectly good case of hate and revenge against other—his liver (fact prepared for) falls out and it’s all changed yet he’s committed to idea—Reverse of suicide story. Or—he has to stop drinking to beat him up and no longer wants to beat him up.
800
The morning young Jackson came over about Ring on telephone
801
Play about boys from Newman
802
Play about wife and Prince Droit de Seigneur
803
Father and Polonius
Something that began from Greenland’s etc.
Whittier’s Barbara Fritchie with the words traitor and shame inked out and replaced by substitutes in the margin, and sections of Hamlet. Principly
Lend not etc.
Well, this brings up—“your father” (loan to that man)
Morgan affair. Smith parallel
My principles of loan
English cadging
Loaning in the morning
Finish
Father telling me about man who went to prison for telling lie (Shuttleworth)
804
The celebrity
805
John Jackson tries to get son to stop drinking
806
Man and crime. Through his eyes the guilty
Begin in mediores. Perhaps golf
Two ex-poor girls married to rich men try to return to former lives
807
Contemplating suicide a man does all he wants to do. Circumstances prevent and he lives in terror. But it was all good for him.
808
Basil of Bar Twenty or another
809
Josephine’s marriage or rather in Camp
810
Foley Family
811
Woman envies another for meeting Prince of Wales
812
Masseur blinded in war—Goucher wife, Baby seen through her eyes.
813
Could you have believed in 1929
That Kreuger —and Insull
That Colonel Lindbergh
That Princeton
That Hoover
That a Mob
That the Japanese
That U. S. Steel
That Spain
That the Hohenzollerns
814
Psychological movie with Rex Inghram.
815
For Esquire: Jealous husband meets wife’s lover on train. The bluff that convinces all, including the reader that the wife has “boasted.”
816
Scottie’s houseparty
817
The old “Smile for Sylvo” “Canary for two” “Dinner at Eight” theme, this time with a person ignorant of imminent and tragic parting of two lovers following them through what seems a perfect day in New York.
818
On Becoming a Bore
819
Bad parties we’ve given
820
Unattractive things girls do.
821
The Barnyard boys
822
Play—Two men alternately bored with city and country share country house.
823
For New Yorker “Getting Out.” Quiet couple go to Scarface.
824
Save the Indo-Chinese soldiers. Remember they don’t laugh.
825
Eye in back of head
826
The piano-movers. Man in one act analogistic play instructs four waiting piano movers in the higher conception. When the piano arrives they are unable to use it.
827
The Fellows yacht scandal
828
Easy Fables for Business Men
829
Fairy play laid in 1940. The pioneer.
830
The walking seven times around the deck after the most terrible stuff. Different line for each seven times. In novel with a new woman in Section II.
Why Explanation of each of their lives like in advertising article
831
Title for Communist Article. “The Burning of the Book” from Chinese History.
832
Story of Fred Murphy
833
“Time Lapse”
(1) Man, girl, friend. Former thinks may happen but won’t—it is happening.
(2) Later—thinks it is now. Has happened and is over.
834
The Grotesque Stories
The Horror (St. Sulpice)
The Devil (A day of my Life)
Tiggy’s Dress Suit
Dr. Fay and the three colleges
835
AN AUTHOR TELLS ALL
Escape and so we have the Escape Autobiography
Youth, Rich Ancestry
Football
War (Escape from Germany capture Kaiser) and Revolution
Hollywood
Money making. Bull market
Flying Pacific
Marriages. Giving up Mary, Gretta, etc.
Civil murder and Dot King Case
Breaking up gangs
Writing success. Nom de Plumes
To the South Seas and back
Charming retreat at etc.
Rescues at sea, fire.
All the things I’d like to have done. And you better hurry up with the check for this or I won’t be able to pay my week’s hotel bill.
836
The great Morons of the world (their Ages)
837
New Masses. Father Baron and the nun (for an actor)
838
The Pardners
839
That September 1924, I knew something had happened that could never be repaired.
840
Clarence Brown’s stories
841
Girl married a dissipated man and keeps him in healthy seclusion. She meanwhile grows restless and raises hell on the side.
842
The Party Dress (Hergy)
843
My idea about depth in three dimension pictures about submarines.
844
Hollywood Doctor
845
This is the first of six original stories written for the Screen. They will not be offered to magazines. This is not because, in any sense, they are inferior products but because the magazines expect from this author descriptive and “mental” values rather than dramatic values. Also the lengths.
846
Trinidad: The Redlegs are the rear guard of Monmouth’s army.
847
Story about 1st flight—man can’t marry dumb girl in last flight because of eugenics. Fixes test to prove value of beauty.
848
“—I hadn’t been within miles of the lines and I was very bored and had nothing to write home. I wrote my mother that I’d just saved the lives of Pershing and Foch—that a bomb had fallen on them and I’d picked it up and thrown it away. And what did mother do but telephone the news about her brave boy to every paper in Philadelphia.”
1721
Syndicate idea
Erroneous news paragraph contributed by Miss Information.
1724
Novel Index
For Post
My Successful Year.
It is impossible to tell this story without gloating. If I attempted to tell it with the exquisite modesty, the taste of Joseph Conrad, it would be a falsification, for this story is bumptious and gluttinous—call it crude, coarse, and be done with it.
1735
Idea of play in which dolls grow older.
I Dolls new
II Dolls crisis
III Dolls older than humans.
1741
Story of Leland Hayward
1742
Story of Marion Davies
1743
For story contrast, the Magazine types.
1750
A story—
The arrival at the chateau. (Rich family arriving. Poor family in contrast.) Suggested by Gt. Amer. Fortunes.
1756
Opera plot: A youth, unjustly imprisoned and embittered, joins big mobster. Idealistically disillusioned, he is redeemed.
1761
Story—A hole or bag in which someone finds all the things he’s ever lost.
1770
The Woman’s Times.
1771
The suit beginning in 1000 about land in Naples given away by mistake for the millenium.
1778
Man playing harp as piano.
1794
Russell Woolcott’s turtle that grew and diminished
1796
| Ages 1700—1967 | |
| Monarchs | Louis XIV |
| Philos. | Voltaire |
| Nations | Washington |
| Tyrants | Napoleon |
| Peace | Victoria |
| Science | Darwin |
| Empire | Wilson |
| Revolution | Lenin |
1803
Story idea about prison. Girl hates town. Meets convict released. Helps him and when he goes back, she does, too.
Next: J: Jingles and Songs.
Переводы: I: Сюжеты (разные переводчики).