Dear Scott/Dear Max
Correspondence of Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins

Chapter 4: The Count of Darkness (March 1935 - December 1940)

311. TO: Maxwell Perkins

TL, 2 pp. Princeton University Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Max: You might file this

F Scott Fitzgerald1

March 26, 1935.

To Maxwell Perkins

This collection will be published only in case of my sudden death. It contains many stories that have been chosen for anthologies but, though it is the winnowing from almost fifty stories, none that I have seen fit to reprint in book form. This is in some measure because the best of these stories have been stripped of their high spots which were woven into novels—but it is also because each story contains some special fault— sentimentality, faulty construction, confusing change of pace—or else was too obviously made for the trade.

But readers of my other books will find whole passages here and there which I have used elsewhere—so I should prefer that this collection should be allowed to run what course it may have, and die with its season.

If the Mediaeval stories are six or more they should be in a small book of their own. If less than six they should be in one section in this book. Note date above—there may be other good ones after this date.

CHOOSE FROM THESE
not more than 16

THESE ARE SCRAPPED

 

 

1919

Myra Meets His Family

 

 

 

The Smilers

1921

Two for a Cent

1921

The Popular Girl

 

 

1923

Dice Brass Knuckles and Guitar

1924

One of My Oldest Friends

1924

John Jackson's Arcady

 

The Pusher in the Face

 

The Unspeakable Egg

 

 

 

The Third Casket

 

 

 

Love in the Night

1925

Presumption

1925

Not in the Guide Book

 

Adolescent Marriage

 

A Penny Spent

1926

The Dance

1926

Your Way and Mine

1927

Jacob's Ladder

1927

The Love Boat

 

The Bowl

 

Magnetism

 

Outside the Cabinet Makers

 

 

 

 

1928

A Night at the Fair

1929

The Rough Crossing

1929

Forging Ahead

 

At Your Age

 

Basil and Cleopatra

 

 

 

The Swimmers

1930

One Trip Abroad

1930

The Bridal Party

 

The Hotel Child

 

A Snobbish Story

1931

A New Leaf

1931

Indecision

 

Emotional Bankruptcy

 

Flight and Pursuit

 

Between Three and Four

 

Half a Dozen of the Others

 

A Change of Class

 

Diagnosis

 

A Freeze Out

 

 

 

 

1932

What a Handsome Pair

 

 

 

The Rubber Check

 

 

 

On Schedule

1933

More than Just a House

 

 

 

I Got Shoes

 

 

 

The Family Bus

 

 

1934

No Flowers

1934

New Types

 

Her Last Case

 

 

1935

The Intimate Strangers

1935

Shaggy's Morning

 

And, to date four mediaval stories

 

 

Notes:

1 Added in holograph.

312. To Fitzgerald

April 8, 1935

Dear Scott:

I sent Hem a copy of “Taps at Reveille”,* but not in time for him to read it before he started on a trip for Bimini with Dos+ and Make [Mike] Strater. But I just had a letter from him in which he says: “How is Scott? I wish I could see him. A strange thing is that in retrospect his Tender is the Night gets better and better. I wish you would tell him I said so.”

Always yours,

Notes:

* Published late in March.

+ John Dos Passos.

313. To Perkins

1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland,

April 15, 1935.

Dear Max:

You don't say anything about “Taps” so I gather it hasn't caught on at all. I hope at least it will pay for itself and its corrections. There was a swell review in The Nation;** did you see it?

I went away for another week but history didn't repeat itself and the trip was rather a waste. Thanks for the message from Ernest. I'd like to see him too and I always think of my friendship with him as being one of the high spots of life. But I still believe that such things have a mortality, perhaps in reaction to their very excessive life, and that we will never again see very much of each other. I appreciate what he said about “Tender is the Night.” Things happen all the time which make me think that it is not destined to die quite as easily as the boys-in-a-hurry prophesied. However, I made many mistakes about it from its delay onward, the biggest of which was to refuse the Literary Guild subsidy.

Haven't seen Beth since I got back and am calling her up today to see if she's here. I am waiting eagerly for a first installment of Ernest's book.* When are you coming south? Zelda, after a terrible crisis, is somewhat better. I am, of course, on the wagon as always, but life moves at an uninspiring gait and there is less progress than I could wish on the Mediaeval series—all in all an annoying situation as these should be my most productive years. I've simply got to arrange something for this summer that will bring me to life again, but what it should be is by no means apparent.

About 1929 I wrote a story called “Outside the Cabinet-Maker's,” which ran in the Century Magazine. I either lost it here or else sent it to you with the first batch of selected stories for Taps and it was not returned. Will you (a) see if you've got it? or (b) tell me what and where the Century Company is now and whom I should address to get a copy of the magazine?

I've had a swell portrait painted at practically no charge and next time I come to New York I am going to spend a morning tearing out of your files all those preposterous masks with which you have been libeling me for the last decade.

Just found another whole paragraph in Taps, top of page 384, which appears in Tender Is the Night. I'd carefully elided it and written the paragraph beneath it to replace it, but the proofreaders slipped and put them both in.

Ever yours,

Notes:

** By William Troy (April 17, 1935).

* The Green Hills of Africa, which ran serially, in seven installments, in Scribner's Magazine (prior to its book publication), beginning in May 1935.

Also Turnbull.

314. To Perkins

1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland,

April 17, 1935.

Dear Max:

Reading Tom Wolfe's story^ in the current Mondern Monthly makes me wish he was the sort of person you could talk to about his stuff. It has all his faults and virtues. It seems to me that with any sense of humor he could see the Dreiserian absurdities of how the circus people “ate the cod, bass, mackerel, halibut, clams and oysters of the New England coast, the terrapin of Maryland, the fat beeves, porks and cereals of the middle west” etc. etc. down to “the pink meated lobsters that grope their way along the sea-floors of America.” And then (after one of his fine paragraphs which sounds a note to be expanded later) he remarks that they leave nothing behind except “the droppings of the camel and the elephant in Illinois.” A few pages further on his redundance ruined some paragraphs (see the last complete paragraph on page 103) that might have been gorgeous. I sympathize with his use of repetition, of Joyce-like words, endless metaphor, but I wish he could have seen the disgust in Edmund Wilson's face when I once tried to interpolate part of a rhymed sonnet in the middle of a novel, disguised as prose. How he can put side by side such a mess as “With chitterling tricker fast-fluttering skirrs of sound the palmy honied birderies came” and such fine phrases as “tongue-trilling chirrs, plum-bellied smoothness, sweet lucidity” I don't know. He who has such infinite power of suggestion and delicacy has absolutely no right to glut people on whole meals of caviar. I hope to Christ he isn't taking all these emasculated paeans to his vitality seriously. I'd hate to see such an exquisite talent turn into one of those muscle-bound and useless giants seen in a circus. Athletes have got to learn their games; they shouldn't just be content to tense their muscles, and if they do they suddenly find when called upon to bring off a necessary effect they are simply liable to hurl the shot into the crowd and not break any records at all. The metaphor is mixed but I think you will understand what I mean, and that he would too—save for his tendency to almost feminine horror if he thinks anyone is going to lay hands on his precious talent. I think his lack of humility is his most difficult characteristic, a lack oddly enough which I associate only with second or third rate writers. He was badly taught by bad teachers and now he hates learning.

There is another side of him that I find myself doubting, but this is something that no one could ever teach or tell him. His lack of feeling other people's passions, the lyrical value of Eugene Gant's love affair with the universe—is that going to last through a whole saga? God, I wish he could discipline himself and really plan a novel.

I wrote you the other day and the only other point of this letter is that I've now made a careful plan of the Mediaeval novel as a whole (tentatively called “Philippe, Count of Darkness” confidential) including the planning of the parts which I can sell and the parts which I can't. I think you could publish it either late in the spring of '36 or early in the fall of the same year. This depends entirely on how the money question goes this year. It will run to about 90,000 words and will be a novel in every sense with the episodes unrecognizable as such. That is my only plan. I wish I had these great masses of manuscripts stored away like Wolfe and Hemingway but this goose is beginning to be pretty thoroughly plucked I am afraid.

A young man has dramatized “Tender is the Night” and I am hoping something may come of it. I may be in New York for a day and a night within the next fortnight.

Ever yours,

Later—Went to N.Y. as you know, but one day only. Didn't think I would like Cape that day.* Sorry you & Nora Flynn^ didn't meet. No news here—I think Beth is leaving soon.

Notes:

^ “Circus at Dawn.”

* Perkins was having lunch with Jonathan Cape, the English publisher, and had asked Fitzgerald to join them.

^ Nora Langhorne Flynn, who, with her husband, Lefty, befriended Fitzgerald during 1935 and 1936.

Also Turnbull.

315. To Fitzgerald

April 25, 1935

Dear Scott:

I was just having lunch with Jim Boyd, who, by the way, will be in Baltimore tomorrow. I happened to tell him that you were doing that mediaeval series (but I did not mention the title of the novel, and won't) which was especially in my mind since I had just read your letter. Jim was simply delighted. He has the greatest admiration for your talents, and he said that he had not known about this, but that he himself had thought that the best thing you could do for the moment was a historical novel. I told you that Ned Sheldon** had said the same thing. It is curious they both should have thought of it,—and both of them think that no one surpasses you in possibilities.

It would be a grand thing if some time it should come about that you could talk to Tom. Of course everything you say is true as truth can be. But even if one had an utterly free hand, instead of being subject to constant abuse (God damned Harvard English, grovelling at the feet of Henry James, etc.) it would be a matter of editing inside sentences even, and that would be a dangerous business. But gradually criticism, and age too, may make an impression. By the way.—That Calverton story to the effect that Tom thought he was better than so and so, and so and so, while true in a literal sense, was not true in spirit. I think it is right enough Tom should feel the way he does, which is that what he has to say is so overwhelmingly important that it is all he can see. It is not that he thinks he is better than anyone else. He just does not think about the other people at all. When he reads them he is quite keen about them for a while, but it does not seem to him to be the important thing that they are doing because what he is doing seems to him momentous.

I swear I do not see why a good man could not make a grand play out of “Tender Is the Night”.

Always yours,

Notes:

** Probably American dramatist Edward Sheldon.

316. To Perkins

1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland,

April 29, 1935.

Dear Max:

Jim Boyd called me up on race-day76 but I missed him as he pulled out of the Belvedere before the race was over. Elizabeth, by the way, left yesterday or today.

I got “Roll River”* and in the same mail another book called “Deep Dark River,” + (Farrar & Rhinehart), so Max, if you don't mind I want the names of my books changed to fit in with this new mode. They should be called “This Side of the River,” “Rivers and Philosophers,” “Tender is the River,” and “Rivers at Reveille.” Please see to this immediately because dat ol' debbil certainly does make sales.

Zelda is better. I am thinking of closing up shop here and going to North Carolina for a real physical rest as I am God damned tired of being half sick and half well. I will be writing all the time of course.

I would rather you didn't mention the century of my novel or advise people that some of it is in the Red Book. Let it just stand for the present as an historical novel.

Ever yours,

Notes:

* A novel by James Boyd, published by Scribners in 1935.

+ A novel by Robert Rylee.

76. Probably the day of the Preakness Stakes, an annual horserace run at Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore.

317. To Perkins

1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland,

May 11, 1935.

Dear Max:

It was fine seeing you but I was in a scrappy mood about Tom Wolfe. I simply cannot see the sign of achievement there yet, but I see that you are very close to the book and you don't particularly relish such an attitude. I am closing the house and going away somewhere for a couple of months and will send you an address when I get one.

I'd like to see Ernest but it seems a long way and I would not like to see him except under the most favorable of circumstances because I don't think I am the pleasantest company of late.** Zelda is in very bad condition and my own mood always somehow reflects it.

Katy Dos Passos was here and in her version the bullet bounced off the side of the boat, but I suppose when Ernest's legend approaches the Bunyan type it will have bounced off the moon, so it is much the same thing.

Had a nice letter from Jim Boyd agreeing with me about Clara but not about the weak writing at the end. I am quite likely to see him this summer.

Ever yours,

Notes:

** Perkins, on May 6th, had written that Hemingway, who was recovering from a bullet wound in his leg, had invited Fitzgerald to visit him in Bimini.

Also Turnbull.

318. To Perkins

Hotel Stafford, Baltimore, Md. Sunday evening

[ca. June 25, 1935]

Dear Max:

I feel I owe you a word of explanation; 1st: As to the health business, I was given what amounted to a death sentence about 3 months ago. It was just before I last saw you—which was why, I think, I got into that silly quarrel with you about Tom Wolfe that I've regretted ever since. I was a good deal dismayed & probably jealous, so forget all I said that night. You know I've always thought there was plenty room in America for more than one good writer, & you'll admit it wasn't like me.

Anyhow what upset me most was that it came just two months after the liquor question was in hand at last—and I was quite reconciled, simply cross and upset at the arbitrary change of plan. (I never felt emotional about it until a fortnight ago when I learned that the Great Scene wasn't coming off. It seemed such a shame after such good rehearsals that one grew suddenly sentimental and sorry for oneself.)

2nd Came up to Baltimore for five days* to see Zelda who seems hopeless & send Scotty to camp, I had 24 hrs with nothing to do and went to N.Y. to see a woman I'm very fond of—its a long peculiar story (…—one of the curious series of relationships that run thru a man's life). Anyhow she'd given up the wk. end at the last minute to meet me & it was impossible to leave her to see you.

Putting Scotty on train in 10 minutes.

In haste, always yrs.

I wish Struthers Burt would decide on a name—I call him everything but Katherine! ^

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had been spending the summer at the Grove Park Inn, in Asheville, North Carolina.

^ Burt's full name was Maxwell Struthers Burt. His wife's name was Katherine.

Also Turnbull.

319. To Fitzgerald

Sept. 28, 1935

Dear Scott:

I have got to go for a two weeks' vacation beginning Tuesday, but I expect to come to Baltimore sometime after that.

Ernest is here now, in fine shape. He is going to be in this region probably for some time because he wants to wait until it gets cool enough to return to Key West. He means to go somewhere in the country. He has speculated several times about seeing you, but he is bent upon writing stories,—has done a couple.

Every writer seems to have to go through a period when the tide runs against him strongly, and at the worst it is better that it should have done this when Ernest was writing books that are in a general sense minor ones. That is, the kind that the trade and the run of the public are bound to regard that way. I hope we can think of something to be done about it between now and October 25th.

I am sorry we did not get Scotty, but Harold did not seem to want to let her go at the beginning, and then Nance had to have her tonsils out.77 The whole family is back from Europe, and we are all in New York.

Yours always,

Notes:

77. Fitzgerald's daughter had been staying with the Obers and plans to have her spend some time with the Perkins family were cancelled when Nancy, the youngest Perkins daughter, became ill.

320. To Perkins

Cambridge Arms, Baltimore, Maryland,

October 24, 1935.

Dear Max:

Thank you again.* I haven't realized on either of the two stories but will hear from one this week end and from the other the beginning of next week.

Have you got any suggestions about the Red Book series? I now have about 30,000 words (in the 4 written stories) but Balmer of the Red Book is noncommittal about whether he wants any more or not. What could Scribner's pay in cash for the rest of the series? Or have you read the last two and did you like them? The fourth isn't published yet. I know this is a wild idea and even granted that the material fitted Scribner's you wouldn't have the advantage of featuring it as a serial from the beginning, but of course it is to your advantage to have me finish the book.

The original plan was to have been a book of over 100,000 words, but supposing instead, I published two books of 60,000 words each about my noble Philippe, the first book dealing with his youth. That book you see would be half done now.

This all sounds like a make-shift arrangement but I can't see how in the next six months I can raise enough money to continue the mediaeval theme unless it is somehow subsidized by serialization. Have you any ideas?

Ever yours,

Notes:

* Perkins had deposited $300 in Fitzgerald's Baltimore bank on October 18th.

321. To Fitzgerald

Oct. 26, 1935

Dear Scott:

It seems to me most unlikely that we could do anything through the magazine about stories you began with the Red Book, but if you have copies of those that have been published, I wish I could read them. I only read the first one. Anyhow, by doing that, I could have more idea of the advisability of breaking the scheme into two books. It might be a good thing to do.

Ernest got a first-rate review* in the Sunday Times Supplement, a very good review in the Tribune Supplement, excellent short reviews in the Atlantic and in Time, a bad review in the Saturday Review (which does not count for much) and mostly unfavorable comment from Gannett,^ and very unfavorable from Chamberlain,** but the review in the Times is more important than all the others put together, generally speaking. The unfavorable reviews are mostly colored by this prevalent idea that you ought to be writing only about the troubles of the day, and are disapproving of anything so remote from present social problems as a hunting expedition.

I had lunch with Bunny Wilson, who seems better and happier than in years, and very enthusiastic about Russia as a country, and a people. I got the impression that his views on Communism were somewhat sobered and more philosophical, and that he thought better of his own country. I suspect he now feels that whatever form of society Russians and Americans are revolving toward is a long slow process. He also told me that he had inherited from an uncle enough money to make his situation considerably more comfortable.

Always yours,

Notes:

*Of The Green Hills of Africa.

^ Critic Lewis Gannett, whose book reviews appeared daily in the New York Herald Tribune.

** Critic John Chamberlain, whose book reviews appeared in the daily New York Times.

322. To Perkins

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore, Maryland,

March 17, 1936.

Dear Max:

A kid named Vincent McHugh has written me asking me to recommend him to you. Ordinarily I would not do such things any more but he has been a sort of unknown protege of mine for some time. He has published a book called Sing Before Breakfast which I thought was a remarkable book and showed a very definite temperament. I'm not promising you that he is as strong a personality as Ernest or Caldwell or Cantwell or the men that I have previously recommended, but I do wish you would get hold of this earlier book Sing Before Breakfast published by Simon and Schuster in 1933 and consider that as much as what he has to offer at the moment in making your decision.

I know, that due to your experience with Tom Boyd, you place a great deal of emphasis on vitality, but remember that a great deal of the work in this world has been done by sick men and people who at first sight seem to have no vitality will suddenly exhibit great streaks of it. I've never seen this young man but potentially he seems capable of great efforts.78

Things are standing still here. I am waiting to hear this afternoon about a Saturday Evening Post story, which, if it is successful, will continue a series.

Best wishes always,

Notes:

78. Perkins replied, on March 20th, that he had “always been interested” in McHugh ever since Scribners had “most reluctantly” declined Sing Before Breakfast “about which I was very enthusiastic.” He assured Fitzgerald that he would help McHugh in any way he could and that he would read anything McHugh wrote “with great interest.”

Also Turnbull.

323. To Perkins

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore, Maryland,

March 25, 1936.

Dear Max:

In regard to the enclosed letter from Simon and Schuster* do you remember my proposing some years ago to gather up such of my non-fiction as is definitely autobiographical—“How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” etc., “My Relations with Ring Lardner,” a Post article called “A Hundred False Starts,” of hotels stayed at that I did with Zelda and about a half dozen others and making them into a book? At the time you didn't like the idea and I'm quite aware that there's not a penny in it unless it was somehow joined together and given the kind of lift that Gertrude Stein's autobiography^ had. Some of it will be inevitably dated, but there is so much of it and the interest in this Esquire series has been so big that I thought you might reconsider the subject on the chance that there might be money in it. If you don't like the idea what would you think of letting Simon and Schuster try it?

I don't want to spend any time at all on it until I am absolutely sure of publication and, as you know, of course I would prefer to keep identified with the house of Scribner, but in view of the success of the Gertrude Stein book and the Seabrook* book it just might be done with profit.

Ever yours,

Notes:

* Simon and Schuster had written Fitzgerald expressing interest in publishing in book form the autobiographical articles which he was publishing in Esquire.

^ The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

* Probably Asylum by William B. Seabrook (1934), in which the author recounted his experiences in a mental hospital for alcoholics.

324. To Fitzgerald

March 26, 1936

Dear Scott:

I remember your speaking to me about a collection of non-fiction. I did not think well of it as a collection. But do you remember at the time when you were struggling desperately with “Tender Is the Night” and it seemed as if you might not get through with it for long, that I suggested a reminiscent book? It might even have been before you published “Echoes of the Jazz Age” in 1931, which was a beautiful article. I have been reading that again lately, and have been hesitating on the question of asking you to do a reminiscent book,—not autobiographical, but reminiscent. Gertrude Stein's autobiography is an apt one to mention in connection with the idea. I even talked to Gilbert Seldes about it, and he was favorable. I do not think the Esquire pieces ought to be published alone. But as for an autobiographical book which would comprehend what is in them, I would be very much for it. Couldn't you make a really well integrated book? You write non-fiction wonderfully well, your observations are brilliant and acute, and your presentations of real characters like Ring, most admirable. I always wanted you to do such a book as that. Whatever you decide, we want to do, but it would be so much better to make a book out of the materials than merely to take the articles and trim them, and join them up, etc.

Always yours,

325. To Perkins

1 East 34th Street, Baltimore, Maryland,

April 2, 1936.

Dear Max:

Your letter really begs the question because it would be one thing to join those articles together and another to write a book. The list would include the following:

1. A short autobiography I wrote for the Saturday Evening Post “Who's Who and How.”

2. An article on Princeton for College Humor.*

3. An article on being twenty-five for the American. +

4. “How to Live on $36,000 a Year” for the Post.

5. “How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year” for the Post.

6. “Imagination and a Few Mothers” for the Ladies Home Journal.

7. “Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own” for the Woman's Home Companion.

8. “How to Waste Material” for Bookman.

9. “One Hundred False Starts” for Post.

10. “Ring Lardner” New Republic.

11. A short autobiography for New Yorker.**

12. “Girls Believe in Girls” Liberty.

13. “My Lost City” Cosmopolitan (still unpublished, but very good I think.)

14. “Show Mr. and Mrs. F—to—” Esquire.

15. Echoes from [of] the Jazz Age.

16. The three articles about cracking up from Esquire.++

This would total 60,000 words. I would expect to revise it and add certain links, perhaps in some sort of telegraphic flashes between each article.

Whether the book would have the cohesion to sell or not I don't know. It makes a difference whether people think they are getting some real inside stuff or whether they think a collection is thrown together. As it happens the greater part of these articles are intensely personal, that is to say, while a newspaper man has to find something to write his daily or weekly article about, I have written articles entirely when the impetus came from within, in fact, I have cleaner hands in the case of non-fiction than in fiction. Let me add, however, if I had the time to sit down and make these over into a re-written book, rather than a revised book, I would devote that time to finishing Philippe. I simply can't afford to do it until I pull myself out of this pit of debt. Meanwhile, what do you think? I need advice on the subject.79

Ever yours,

Notes:

* “Princeton,” College Humor, December, 1927.

^ “What I Think and Feel at Twenty-Five,” American Magazine, September, 1922.

** “A Short Autobiography,” New Yorker, May 25, 1929.

++ “The Crack-up” (February), “Pasting It Together” (March), and “Handle With Care” (April), all published in 1936.

79. In his reply, dated April 8th, Perkins reiterated his feeling that the book would not be wise unless it were unified and revised into a volume of reminiscence. To publish the book Fitzgerald proposed, he pointed out, would “injure the possibilities of a reminiscent book at some later time.”

326. To Perkins

Cambridge Arms, Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland,

June 13, 1936.

Dear Max:

I am glad you agree with me about the Modern Library publishing “Tender Is The Night”. There was no intention of asking them about it before letting you know and I thought the two letters had gone off in the mail at the same time.80

However, the subject has reminded me of the idea that I wrote you about last month, to wit: the practicability of collecting my articles into a book, even without unifying them as an auto biography. The new series for Esquire seems to have moved Gingrich so much that he has written me that the one that appears in the August issue (called “Afternoon of An Author”) is the best thing he has published in six years of editing his sheet. I still think that if I could get an attractive title, that the book would have possibility. It would include very much the material I suggested before with the addition of these new Esquire pieces, and I would expect to do a certain amount of work on it in proof. Please reconsider the matter and let me know.81

My plans are still vague for the summer, but you can always reach me through the Cambridge Arms address.

Best wishes always,

Notes:

80. Fitzgerald had wired Donald Klopfer and Bennett Cerf of the Modern Library, suggesting that they publish Tender Is the Night. Klopfer had replied on May 19th that he was personally interested in the book but that he would have to await Cerf's return from England before a final decision could be made. On June 3rd, Perkins had written Fitzgerald that he too approved the idea.

81. On June 16th, Perkins replied in much the same vein as his earlier response of April 8th, but he ended the letter, “we shall do it [the book Fitzgerald proposed] if you think well of it, and do our best for it.”

327. TO: Earl Donaldson (Of the Sun Life Insurance Co.)

TL(CC), 1 p. Princeton University; Correspondence.

July 5, 1936

Dear Earl:

With the help of a suggestion of John Biggs Jr. I went to the Scribner Company and arranged to borrow enough to cover the two deficient payments of March 15 and June 15. From his office I called up your office in Newark, New Jersey and found that you are equipped to handle such assignments in emergencies. The time is short now because my interests must be protected before the fifteenth of July, and this is already the sixth; so would you send me the following documents which I must fill out?

(a) An assignment to the Charles Scribner Company, 599 Fifth Avenue, New York City, of first rights, in case of my death, of $1500.00 to them, I am told that you must send me three papers to be signed and assigned. Mr. Charles Scribner will, in return, pay you $1500.00 to cover the payments overdue on March 15 and June 15. According to your letter, it is important that all of this should be done before July 15, up to which time I am protected, after that I think I shall be able to carry the $700.00 per quarter. I don't want any slip up to happen here, because this is the only protection that my wife and child have.

(b) My life insurance might lapse for non-payment; therefore, I would like to have my policy changed so that the beneficiaries, in the event of my death, will be, first: Charles Scribner, to the amount of $1500.00; and second: Harold Ober, of 40 E. 49th Street, New York City, to the extent of $8,000.00, balance to go to such heirs and assigns as may be made in my will.

Please send all necessary forms in triplicate to provide for the Charles Scribner's Sons, and for Harold Ober, to reach me by special delivery here.

Ever yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. I am sending this registered mail and hope for a registered letter from you.

Cambridge Arms Apts, Baltimore, Md.

328. FROM: Charles Scribner

TL(CC), 2 pp. Princeton University; Correspondence.

July 10, 1936.

Dear Scott:

Eben Cross called me up on the telephone the first of the week and I sent him the cheque for $1,500.00 to pay your back insurance premiums. I also thought that it was a good time to check up on the advances we had made in order that no misunderstanding might ever arise.

Most of the ancient indebtedness was written off against the serial publication of “Tender is the Night” and the royalty advance on this book. The advance still stands us out $1,671.50 but this is of course only an obligation against “Tender is the Night.”

Since its publication we loaned you $2,000.00 which Ober thought would be met by the sale of motion-picture rights but unfortunately that never came off. On this it was agreed that you should pay 5% interest and it was not to be regarded as a charge against your account with us.

Your open account shows that we have advanced you from time to time $4,400.00 and that this has been reduced by the fact that you have earned since that time $1,188.99 in royalties. We have also paid $100.00 for customs duties which I do not know about personally, and for sundry charged $39.83 plus a bill in the retail of $390.03, and $77.22 interest on the $2,000.00.

Therefore, after deducting the unearned balance on “Tender is the Night,” there is a deficit in your account of $5,818.09, not taking into account the $1,500.00 which you have just assigned on your life insurance policies.

I have thought of asking you to include the loan of $2,000.00 in the assignment as there does not seem to be any prospect in the next few years that you will be able to take care of it, and had I known that Ober was willing to do so I would have spoken to you, but I rather hated to see your daughter's heritage cut down any.

All this is rather painful and I hope it will not give you a headache. Max and I thought it only fair, however, by you as well as ourselves to get the figures on paper, to make sure that we agreed with you.

I certainly hope that you may be able to find time to write a novel in the next few years but I can very well appreciate the difficulties you are up against.

I overlooked giving you a book which I thought might interest you and when you have a permanent address I wish you would let me know and I will send it on.

With all best wishes
Sincerely yours

329. To Perkins

Asheville, N.C., *

Sept. 19th, 1936

Dear Max:

This is my second day of having a minute to catch up with correspondence. Probably Harold Ober has kept you in general touch with what has happened to me but I will summarize:

I broke the clavicle of my shoulder, diving—nothing heroic, but a little too high for the muscles to tie up the efforts of a simple swan dive—At first the Doctors thought that I must have tuberculosis of the bone, but x-ray showed nothing of the sort, so (like occasional pitchers who throw their arm out of joint with some unprepared for effort) it was left to dangle for twenty-four hours with a bad diagnosis by a young Intern; then an x-ray and found broken and set in an elaborate plaster cast.

I had almost adapted myself to the thing when I fell in the bath-room reaching for the light, and lay on the floor until I caught a mild form of arthritis called “Miotoosis,” [myotosis] which popped me in the bed for five weeks more. During this time there were domestic crises: Mother sickened and then died and I tried my best to be there but couldn't. I have been within a mile and a half of my wife all summer and have seen her about half dozen times. Total accomplished for one summer has been one story—not very good, two Esquire articles, neither of them very good.

You have probably seen Harold Ober and he may have told you that Scottie got a remission of tuition at a very expensive school where I wanted her to go (Miss Edith Walker's School in Connecticut). Outside of that I have no good news, except that I came into some money from my Mother, not as much as I had hoped, but at least $20,000. in cash and bonds at the materialization in six months—for some reason, I do not know the why or wherefore of it, it requires this time. I am going to use some of it, with the products of the last story and the one in process of completion, to pay off my bills and to take two or three months rest in a big way. I have to admit to myself that I haven't the vitality that I had five years ago.

I feel that I must tell you something which at first seemed better to leave alone: I wrote Ernest about that story of his,** asking him in the most measured terms not to use my name in future pieces of fiction. He wrote me back a crazy letter, telling me about what a great Writer he was and how much he loved his children, but yielding the point—“If I should out live him—” which he doubted. To have answered it would have been like fooling with a lit firecracker.

Somehow I love that man, no matter what he says or does, but just one more crack and I think I would have to throw my weight with the gang and lay him. No one could ever hurt him in his first books but he has completely lost his head and the duller he gets about it, the more he is like a punch-drunk pug fighting himself in the movies.

No particular news except the dreary routine of illness.

Scottie excited about the wedding.

As ever yours,

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had moved to Asheville to be close to Zelda who was in a sanitarium there.

** “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” which, in its original version, had the hero thinking, “He remembered poor old Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of [the rich] and how he had started a story once that began, 'The very rich are different from you and me.' And how someone had said to Scott, yes they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott.” In subsequent printings, the name was changed to Julian.

Ethel Walker School, Simsbury, Connecticut.

Also Turnbull.

330. To Fitzgerald

Sept. 23, 1936

Dear Scott:

If you are sure to get $20,000 in six months, doesn't this offer you your big chance? You have never, since the very beginning, had a time free from the necessity of earning money.—You have never been free from financial anxiety. Can't you now work out a plan to get at least eighteen months, or perhaps two years, free from worry by living very economically, and work as you always wanted to, on a major book? Certainly it seems to me that here is your opportunity. I am glad Scotty is doing so well. I know the school in Simsbury, once thought of sending our girls there. It is very good.

As for what Ernest did, I resented it, and when it comes to book publication, I shall have it out with him. It is odd about it too because I was present when that reference was made to the rich, and the retort given, and you were many miles away.

Always yours,

331. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

ASHEVILLE NCAR 1936 OCT 6 AM 2 23

EVEN THOUGH ADMINISTRATOR HAS BEEN APPOINTED BALTIMORE BANK WILL NOT ADVANCE MONEY ON MY SECURITIES OF TWENTY THOUSAND I MARKET VALUE AT THEIR ESTIMATE UNTIL SIX WEEKS BY WHICH TIME I WILL BE IN JAIL STOP WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU CANT PAY TYPIST OR BUY MEDICINES OR CIGARETTS STOP ANY LOANS FROM SCRIBNERS CAN BE SECURED BY LIEN PAYABLE ON LIQUIDATION CANT SOMETHING BE DONE I AM UP AND PRETTY STRONG BUT THESE ARE IMPOSSIBLE WRITING CONDITIONS I NEED THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS WIRED TO FIRST NATIONAL BALTIMORE AND TWO THOUSAND MORE THIS WEEK WIRE ANSWER1
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD.

Notes:

1 This loan was not made. See Perkins' 6 October letter to Fitzgerald in Scott /Max.

332. To Fitzgerald

Oct 6, 1936

Dear Scott:

We have been talking here for a long time as a result of getting your telegram.82 We have to have some business justification for the money we put out. With both Charlie* and me there is a strong personal element in the matter, but there is none, or hardly any, with others who do not know you and who cannot understand why your account should look as it does. How are we to explain it to them? We greatly want to help you and always have, but you do not half help us to do it. In this case, if we send you the two thousand, we should have some degree of justification if you could give us a guarantee from the administrator that this, and the earlier loan of two thousand for which we hold your note, would be paid on liquidation of the Estate. But we should feel much better about the whole thing, and about you yourself, if you could now, with the respite which this inheritance will give you, work out some plan by which you would be producing something upon which we might hope to realize,—and you would too. One successful book would clear the whole slate for you all round. Couldn't you now make a regular scheme by which you would produce a book? I am not at all sure but what that biographical book I urged upon you would not be the most likely one to do what is needed. But you will now have this interval of a year, and you ought to make the fullest use of the opportunity.

—If you only could tell us what you are planning, we should feel very much better about the whole matter,—and more on your account than on our own too.

Always yours,

Notes:

* Charles Scribner, President of Charles Scribner's Sons.

82. Fitzgerald had asked for $2,000. On October 6th, Perkins wired that he was sending $300, but added, “If we advanced more could you have administrator legally guarantee repayment[?]”

333. To Perkins

Grove Park Inn Asheville, N.C.

October 16, 1936

Dear Max:

As I wired you, an advance on my Mother's estate from a friend makes it unnecessary to impose on you further.

I do not like the idea of the biographical book. I have a novel planned, or rather I should say conceived, which fits much better into the circumstances, but neither by this inheritance nor in view of the general financial situation do I see clear to undertake it. It is a novel certainly as long as Tender Is The Night, and knowing my habit of endless corrections and revisions, you will understand that I figure it at two years. Except for a lucky break you see how difficult it would be for me to master the leisure of the two years to finish it. For a whole year I have been counting on such a break in the shape of either Hollywood buying Tender or else of Grisman getting Kirkland or someone else to do an efficient dramatization. (I know I would not like the job and I know that Davis* who had every reason to undertake it after the success of Gatsby simply turned thumbs down from his dramatist's instinct that the story was not constructed as dramatically as Gatsby and did not readily lend itself to dramatization.) So let us say that all accidental, good breaks can not be considered. I can not think up any practical way of undertaking this work. If you have any suggestions they will be welcomed, but there is no likelihood that my expenses will be reduced below $18,000 a year in the next two years, with Zelda's hospital bills, insurance payments to keep, etc. And there is no likelihood that after the comparative financial failure of Tender Is The Night that I should be advanced such a sum as $3,000. The present plan, as near as I have formulated it, seems to be to go on with this endless Post writing or else go to Hollywood again. Each time I have gone to Hollywood, in spite of the enormous salary, has really set me back financially and artistically. My feelings against the autobiographical book are:

First: that certain people have thought that those Esquire articles*** did me definite damage and certainly they would have to form part of the fabric of a book so projected. My feeling last winter that I could put together the articles I had written vanished in the light of your disapproval, and certainly when so many books have been made up out of miscellaneous material and exploited material, as it would be in my case, there is no considerable sale to be expected. If I were Negly Farson* and had been through the revolutions and panics of the last fifteen years it would be another story, or if I were prepared at this moment to “tell all” it would have a chance at success, but now it would seem to be a measure adopted in extremis, a sort of period to my whole career.

In relation to all this, I enjoyed reading General Grant's Last Stand,+ and was conscious of your particular reasons for sending it to me. It is needless to compare the force of character between myself and General Grant, the number of words that he could write in a year, and the absolutely virgin field which he exploited with the experiences of a four-year life under the most dramatic of circumstances. What attitude on life I have been able to put into my books is dependent upon entirely different field of reference with the predominant themes based on problems of personal psychology. While you may sit down and write 3,000 words one day, it inevitably means that you write 500 words the next.

I certainly have this one more novel, but it may have to remain among the unwritten books of this world. Such stray ideas as sending my daughter to a public school, putting my wife in a public insane asylum, have been proposed to me by intimate friends, but it would break something in me that would shatter the very delicate pencil end of a point of view. I have got myself completely on the spot and what the next step is I don't know.

I am going to New York around Thanksgiving for a day or so and we might discuss ways and means. This general eclipse of ambition and determination and fortitude, all of the very qualities on which I have prided myself, is ridiculous, and, I must admit, somewhat obscene.

Anyhow, that [thank] you for your willingness to help me. Thank Charlie for me and tell him that the assignments he mentioned have only been waiting on a general straightening up of my affairs. My God, debt is an awful thing!

Yours,

Heard from Mrs. Rawlings & will see her83

Notes:

* Playwright Owen Davis, who had done the dramatization of Gatsby.

* American journalist and novelist, known primarily for his autobiographical books of adventure.

^ By Horace Green, published by Scribners in 1936.

*** Three essays known collectively as “The Crack-Up.”

83. Perkins, in a letter of October 2nd, had told Fitzgerald that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was nearby in North Carolina and was very interested in meeting him. Perkins recommended her highly as “a great deal of a person, both in intelligence and in personality,” and urged Fitzgerald to see her.

Also Turnbull.

334. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

ASHEVILLE NCAR 1936 DEC 3 PM 7 44

CANT EVEN GET OUT OF HERE UNLESS YOU DEPOSIT THE REMAINING THOUSAND STOP IT IS ONLY FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS STOP I HAVE COUNTED ON IT SO THAT I HAVE CHECKS OUT AGAINST IT ALREADY STOP PLEASE WIRE ME IF YOU HAVE WIRED IT TO THE BALTIMORE BANK STOP THE DOCTORS THINK THAT THIS SESSION OF COMPARATIVE PROSTRATION IS ABOUT OVER
SCOTT FITZGERALD.

335. To Perkins

[Oak Hall Hotel] [Tryon, North Carolina] [late in February, 1937]

Dear Max:

Thanks for your note and the appalling statement. Odd how enormous sums of $10,000 have come to seem lately—I can remember turning down that for the serialization of The Great Gatsby—from College Humor.

Well, my least productive & lowest general year since 1926 is over. In that year I did 1 short story and 2 chaps. of a novel—that is two chaps. that I afterwards used. And it was a terrible story. Last year, even though laid up 4 mos. I sold 4 stories & 8 Esq. pieces, a poor showing God knows. This year has started slowly also, same damn lack of interest, staleness, when I have every reason to want to work if only to keep from thinking. Havn't had a drink since I left the north. (about six weeks, not even beer) but while I feel a little better nervously it doesn't bring back the old exuberance. I honestly think that all the prizefighters, actors, writers who live by their own personal performances ought to have managers in their best years. The ephemeral part of the talent seems when it is in hiding so apart from one, so “otherwise” that it seems it ought to have some better custodian than the poor individual with whom it lodges and who is left with the bill. My chief achievment lately has been in cutting down my and Zelda's expenses to rock bottom; my chief failure is my inability to see a workable future. Hollywood for money has much against it, the stories are somehow mostly out of me unless some new [scourse /] source of material springs up, a novel takes money & time—I am thinking of putting aside certain hours and digging out a play, the ever-appealing mirage. At 40 one counts carefully one's remaining vitality and rescourses and a play ought to be within both of them. The novel & the autobiography have got to wait till this load of debt is lifted.

So much, & too much, for my affairs. Write me of Ernest & Tom & who's new & does Ring still sell & John Fox & The House of Mirth. Or am I the only best seller who doesn't sell?

The account, I know, doesn't include my personal debt to you. How much is it please?

I don't know at all about Brookfield. Never have heard of it but there are so many schools there. Someone asked me about Oldfields where Mrs. Simpson went and I'd never heard of that. Please write me—you are about the only friend who does not see fit to incorporate a moral lesson, especially since the Crack up stuff. Actually I hear from people in Sing Sing & Joliet all comforting & advising me.

Ever Your Friend

Notes:

Also Turnbull.

336. To Fitzgerald

March 3, 1937

Dear Scott:

In spite of the discouraging financial outlook, I thought your letter was fine. Maybe you really were the best diagno[s]tician of any,—maybe you best knew yourself. My urgency about doing the autobiographical book—which of course I thought would be extremely good and would sell—was part of one of my very cunning plots.—That is, I thought that if you wrote all about that period, and said your full say about it, you would get through with it all and step out into some fresh field without being directed back by the past. I do not think I am much of a psychologist, but maybe there was something in that side of the idea.

Hem was here last week, and on Saturday I saw him off for Spain on the Paris, along with Evan Shipman* and Sidney Franklin. I hope they won't all get into trouble over there. They seem to be quite bloodthirsty, although they are going strictly on business. Ernest has finished his novel,+ but won't deliver it to us until June. He says he will be out of Spain by May first.

Tom is turning out volumes of manuscript, but he is terribly worried about his lawsuits. The landlady who sued him won't settle, at least for the present. She is too furious with him.84

Edith Wharton doesn't sell except with “Ethan Frome”, and that excellently. Not “The House of Mirth” though, nor any of her other books. Nor does Ring sell to any extent. But John Fox does, and also Thomas Nelson Page.** We had an unusual experience with Marcia Davenport's novel, “Of Lena Geyer”. Most books today succeed from the start or never. And even successes seldom carry into a new year. Marcia started out badly, with little advance sale, and none of the breaks. Not even good reviews, really. She has had no great sale yet,—about 20,000—but almost half of that has come since Christmas…

I see you have a story in the new Post.^^

Always yours,

Notes:

* Poet and acquaintance of Hemingway. + To Have and Have Not, published by Scribners in 1937.

** American novelist and diplomat, known primarily for his romantic stories of the post-Civil War South.

++ “Trouble.”

84. Late in 1936, Scribners and Wolfe had gotten into a $125,000 libel suit brought on the allegation of a woman who claimed that she had been slanderously portrayed in Wolfe's short story “No Door” and was identifiable. The suit was eventually settled out of court.

337. To Fitzgerald

[Oak Hall Hotel] [Tryon, North Carolina]

[Before March 19, 1937]

Dear Max:

Thanks for the book—I don't think it was very good but then I didn't go for Sheean or Negley Farson either. Ernest ought to write a swell book now about Spain—real Richard Harding Davis reporting or better. (I mean not the sad jocosity of P.O.M. passages or the mere calendar of slaughter.) And speaking of Ernest, did I tell you that when I wrote asking him to cut me out of his story he answered, with ill grace, that he would—in fact he answered with such unpleasantness that it is hard to think he has any friendly feeling to me any more. Anyhow please remember that he agreed to do this if the story should come in with me still in it.

At the moment it appears that I may go to Hollywood for awhile, and I hope it works out. I was glad to get news of Tom Wolfe though I don't understand about his landlady. What?

Ever yours,
Scott

Write me again—I hear no news. On the wagon since January and in good shape physically.

Notes:

Foreign correspondent Vincent Sheean.

In Green Hills of Africa (Scribners, 1935), Hemingway referred to his wife Pauline as “Poor Old Mama” or “P.O.M.”

Wolfe’s landlady had brought a libel suit against him.

From Turnbull.

338. To Fitzgerald

March 19, 1937

Dear Scott:

As for Ernest, I know he will cut that piece out of his story. He spoke to me a while ago about it, and his feelings toward you are far different from what you seem to suspect. I think he had some queer notion that he would give you a “jolt” and that it might be good for you, or something like that. Anyhow, he means to take it out.85

Ober told me about the Hollywood possibility,* and I hope it goes through;—and as he told you, I took the liberty of sending three hundred to the Baltimore bank myself, in view of the situation.

I hope the Hollywood thing goes, but even if it does not, don't get discouraged now because your letters are beginning to look and sound the way they used to.

Always yours,

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had written in his previous letter, that he was considering a Hollywood offer.

85. Fitzgerald had written a few days earlier that when he had asked Hemingway to remove his name from “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Ernest “answered, with ill grace, that he would—in fact he answered with such unpleasantness that it is hard to think he has any friendly feeling to me any more. Anyhow please remember that he agreed to do this if the story should come in with me still in it.”

339. To Perkins

[Oak Hall Hotel] [Tryon, North Carolina]

[ca. May 10, 1937]

Dear Max:

Thanks for your letter—and the loan. I hope Ober will be able to pay you in a few weeks.

All serene here and would be content to remain indefinately save that for short stories a change of scene is better. I have lived in tombs for years it seems to me—a real experience like the 1st trip to Loudon County usually means a story. As soon as I can I want to travel a little—its fine not having Scottie to worry over, love her as I do. I want to meet some new people. (I do constantly but they seem just the old people over again but not so nice.)

Ever your Friend

Thanks for the word about Ernest. Methinks he does protest too much. *

Notes:

* Perkins had written Fitzgerald about Hemingway, “... his feelings towards you are different from what you seem to suspect. I think he had some queer notion that he would give you a 'jolt' and that it might be good for you or something like that.”

Also Turnbull.

340. To Perkins

[The Garden of Allah Hotel] [Hollywood, Calif.]

[ca. July 15, 1937]

Dear Max:

Thanks for your letter—I was just going to write you. Harold has doubtless told you I have a nice salary out here tho until I have paid my debts and piled up a little security so that my “catastrophe at forty” wont be repeated I'm not bragging about it or even talking about it. The money is budgeted by Harold, as someone I believe Charlie Scribner recomended years ago. I'm sorry that the Scribner share will only ammount to $2500 or so the first year but that is while I'm paying back Harold who like you is an individual. The seconde year it will be better.

There are clauses in the contract which allow certain off periods but it postpones a book for quite a while.

Ernest came like a whirlwind, put Ernest Lubitch [Ernst Lubitsch] the great directer in his place by refusing to have his picture prettied up and remade for him a la Hollywood at various cocktail parties. I felt he was in a state of nervous tensity, that there was something almost religious about it. He raised $1000 bills won by Miriam Hopkins fresh from the gaming table, the rumor is $14,000 in one night.

Everyone is very nice to me, surprised & rather relieved that I don't drink. I am happier than I've been for several years.

Ever your Friend

Notes:

Also Turnbull.

341. To Perkins

 [Garden of Allah Hotel] [Hollywood, Cal.]

[ca. August 20, 1937]

Dear Max:

Have heard every possible version* save that Eastman has fled to Shanghai with Pauline.^ Is Ernest on a bat—what has happened? I'm so damn sorry for him after my late taste of newspaper bastards. But is he just being stupid or are they after him politically. It amounts to either great indiscretion or actual persecution.

Thanks for my “royalty” report. I scarcely even belong to the gentry in that line. All goes beautifully here so far. Scottie is having the time of her young life, dining with Crawford, Scheerer ect, talking to Fred Astaire & her other heroes. I am very proud of her. And a granddaughter.** Max, do you feel a hundred?

Ever Your Friend

Notes:

* Of a scuffle in the Scribners offices between Hemingway and radical editor-critic Max Eastman, which is elaborately described in Perkins' letter of August 24th.

^ Mrs. Ernest Hemingway.

** Perkins had recently become a grandfather

Also Turnbull.

342. FROM Max Perkins TO HAMILTON BASSO

Aug. 23, 1937

Dear Ham :

I was glad to hear about Tom. I took the risk of paying a month’s rent on his apartment 1 because the agent has been threatening to dispossess him at any moment, for the last week, and I did not know what in the world would happen if all his manuscripts got thrown out on the sidewalk, or even put up for auction—which I believe the landlord is entitled to do, to the extent of the debt. Miss Nowell2 has been telegraphing and writing Tom, but has got no answer, and I think this means that he has been away and when he gets back he will send a check. I thought it would do Tom lots of good to get back into the mountains,3 but perhaps the great fame that he enjoys there, and the happiness of being among his own people, has not enabled him to work properly. It must have done him good in resting him, and I suppose John Barleycorn is not so ubiquitous in that region as in this.

I guess I wrote you that old Scott4 seems to be on the right road at last, and busy and paying his debts.

I look forward eagerly to seeing both of you.

Always yours,

Notes

1 Thomas Wolfe’s apartment at 49th Street and First Avenue.

2 Miss Elizabeth Nowell, literary agent, a friend of Wolfe’s.

3 Wolfe made a short trip to his home town, Asheville, North Carolina, during August, 1937.

4 F. Scott Fitzgerald.

343. To Fitzgerald

Aug. 24, 1937

Dear Scott:

Since the battle occurred in my office between two men whom I have long known, and for both of whom I was at the time acting as editor, I have tried to maintain a position of strict neutrality.—And I have said to every newspaperman, and to everyone that I did not know very well, that the “altercation” was a matter entirely between them, and that I had nothing to say about it. But here, for your own self alone, is what happened:

Max Eastman was sitting beside me and looking in my direction, with his back more or less toward the door, talking about a new edition of his “Enjoyment of Poetry”. Suddenly in tramped Ernest and stopped just inside the door, realizing I guess, who was with me. Anyhow, since Ernest had often told me what he would do to Eastman on account of that piece Eastman wrote,* I felt some apprehension.—But that was a long time ago, and everyone was now in a better state of mind. But in the hope of making things go well I said to Eastman, “Here's a friend of yours, Max.” And everything did go well at first. Ernest shook hands with Eastman and each asked the other about different things. Then, with a broad smile, Ernest ripped open his shirt and exposed a chest which was certainly hairy enough for anybody. Max laughed, and then Ernest, quite good-naturedly, reached over and opened Max's shirt, revealing a chest which was as bare as a bald man's head, and we all had to laugh at the contrast.—And I got all ready for a similar exposure, thinking at least that I could come in second. But then suddenly Ernest became truculent and said, “What do you mean of accusing me of impotence?” Eastman denied that he had, and there was some talk to and fro, and then, most unfortunately, Eastman said, “Ernest you don't know what you are talking about. Here, read what I said,” and he picked up a book on my desk which I had there for something else in it and didn't even know contained the “Bull in the Afternoon” article. But there it was, and instead of reading what Eastman pointed out, a whole passage, Ernest began reading a part of one paragraph, and he began muttering and swearing. Eastman said, “Read all of it, Ernest. You don't understand,—Here, let Max read it.” And he handed it to me. I saw things were getting serious and started to read it, thinking I could say something about it, but instantly Ernest snatched it from me and said, “No, I am going to do the reading,” and as he read it again, he flushed up and got his head down, and turned, and smack,—he hit Eastman with the open book. Instantly, of course, Eastman rushed at him. I thought Ernest would begin fighting and would kill him, and ran around my desk to try to catch him from behind, with never any fear for anything that might happen to Ernest. At the same time, as they grappled, all the books and everything went off my desk to the floor, and by the time I got around, both men were on the ground. I was shouting at Ernest and grabbed the man on top, thinking it was he, when I looked down and there was Ernest on his back, with a broad smile on his face.—Apparently he regained his temper instantly after striking Eastman, and offered no resistance whatever.—Not that he needed to, because it had merely become a grapple, and of course two big men grappling do necessarily fall, and it is only chance as to which one falls on top.—But it is true that Eastman was on top and that Ernest's shoulders were touching the ground,—if that is of any importance at all. Ernest evidently thinks it is, and so I am saying nothing about it.

When both Ernest and Eastman had gone, I spoke to the several people who had seen or heard, and all agreed that nothing would be said.

It seems that Max Eastman for some reason wrote out an account of the thing and that the next night at dinner, where there were a number of newspaper people and various others of that kind, read it aloud. Apparently he was urged to do it by his wife, and it was supposed that it would go no further. But of course it did go further, and reporters came to Eastman for it and he gave them his own story. His story appeared in the evening papers on Friday, and reporters were calling me up all day, and when, late in the afternoon, Ernest came in I told him this. The reporters represented the story as saying, as indeed it did imply, that Eastman had thrown him over my desk and bounced him on his head, etc. And Ernest talked to one of these reporters and then agreed to be interviewed by him, and then a number of others turned up. I was talking to different people outside all the time and did not know what Ernest said until I read it in the papers. He talked too much, and unwisely. It would have been better to have said nothing, but at the time it seemed as though Eastman's story should not appear without proper qualification. Ernest really behaved admirably the moment after he had struck the blow with the book. He then talked more the next day at the dock before he sailed. That is the whole story. I think Eastman does think that he beat Ernest at least in a wrestling match, but in reality Ernest could have killed him, and probably would have if he had not regained his temper. I thought he was going to.

I am glad everything is going well with you. In rather troubled times I often think of that with great pleasure,—and with admiration.

All this I am telling you about the fight is in strict confidence.

Always yours,

Notes:

* “Bull in the Afternoon,” New Republic, June 7, 1933.

344. To Perkins

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Studios Culver City, Calif.

Sept. 3, 1937.

Dear Max:

Thanks for your long, full letter. I will guard the secrets as my life.

I was thoroughly amused by your descriptions, but what transpires is that Ernest did exactly the same asinine thing that I knew he had it in him to do when he was out here. The fact that he lost his temper only for a minute does not minimize the fact that he picked the exact wrong minute to do it. His discretion must have been at low ebb or he would not have again trusted the reporters at the boat.

He is living at the present in a world so entirely his own that it is impossible to help him, even if I felt close to him at the moment, which I don't. I like him so much, though, that I wince when anything happens to him, and I feel rather personally ashamed that it has been possible for imbeciles to dig at him and hurt him. After all, you would think that a man who has arrived at the position of being practically his country's most imminent [eminent] writer, could be spared that yelping.

All goes well—no writing at all except on pictures.

Ever your friend,

The Schulberg book * is in all the windows here.

Notes:

Hemingway had brawled with critic Max Eastman in Perkins’s office.

* They Cried a Little by Sonya Schulberg.

Also Turnbull.

345. To Perkins

Garden of Allah 8152 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California

March 4th, 1938

Dear Max:

Sorry I saw you for such a brief time while I was in New York and that we had really no time to talk.

My little binge lasted only three days, and I haven't had a drop since. There was one other in September, likewise three days. Save for that, I haven't had a drop since a year ago last January. Isn't it awful that we reformed alcoholics have to preface everything by explaining exactly how we stand on that question?

The enclosed letter is to supplement a conversation some time ago. It shows quite definitely how a whole lot of people interpreted Ernest's crack at me in “Snows of K.” When I called him on it, he promised in a letter that he would not reprint it in book form. Of course, since then, it has been in O'Brien's collection,^ but I gather he can't help that. If, however, you are publishing a collection of his this fall, do keep in mind that he has promised to make an elision of my name. It was a damned rotten thing to do, and with anybody but Ernest my tendency would be to crack back. Why did he think it would add to the strength of his story if I had become such a negligible figure? This is quite indefensible on any grounds.

No news here. I am writing a new Crawford picture, called “Infidelity.” Though based on a magazine story, it is practically an original. I like the work and have a better producer than before—Hunt Stromberg—a sort of one-finger Thalberg, without Thalberg's scope, but with his intense power of work and his absorption in his job.

Meanwhile, I am filling a notebook with stuff that will be of more immediate interest to you, but please don't mention me ever as having any plans. “Tender Is the Night” hung over too long, and my next venture will be presented to you without preparation or fanfare.

I am sorry about the Tom Wolfe business.* I don't understand it. I am sorry for him, and, in another way, I am sorry for you for I know how fond of him you are.

I may possibly see you around Easter.

Best to Louise.

Ever yours,

All this about The Snows is confidential.

Notes:

^ The Best Short Stories 1937 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story, edited by Edward J. O'Brien.

* Wolfe had left Scribners and was to have his future books published by Harpers.

Also Turnbull.

346. To Fitzgerald

March 9, 1938

Dear Scott:

I was mighty glad to get your letter. I'll bet you find the work out there very interesting. Don't get so you find it too interesting and stay in it. I don't believe anyone could do it better, and I should think doing “Infidelity” would be really worthwhile.

You know my position about Ernest's story “The Snows”.—Don't be concerned about it. We do aim to publish a book of his stories in the Fall and that would be in it. His play^ will presumably be put on in the Fall but I cannot find out definitely whether it has yet been arranged for. I think Ernest is having a bad time, by the way, in getting re-acclimated to domestic life, and I only hope he can succeed.

I am sending back the letter about Gatsby.—You might want to have it for some reason. What a pleasure it was to publish that! It was as perfect a thing as I ever had any share in publishing.—One does not seem to get such satisfactions as that any more. Tom was a kind of great adventure, but all the dreadful imperfections about him took much of the satisfaction out of it. I think that at bottom Tom has an idea now that he will go it alone, doing his own work, and if he could manage that, it would be the one and only way in which he could really achieve what he should.

Scott, I ought not to even breathe it to you because it will probably never turn out, but I have a secret hope that we could some day—after a big success with a new novel—make an omnibus book of “This Side of Paradise,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “Tender Is the Night” with an introduction of considerable length by the author. Those three books, besides having the intrinsic qualities of permanence, represent three distinct periods.—And nobody has written about any of those periods as well. But we must forget that plan for the present.

I understand about your brief holiday, and thought it was justified, and greatly enjoyed seeing you the little I did. I wish you were to be here on April first when we are giving a party for Marjorie Rawlings, whose “South Moon” you liked.—She has written one called “The Yearling” which the Book of the Month Club has taken for April.—I planned the party before the Club did take it, though. They also took “South Moon” but that only sold about 10,000 copies even so, because it appeared on the day the bank holiday began.

Yours,

Notes:

^ “The Fifth Column.”

347. To Fitzgerald

April 8, 1938

Dear Scott:

You know Ernest went back to Spain, and I think he did it for good reasons. He couldn't reconcile himself to seeing it all go wrong over there,—all the people he knew in trouble—while he was sitting around in Key West. It was a cause he had fought for and believed in, and he couldn't run out on it. So he went back for a syndicate, and he wrote me on his arrival in France ten days ago. He wrote from the ship, and in a quite different vein from what he ever did before, in apology for having been troublesome—which he hadn't been in any serious sense—and thanking me for “loyalty” and then sending messages to different people here, and also to you and John Bishop. In fact, his letter made me feel depressed all through the weekend because it sounded as if he felt as if he did not think he would ever get back from Spain.—But I haven't much faith in premonitions. Very few of mine ever developed. Hem seemed very well, and I thought he was in good spirits, but I guess he wasn't. I thought I would tell you that he especially mentioned you.

But the good news is that the play, which came right after the letter, is very fine indeed, and it shows he is going forward. At the end, after “Philip” has gone through all kinds of horrors and carried on an affair with a girl, Dorothy, who is living in a Madrid hotel writing trivial articles, he says to his side-partner, “There's no sense babying me along. We're in for fifty years of undeclared wars, and I've signed up for the duration. I don't exactly remember when it was, but I signed up all right.”

And then later the girl, who has disgusted him by turning up with a silver fox cape bought for innumerable smuggled pesetas, tries to persuade him to marry her, or anyhow to go off with her to all the beautiful places on the Rivera and Paris and all that. And Philip says finally, “You can go. But I have been to all those places and I have left them all behind, and where I go now I go alone, or with others who go there for the same reason I go.”

There isn't much to give you an idea from, but you have intuition, and you know Ernest. He has grown a lot in some way. I don't know where he is going either, but it is somewhere. But anyhow, I felt greatly moved by the play, but melancholy after his letter. One thing that worries him a lot is Evan Shipman who was in that foreign brigade, whatever they called it. Anything may have happened to him, and Ernest felt responsible about his being there. I hope everything will turn out all right, but I thought you would like to hear. Anyhow, the play is really splendid. It should be produced in September.

Always yours,

348. TO: Maxwell Perkins

TLS, 4 pp. Princeton University

Garden of Allah stationery.

Hollywood, California

PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

April 23, 1938

Dear Max:

I got both your letters and appreciate them and their fullness, as I feel very much the Californian at the moment and, consequently, out of touch with New York.

The Marjorie Rawlings’ book fascinated me. I thought it was even better than “South Moon Under” and I envy her the ease with which she does action scenes, such as the tremendously complicated hunt sequence, which I would have to stake off in advance and which would probably turn out to be a stilted business in the end. Hers just simply flows; the characters keep thinking, talking, feeling and don’t stop, and you think and talk and feel with them.

As to Ernest, I was fascinated by what you told me about the play, touched that he remembered me in his premonitory last word, and fascinated, as always, by the man’s Byronic intensity. The Los Angeles Times printed a couple of his articles, but none the last three days, and I keep hoping a stray Krupp shell hasn’t knocked off our currently most valuable citizen.

In the mail yesterday came a letter from that exquisitely tactful co-worker of yours, Whitney Darrow, or Darrow Whitney, or whatever his name is. I’ve never had much love for the man since he insisted on selling “This Side of Paradise” for a dollar fifty, and cost me around five thousand dollars; nor do I love him more when, as it happened the other day, I went into a house and saw someone reading the Modern Library’s “Great Modern Short Stories” with a poor piece of mine called “Act Your Age” side by side with Conrad’s “Youth,” Ernest’s “The Killers” because Whitney Darrow was jealous of a copyright.

His letter informs me that “This Side of Paradise” is now out of print. I am not surprised after eighteen years (looking it over, I think it is now one of the funniest books since “Dorian Gray” in its utter spuriousness—and then, here and there, I find a page that is very real and living), but I know to the younger generation it is a pretty remote business, reading about the battles that engrossed us then and the things that were startling. To hold them I would have to put in a couple of abortions to give it color (and probably would if I was that age and writing it again). However, I’d like to know what “out of print” means. Does it mean that I can make my own arrangements about it? That is, if any publisher was interested in reprinting it, could I go ahead, or would it immediately become a valuable property to Whitney again?

I once had an idea of getting Bennett Cerf to publish it in the Modern Library, with a new preface. But also I note in your letter a suggestion of publishing an omnibus book with “Paradise,” “Gatsby” and “Tender.” How remote is that idea, and why must we forget it? If I am to be out here two years longer, as seems probable, it certainly isn’t advisable to let my name slip so out of sight as it did between “Gatsby” and “Tender,” especially as I now will not be writing even the Saturday Evening Post stories.

I have again gone back to the idea of expanding the stories about Phillippe, the Dark Ages knight, but when I will find time for that, I don’t know, as this amazing business has a way of whizzing you along at a terrific speed and then letting you wait in a dispirited, half-cocked mood when you don’t feel like undertaking anything else, while it makes up its mind. It is a strange conglomeration of a few excellent over-tired men making the pictures, and as dismal a crowd of fakes and hacks at the bottom as you can imagine. The consequence is that every other man is a charlatan, nobody trusts anybody else, and an infinite amount of time is wasted from lack of confidence.

Relations have always been so pleasant, not only with you but with Harold and with Lorimer’s Saturday Evening Post, that even working with the pleasantest people in the industry, Eddie Knopf and Hunt Stromberg, I feel this lack of confidence.

Hard times weed out many of the incompetents, but they swarm back—Herman Mankiewicz, a ruined man who hasn’t written ten feet of continuity in two years, was finally dropped by Metro, but immediately picked up by Columbia! He is a nice fellow that everybody likes and has been brilliant, but he is being hired because everyone is sorry for his wife—which I think would make him rather an obstacle in the way of making good pictures. Utter toughness toward the helpless, combined with super-sentimentality—Jesus, what a combination!

I still feel in the dark about Tom Wolfe, rather frightened for him; I cannot quite see him going it alone, but neither can I see your sacrificing yourself in that constant struggle. What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max—Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy.

Do let me know about “This Side of Paradise.” Whitney Darrow’s, or Darrow Whitney’s letter was so subtly disagreeable that I felt he took rather personal pleasure in the book being out of print. It was all about buying up some second-hand copies. You might tell him to do so if he thinks best. I have a copy somewhere, but I’d like a couple of extras.

Affectionately always,
Scott

Notes:

The Yearling (Scribners, 1938).

“At Your Age.”

Also Turnbull.

349. To Fitzgerald

May 24, 1938

Dear Scott:

You know I wish you would get back to the Phillippe.—When you were working on that you were worn out, and I thought could not do it justice.—But if you could get at it now it would be different, and you could make a fine historical novel of that time, and the basic idea was excellent and would be appreciated and understood now better than when you were writing it.—But I must say I should think your present work would take all the time you have, pretty much. Does it ease off any in the summer?

You do the gentleman you particularly write about a wrong in regard to the short story. -That was not his fault, but that of A.H.S.* who was very much rooted in the past, as you know. He could not catch the new idea and felt as if the use of material we had published was always more or less of a robbery. In fact, W.D. wanted to do the book of stories we finally published in order rather to offset the decision in regard to the Modern Library.—But that too was based on a misunderstanding of the situation. For a short story in those days one could not do much of anything.

I am sure that to put the three books in one now would be hopeless. We are really in as deep a depression as we ever saw, and you know how bad that was. It means books sell about a third of what they otherwise would, and we are mighty lucky in having “The Yearling”.—It goes to the very tip top by the way, next week. And we have a splendid new first novel for the Fall too. But books in general do not get much of anywhere, and I would not want to waste the possibilities for this three-in-one volume in these adverse conditions. It would come to nothing and would merely spoil an opportunity for good.—What's more, I think it is a little too soon anyway. There comes a time, and it applies somewhat now to both “Paradise” and “Gatsby,” when the past gets a kind of romantic glamour. We have not yet reached that with “Tender Is the Night” and not to such a degree as we shall later even with “Paradise” I think. But unless we think there never will be good times again—and barring a war there will be better times than ever, I believe—we ought to wait for them. We shall lose nothing by it except that when one has an idea it is hard to postpone the execution of it.

I just had a letter from Ernest and he is about to come back. It was a fine and characteristic letter, and he wants to get back and write has plenty that is grand, he says. He has been right in it apparently,—says that “Nobody's got any social standing now who has not swum the Ebro at least once.” He may have sailed by this time, but he wrote from Marseilles and was about to fly back to Madrid. I have seen dispatches of his from there. He was just going to look things over and then start for the U.S.A.

I had a mighty nice lunch with John Bishop. He gets better as he ages—he does age though for his hair is pretty white. I think he is now going to write a novel.—Its scene is to be Paris at the time when you were all over there, the post-war period.—It isn't really about that, but rather human relations of certain individuals. Bunny they say is very happy and I have always meant to get him and his wife over to New Canaan, but the trouble is that I have to do all my work at home. No one could do it here.

Always yours,

Notes:

* Probably Arthur H. Scribner.

350. To Fitzgerald

Sept. 1, 1938

Dear Scott:

I went over to see Harold Ober the other day and heard about you, what you are working on now, that you had a plan for a novel, that Scottie got safely into Vassar, etc. I hope something may bring you back this way again before long, but I suppose you will have to stay on that job for another year or eighteen months or so. I have a long letter from Elizabeth today, to tell about how she bought that church house on the place and made it all over and is just about getting it finished.—She is living in it now. She seems very happy, but it seems all wrong that she should be living alone.

Hem went through here like a bullet day before yesterday, to sail for France. He is going to take at least another look at Spain, but his real purpose was to work. I wish I could talk to you about him: he asked me about a plan he has, and I advised him quite vigorously, and yet had some doubts of the wisdom of it afterward. But I think it is right enough. I only would like to talk to someone who really would understand the thing. We are publishing, after a great deal of argument and frequent changes of plan which were made to meet Hemingway's wishes mostly, a book which is to be called “The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories”. It is the play, “The Fifth Column”, the four new stories, and then all the old ones, in an omnibus volume. The play appears simply as if it were a story, and it can be read that way mighty well.—If later it is produced, we shall publish separately the version used, for there will be a demand for it in that form.—But here it appears as if it were one of his stories, you might say. There is a good introduction. One of the new stories is “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and you are not in it. By the way, the O'Brien collection containing that, had nothing whatever to do with us, and I did not even know that that story was in it until the book was out. Hem was really in better shape and spirits than I have seen him in for years, and there were not so many people around,—all that rabble from Esquire has generally been hanging around recently, and I never really got a good chance to talk to him quietly. I did this time. I think his home problems are working out somehow or other, but having got into all this Spanish business, with all the partisanship there is around it, he could not work over here because so many people were bothering him to do things for this cause or that.—The communists seem to regard him as one of themselves now, and they keep pestering him for all kinds of reasons.

Couldn't you get time to write the old lone Wolfe? He went on an odyssey of the Northwest, not having seen it before, and after six or eight weeks of it, he found himself in Seattle, and mighty ill.—It turned out he had bronchial pneumonia and he is still far from well, and has a fever, though some seven weeks have passed. I think he came pretty close to death. He wrote me a very nice letter in answer to one I wrote him, and that apparently brought back his fever again. He needs support and encouragement now for I know he will begin to get into a panic about the time he is wasting. If this illness should result in his getting a really long rest, it would perhaps have been good fortune, and not bad,—for he has never rested a moment since I have known him hitherto. I think if he does what he should, he will go to California, and lay off for some months.—But I hope he won't go down your way, for then he would find too much that was exciting from Hollywood.

I am just sending you one book because it is so good. It is not in your line at all, and judged as a whole, it does not quite come off in a story sense. But really it is not a story. It is directly derived from experience, and it is excellent. It is a book you will remember pieces of for years.—But you do not have to read it if you haven't the time. It is called “The Captain's Chair”.* It is too bad it had to be called that, and be presented as if it were a novel, but I could not contend against the English publishers, or do anything with the author when he was dealing with them first,—but I tried to get this man to write a book about this region twenty years ago, before he had ever done anything, and I still have in the safe thirty pages that he did bring in as an example of what he could do.

I think I have Louise moved back to Connecticut for good.—She may insist upon an apartment or a suite in a hotel, or something, for a month or two, but the house is filled up with children and grandchildren so that we cannot get back there, thank Heaven. I am glad to be a commuter again.—It is the way I began, and I never lost the habit. Zippy^ has a magnificent boy with a Napoleonic head, and red hair. Peggy^ is delighted with her job in Bergdorf Goodman, but just the same I told her plainly that if she did not watch her step she would find herself engaged. He is a very nice and attractive boy, but he has no money. Now she is getting an apartment on 78th Street.

Always yours,

Notes:

* A novel by Robert Flaherty, published by Scribners in 1938.

^ Two of Perkins' daughters.

351. To Perkins

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Studios Culver City, Calif.

Sept. 29th 1938

Dear Max:

I feel like writing to you about Tom as to a relation of his, for I know how deeply his death** must have touched you, how you were so entwined with his literary career and the affection you had for him. I know no details. Shortly after I got your letter that he was in Seattle I read in the paper that he was starting East sick. This worried me and it seemed a very forlorn and desolate and grievous experience yet something which his great vitality would somehow transcend and dominate—and then the end at Baltimore and that great pulsing, vital frame quiet at last. There is a great hush after him—perhaps even more than after the death of Ring who had been moribund so long.

I would like to know something about the situation. You, as his literary executor, are I suppose oddly enough more in control of his literary destiny than when he was alive. I don't suppose that his “million words” rounds out his great plan but I am not so sure that that matters because the plan must have been a mutating and progressive thing. The more valuable parts of Tom were the more lyrical parts or rather those moments when his lyricism was best combined with his powers of observation—those fine blends such as the trip up the Hudson in “Of Time And The River”. I am curious to know what his very last stuff was like, whether he had lost his way or perhaps found it again.

With deepest sympathy for you and also for his family. Do you think it would do any good to write them a letter and to whom should I address it?86

Ever, your friend –

P.esses: I am more than delighted about Zippy's boy. Which of your daughters went to Vassar? You speak vaguely of some plan of Ernest's, but you leave me in the dark. Glad he cut me out of “The Snows.” Thanks for “The Captain's Chair.” Also for the news about Elizabeth.

Notes:

** Thomas Wolfe died on September 15th.

86. Replying on October 3rd, Perkins said, “If you could find time to write to his [Wolfe's] mother, who really was wonderful in her courage and fortitude on the day of the operation in Baltimore, and at the funeral, I think it would be a great thing to do.”

Also Turnbull.

352. To Perkins

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Studios Culver City, Calif.

December 24, 1938.

Dear Max:

Since the going-out-of-print of “Paradise” and the success (or is it one?) of the “Fifth Column”* I have come to feel somewhat neglected. Isn't my reputation being allowed to let slip away? I mean what's left of it. I am still a figure to many people and the number of times I still see my name in Time and the New Yorker ect. make me wonder if it should be allowed to casually disappear—when there are memorial double deckers to such fellows as Farrel[l] and Stienbeck.

I think something ought to be published this Spring. You had a plan for the three novels and I have another plan, of which more hereafter, for another big book; the recession is over for awhile and I have the most natural ambition to see my stuff accessible to another generation. Bennet Cerf obviously isn't going to move about Tender and it seems to me things like that need a spark from a man's own publisher. It was not so long ago that “Tender” was among the dozen best of a bad season and had an offer from the Literary Guild—so I can't be such a long chance as say, Callaghan. Either of the two books I speak of might have an awfully good chance to pay their way. A whole generation now has never read “This Side of Paradise”. (I've often thought that if Frank Bunn at Princeton had had a few dozen copies on his stands every September he could have sold them all by Christmas).

But I am especially concerned about Tender—that book is not dead. The depth of its appeal exists—I meet people constantly who have the same exclusive attachment to it as others had to Gatsby and Paradise, people who identified themselves with Dick Diver. It's great fault is that the true beginning—the young psychiatrist in Switzerland—is tucked away in the middle of the book. If pages 151-212 were taken from their present place and put at the start the improvement in appeal would be enormous. In fact the mistake was noted and suggested by a dozen reviewers. To shape up the ends of that change would, of course, require changes in half a dozen other pages. And as you suggested, an omnibus book should also have a preface or prefaces—besides my proposed glossary of absurdities and inaccuracies in This Side of Paradise. This last should attract some amused attention.

The other idea is this:

A Big collection of stories leading off with Phillipe—entirely rewritten and pulled together into a 30,000 word novelette. The Collection could consist of:

1. Phillipe

2. Pre-war (Basil & Josephine)

3. May Day

4. The Jazz Age (the dozen or so best Jazz Stories).

5. About a dozen others including Babylon.

The reason for using Phillipe is this: He is to some extent completed in the 4th story (which you have never read) and in spite of some muddled writing, he is one of the best characters I've ever “drawn”. He should be a long book—but whether or not my M.G.M. contract is renewed I'm going to free-lance out here another year to lay by some money and then do my modern novel. So it would be literally years before I got to Phillipe again—if ever.

In my work here I can find time for such a rewrite of Phillipe as I contemplate—I could finish it by the first of February. The other stories would go in to the collection unchanged. Unlike Ernest I wouldn't want to put in all the stories from all four books but I'd like to add four or five never published before.

I am desperately keen on both these schemes—I think the novels should come first and, unless there are factors there you haven't told me about, I think it is a shame to put it off. It would not sell wildly at first but unless you make some gesture of confidence I see my reputation dieing on its feet from lack of nourishment. If you could see the cards for my books in the public libraries here in Los Angeles continually in demand even to this day, you would know I have never had wide distribution in some parts of the country. When This Side of Paradise stood first in the Bookman's Monthly List it didn't even appear in the score of the Western States.

You can imagine how distasteful it is to blow my own horn like this but it comes from a deep feeling that something could be done if it is done at once, about my literary standing—always admitting that I have any at all.

Ever your friend,

Notes:

* The Fifth Column [play] and the First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway.

Also Turnbull.

353. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 30, 1938

Dear Scott:

I have had the same problem on my mind right along, but the first thing to remember is that in books a unit is always better than a collection. Besides, I do not think that so large an undertaking as the three novels in one could be done until you have written a major book (that seems to be the current phrase nowadays) and even then it would make a difficult problem. I hope it may some day be done though.

I think the prohibitive thing in the case of the Modern Library was that the three books are too different in typography to be printed from the existing plates.—The Modern Library tries to avoid resetting. They rent plates from the publisher, and I think they are less inclined to do anything afresh nowadays than ever.

Then you propose Philippe and the various stories,—that is, a collection. What I think we ought to do, and I would be mighty glad if it could be done, would be to publish the Philippe, a unit, in the Summer. I know the book had good, deep qualities in it and popular ones too, and I think that that historical sort of book is fitted better to these days than to those in which you wrote it. It might go well. It is as long as “The Great Gatsby”. And anyhow, it would do what we want by publishing a book by you and keeping you on the map.—You may think you are more off it than you are, for when you do a book it will have attention. This book might do very well indeed, and it will get attention, and somewhat of a special sort, as being a different kind of book by you. Can this be done? We might have someone like Shenton do decorations for it.

What you say about the public library demand is true also in New Canaan. It is a curious thing that books do not keep on when they are so much in demand that way. I do not understand it altogether. I have noticed it through years because my girls have brought home copies of your books all read to pieces through the last thirteen years from the New Canaan library.

Ernest's book sold between nine and ten thousand to date, but there are quite a large number on consignment that may have been sold. We cannot tell until the latter part of January. But then the book should go on selling as a kind of stock book, containing stories that cannot be got anywhere else. It should get to 15,000 within the next year. We wanted to publish the play separately, and I believe we would have sold as many of the stories without it, and some thousands of the play as well. There too, comes in the element of the unit. The play by itself would have seemed more attractive than it ever did in this collection.—But Ernest was convinced it was the other way. Anyhow, when the play is produced, we can publish it alone in the form in which it appears, and it should have a considerable sale to the audience that always buys plays on the stage.

Jane* tells me about Scottie once in a while. She is very popular, and Jane has a notion that she is coming out all right as a student too. I hope it is true.

I have a lot of things I would like to write you about but whoever called these days the Holidays must have been a master of sarcasm.

I am sending you a little book about the War. I just thought it would interest you,—it tells of some curious happenings.

Always yours,

P.S. Did you read John Bishop's piece on Tom Wolfe in the Kenyon Review? It is mighty interesting.

Notes:

* Perkins' daughter, who was a student at Vassar with Fitzgerald's daughter.

354. To Perkins

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Studios Culver City, Calif.

January 4, 1939.

Dear Max:

Your letter rather confused me. I had never clearly understood that it was the Modern Library who were considering doing my three books as a giant volume. I thought it was an interprise of yours. If they show no special enthusiasm about bringing out “Tender” by itself, I don't see how they would be interested in doing a giant anyhow. You spoke of it last year as something only the recession kept you from doing.

What I don't like is the out-of-print element. In a second I'm going to discuss the Philippe business with you, but first let me say that I would rather have “This Side of Paradise” in print if only in that cheap American Mercury book edition than not in print at all. I see they have just done Elliot Paul's “Indelible”. How do you think they would feel about it? And what is your advice on the subject?

Now about Philippe. When I wrote you I had envisaged another year of steady work here. At present, while it is possible that I may be on the Coast for another year, it is more likely that the work will be from picture to picture with the prospect of taking off three or four months in the year, perhaps even more, for literary work. Philippe interests me. I am afraid though it would have to be supported by something more substantial. I would have to write 10,000 or 15,000 more words on it to make it as big a book as “Gatsby” and I'm not at all sure that it would have a great unity. You will remember that the plan in the beginning was tremendously ambitious—there was to have been Philippe as a young man founding his fortunes—Philippe as a middle-aged man participating in the Captian founding of France as a nation—Philippe as an old man and the consolidation of the feudal system. It was to have covered a span of about sixty years from 880 A.D. to 950. The research required for the second two parts would be quite tremendous and the book would have been (or would be) a piece of great self-indulgence, though I admit self-indulgence often pays unexpected dividends.

Still, if periods of three or four months are going to be possible in the next year or so I would much rather do a modern novel. One of those novels that can only be written at the moment and when one is full of the idea—as “Tender” should have been written in its original conception, all laid on the Riviera. I think it would be a quicker job to write a novel like that between 50 and 60,000 words long than to do a thorough revision job with an addition of 15,000 words on “Phillipe”. In any case I'm going to decide within the next month and let you know.

Thanks for your letter. I wish you'd send me a copy of the Tom Wolf article because I never see anything out here. John wrote about me in the Virginia Quarterly, too.*

Ever your friend,

P.S. I hope Jane and Scottie see a lot of each other if Scottie stays in, but as I suspected, she has tendencies toward being a play-girl and has been put on probation. I hope she survives this February.87

Notes:

* “The Missing All” by John Peale Bishop, Winter, 1937.

87. Concluding his letter of January 18th, Perkins observed, “I do hope Scottie gets through those mid-years. You will probably know about it soon. But I cannot get very much alarmed about probation, having been the first man in my class to be on it. And you were on it too.”

Also Turnbull.

355. To Perkins

5521 Ames toy Encino, California

February 25, 1939

Dear Max:

I was sorry that a glimpse of you was so short but I had a hunch that you had wanted to talk over something with your daughter and that I was rather intruding. How pretty she was—she seemed a little frightened of me for some reason, or maybe it was one of my self-conscious days.

One of the things I meant to tell you was how much I enjoyed the book “Cantigny” by Evarts, whom I gather is a cousin of yours—or is that true? It seemed to me very vivid. It reminded me of one of the best of Tom Boyd's stories in “Point of Honor” though the attitude was quite satisfactorily different.

No doubt you have talked to Harold in regard to that life insurance business.* Of course, he thinks I am rash, but I think it would be morally destructive to continue here any longer on the factory worker's basis. Conditions in the industry somehow propose the paradox: “We brought you here for your individuality but while you're here we insist that you do everything to conceal it.”

I have several plans, and within a day or so will be embarked on one of them. It is wonderful to be writing again instead of patching—do you know in that “Gone With the Wind” job I was absolutely forbidden to use any words except those of Margaret Mitchell, that is, when new phrases had to be invented one had to thumb through as if it were Scripture and check out phrases of her's which would cover the situation!

Best wishes always.

P. S. I am, of course, astonished that Tom Wolfe's book did what you told me. I am sure that if he had lived and meant to make a portrait of you he would at least have given it a proper tone and not made you the villain.^ It is astonishing what people will do though. Earnest's sharp turn against me always seemed to have [a] pointless childish quality—so much so that I really never felt any resentment about it. Your position in the Wolfe matter is certainly an exceedingly ironic one.

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had gotten Harold Ober to pay $750 so that his life insurance policy, which had been assigned to Scribners during a low period in his fortunes, could be reassigned to him.

^ Wolfe portrayed Perkins not altogether flatteringly as Foxhall Edwards in The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940).

Also Turnbull.

356. To Fitzgerald

Feb. 27, 1939

Dear Scott:

I am glad you spoke of “Cantigny” because it will please Jerry, who is a cousin. He cut out one of his very best stories, and I never understood why.

I only know what your plan is in a rough way, but I hope it will work out well. Of course the kind of thing you have to do in Hollywood is extremely unattractive in the ways you say. If only it were not for the Department of Infernal Revenue, you would have been all squared up already, and a free man.

I have been talking to Spivak* about the possiblity of putting out an edition of “This Side of Paradise”. He thinks it dates, which of course in one sense it does, and ought to.—But he is making some investigation of the library demand, etc. I hope something may come of it, and I shall keep in touch with him.

The trouble with Jane is she is shy,—at any rate when I am around. She showed great interest in you after you had gone. I think I gave you the wrong impression about Tom. I just hate to be written about on any account, and it seemed odd that with all the designs he had upon Scribners, the only part that he wrote that fits into the book—and it's pretty long -should be about me. There is poetic justice in it too, since I had backed him up so strongly, and all his writings were about real people. And as executor, and the man who had backed him, I ought to take it.—But what is written does not present me as a villain. I have skimmed around in it. The trouble is it has no resemblance to me. In reading some of it I even thought if I really were like that man, I would be quite proud of myself.

Always yours,

Notes:

* The publisher of Mercury Books.

357. FROM: Charles Scribner

ALS, 3 pp.1 Princeton University; Correspondence.

May 16th 1939

Dear Scott—

I was sorry to have missed seeing you when you were in New York but it was great news to hear from Max that you had a novel in mind and the time to do it. Had been hoping for years that this time would come. I know what a tough time you had working on your last novel, but knowing you and realizing that you had your health and courage back again I feel certain that this novel may go as easily as any you have ever done and will put you out in front again.

Max and I have always thought that, apart from squaring you with the world, living where you have should give you a vast source of material that someday you should be able to use. There has been plenty about Hollywood but no one to my knowledge has told anything about it that made the people live, and while their surroundings and the form of life they lead may make them absurdly glamorous or dissolute they must have originally been born like other men and women and fundamentally have the same insides.

Well I don't know why I am writing you all this rot except that I know your book would be swell & that I have such a hell of a cold in my head that I can scarcely see out of one eye—and therefore with death at my shoulder I certainly hope to live long enough to read your novel and the sooner the better.

Ever sincerely Charlie Scribner

Notes:

1 This letter has been corrected.

358. To Perkins

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

May 22 1939

Dear Max: -

Just had a letter from Charlie Scribner—a very nice letter and I appreciated it and will answer it. He seemed under the full conviction that the novel was about Hollywood and I am in terror that this mis-information may have been disseminated to the literary columns. If I ever gave any such impression it is entirely false: I said that the novel was about some things that had happened to me in the last two years. It is distinctly not about Hollywood (and if it were it is the last impression that I would want to get about.)

It is, however, progressing nicely, except that I have been confined to bed for a few weeks with a slight return of my old malady. It was nice getting a glimpse of you, however brief—especially that last day. I caught the plane at half past four and had an uneventful trip West.

I have grown to like this particular corner of California where I shall undoubtedly stay all summer. Dates for a novel are as you know, uncertain, but I am blocking this out in a fashion so that, unlike “Tender”, I may be able to put it aside for a month and pick it up again at the exact spot factually and emotionally where I left off.

Wish I had some news, but what I have seen lately is only what you can see outside a window. With very best to all—and please do correct that impression which Charlie seems to have.

Ever your friend,

Notes:

Fitzgerald’s novel in progress, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was, in fact, about Hollywood, but he feared that if his subject were known he would be denied employment by the studios.

Also Turnbull.

359. To Fitzgerald

May 25, 1939

Dear Scott:

Don't worry a bit about any idea of your writing a Hollywood novel getting out. I think Charlie just jumped at a conclusion. I never knew what the novel was, and I don't believe I ever said anything to indicate it was about Hollywood not myself knowing. I am mighty glad that you got going on it,—and I won't bother you with inquiries all the time.—You know I am anxious to hear any news whenever you can tell it.

If you read “Grapes of Wrath” tell me what you think of it. I have only read part of it, but I don't much believe in that chap, i.e. the author. He will probably be very successful though.

I am glad you are O.K. again, and perhaps it was a good thing you did have to lay up for awhile.

Always yours,

360. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University [1939]

ENCINO CALIF JUL 3

HAVE BEEN WRITING IN BED WITH TUBERCULOSIS UNDER DOCTORS NURSES CARE SIS ARRIVING WEST. OBER HAS DECIDED NOT TO BACK ME THOUGH I PAID BACK EVERY PENNY AND EIGHT THOUSAND COMMISSION. AM GOING TO WORK THURSDAY IN STUDIO AT FIFTEEN HUNDRED CAN YOU LEND ME SIX HUNDRED FOR ONE WEEK BY WIRE TO BANK AMERICA CULVERCITY. SCOTTIE HOSPITAL WITH APPENDIX AND AM ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT FUNDS. PLEASE DO NOT ASK OBERS COOPERATION
SCOTT
JUL 4 730A.

Notes:

Ober had informed Fitzgerald that family obligations prevented him from making further advances or loans.

361. TO: Maxwell Perkins

TL(CC), 2 pp. Princeton University

July 19 1939

Dear Max:—

I expected to go to work last Wednesday and have been offered two jobs and had to turn them down—though there is no connection with the old fairy tale of the man who always started looking for a certain kind of game immediately after it passed out of his sight. I can do any kind of work except (a) the kind with producers who work all night which the doctor says is absolutely out, and (b) stories of the Tarzan and Mark of Zorro persuasion which require the practically stationary brain. I am even strong enough to work within the studio walls now and it is a question of days until a romantic comedy or a boy-and-girl story shows up.

The main point of this letter is confidential for the most important reasons. Harold Ober and I are parting company. Whether he is throwing me over or me him may be a subject of controversy—but not on my part. I think he is doing it even if Madame Ober uses me for the rest of her life as an example of gross ingratitude. She was very kind in taking Scottie during many of the intervals between vacations from camp and school in '35 and '36 when I was so ill—I have always wanted to do something for her boys in return. Also I shall be forever grateful to Harold for his part of the help in backing me through that long illness, but his attitude has changed and I tell you this without any anger, but after a month's long and regretful consideration. He is a single-tracked man and the feeling that he once had of definite interest combined with forgiveness of my sins, has changed to a sort of general disapproval and a vague sense that I am through—this in spite of the fact that I paid him over ten thousand dollars in commissions in the last year-and-a half and refunded the whole thirteen thousand that I owed him.

I think something to do with it is the fact that almost every time I have come to New York lately I have just taken Zelda somewhere and have gone on more or less of a binge, and he has formed the idea that I am back in the mess of three years ago.

Anyhow, it is impossible to continue a relation which has become so strained and difficult. Even though there has been no spoken impoliteness there is a new fashion of discussing my stories as if he was a rather dissatisfied and cranky editor and of answering telegrams with delayed airmails and, most of all, completely changing his old policy of backing me up to the limit of what the next story will probably be sold for which makes it impossible to go on. He fairly earned the fifty thousand dollars or so of commissions that I've paid him and nothing snows one under quicker than a send of disbelief and disillusion in anyone close. The final touch was when I had to sell two stories to Esquire at $250., when I wanted cash quick—one of them was worth at least $1000., from Liberty if he could have given me enough advance to survive the wait.

So while I feel regret I have no moral compunction. This is a matter of survival. A man lost in the Arctic for the second time cannot sit waiting while a former rescuer refuses to send out another relief expedition. I would rather deal personally with the editors, as I deal always with you, and get opinions at the source. Harold's greatest help was when I lived in Europe. As you know we have never been very close either intellectually or emotionally (save for his kindness to Scottie) [Twenty-three words omitted by the editor Bruccoli] I stuck with him, of course, when he left Reynolds, but now he has many correct and conventional Agatha Christies, etc., on his list who never cause any inconvenience, so I doubt if I will be missed.

I thought you should know this—know also that he has always treated me fairly and generously and is above reproach as an agent. The blame which brought about this situation is entirely mine. But it is no such illogical step as the one which made Tom Wolfe leave Scribner's. A few weeks ago when three Fitzgeralds at once were in the hands of the medical profession he found it inconvenient to help and under the circumstances of the last year and a half the episode served to give me a great uncertainty as to his caring what becomes of me.

Above all things I wish you wouldn't discuss this with him. I have not, nor will ever say, nor could say anything against him either personally or professionally, but even the fact that I have discussed the matter with you might upset him and give him ideas that I had, and turn what should be a peaceful cleavage into an unpleasant affair.

I am better day by day and long only to make some picture money and get back to the novel.2

Ever your friend,

5521 Amestoy Avenue, Encino, California

Notes:

2 See Perkins' 26 July letter to Fitzgerald in Scott/Max.

362. TO: Maxwell Perkins

TLS (with holograph additions), 1 p. Princeton University

July 24 1939

Dear Max:—

Supplementing Saturday's letter, I would like to have, in case of emergency, the names of the two or three best agents in New York—just in case this difficulty with Harold gets too hard to handle. I will not use your name in any way nor will I act on it immediately, but at this distance one feels rather powerless in obtaining information suddenly and I may need it.

Curtis Brown wouldn't do or any English Company. (Have considered Pinker, but they have that mail restriction at Sing Sing.)1 Seriously who are the top men in that line? Would you airmail me this information?

Ever yours Scott

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

Notes:

1 Agent Eric S. Pinker had been sent to prison for misappropriating his clients' royalties.

363. To Fitzgerald

July 26, 1939

Dear Scott:

You asked my opinion of a good agent and so I'll give you the name of Brandt & Brandt, 101 Park Avenue, of whom you will have heard. I think Carl Brandt is an extremely shrewd, and an agreeable chap, if perhaps a little bit slick. Maybe I am doing him an injustice. I like him anyhow. But, Scott, I think that Harold Ober is one of the very best and most loyal friends you have in the world.88 I hope to God you will stand by him. I don't know what misunderstanding you may have had, but I do know what he thinks of you, and that he has always been absolutely true to you in every sense. I do not think a man has any business to interfere in relations between other people, but if you will allow me in this case, I should say that something very serious would have to have happened before you would think of turning away from Harold.

Anyhow, I am mighty glad things are looking up, and that you are able to go to work, and I hope you will be in fine shape before long, and that you will forgive me for talking about things that are not my business.

Always yours,

Notes:

88. On July 3rd, Fitzgerald had wired Perkins that “Ober has decided not to back me though I paid back every penny and eight thousand commission.” On July 24th, he asked Perkins for the names “of the two or three best agents in New York—just in case this diffculty with Harold gets too hard to handle.”

364. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

ENCINO CALIF OCT 11 AM 5 41

PLEASE LUNCH IF YOU CAN WITH KENNETH LITTAUR OF COLLIERS IN RELATION TO SERIAL OF WHICH HE HAS THE OUTLINE. OBER TO BE ABSOLUTELY EXCLUDED FROM PRESENT STATE OF NEGOTIATIONS I HAD MY LAST DRINK LAST JUNE IF THAT MATTERS TELL LITTAUR THAT I FOOLISHLY TURNED DOWN LITERARY GUILD OFFER FOR TENDER. NIGHTLETTER ME IF YOU CAN. NOVEL OUTLINED ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENTIAL AS EVEN A HINT OF IT WOULD BE PLAGIARIZED OUT HERE EVER YOURS
SCOTT FITZGERALD.

365. TO: Maxwell Perkins

14 October 1939

Wire. Princeton University

VANNUYS CALIF OCT 14

PLEASE DO GET IN TOUCH WITH LITTAUER HAVE OUTLINED EVERY SCENE AND SITUATION AND I THINK I CAN WRITE THIS BOOK AS IF IT WAS A BIOGRAPHY BECAUSE I KNOW THE CHARACTER OF THIS MAN EVER YOURS1
SCOTT FITZGERALD. 906 A.

Notes:

1 On 16 October Perkins reported to Fitzgerald on his meeting with Littauer: “I think he is now very optimistic, but they must see some substantial part to do what is necessary. Couldn't you write that part very quickly, even if not in absolute final form... ?” (Princeton)

366. To Perkins

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

October 20 1939

Dear Max: -

I have your telegram but meanwhile I found that Collier's proposition was less liberal than I had expected.* They want to pay $15,000. for the serial. But (without taking such steps as reneging on my income tax, letting go my life insurance for its surrender value, taking Scottie from college and putting Zelda in a public asylum) I couldn't last four months on that. Certain debts have been run up so that the larger part of the $15,000. has been, so to speak, spent already. A contraction of my own living expenses to the barest minimum, that is to say a room in a boarding house, abandonment of all medical attention (I still see a doctor once a week) would still leave me at the end not merely penniless but even more in debt than I am now. Of course, I would have a property at the end, maybe. But I thought that I would have a property when I finished “Tender Is The Night”! On the other hand, if I, so to speak, go bankrupt, at least there will not be very much accumulating overhead.

However, if Collier's would pay more it would give the necessary margin of security and it would give me $2,000. in hand when I finish the novel in February. I feel quite sure that if I wasn't in such a tight spot Collier's would not figure that $20,000. was exorbitant for such a serial.

The further complication of money to get started with—to take me through the first ten thousand words, was something I hope you might be able to work out between you. Certainly there is no use approaching Harold with it in any way. I would have to pay the piper in the end by paying him a cut on a deal on which he has done nothing. He is a stupid hard-headed man and has a highly erroneous idea of how I live; moreover he has made it a noble duty to piously depress me at every possible opportunity. I don't want him to know anything about the subject of the novel.

Meanwhile I have sold in the last few months ten short stories to Esquire, at the munificent sum of $250. a piece. Only two of these were offered to another magazine because when you're poor you sell things for a quarter of their value to realize quickly—otherwise there wouldn't be any auctioneers.

Have you talked to Charlie Scribner or mulled over the question further? If you come to any decision which is possibly favorable, would you put it in the form of a night letter? I am enclosing a letter to Kenneth Littauer which will keep you up with the situation at present.

Ever yours,

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had written Kenneth Littauer of Collier's Magazine about the possibility of serializing his new novel. Through Perkins, Littauer had expressed guarded interest.

367. To Perkins

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

November 20, 1939

Dear Max:

A lot depends on this week. I've about decided to show him (Littauer) 2 the first nine or ten thousand words and I think it's literally about fifty-fifty whether he'll want it or not. The material is definitely “strong.” As soon as I hear anything from him I'll let you know.

Of course, if he will back me it will be a life-saver, but I am by no means sure that I will ever be a popular writer again. This much of the book, however, should be as fair a test as any. Thanks for your letter.

Ever yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

2 Editor of Colliers. Perkins had written Fitzgerald to ask whether Colliers would give him an advance for the right to serialize his novel-in-progress.

From Turnbull.

368. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

VANNUYS CALIF 100P I939 NOV 28 PM 4 56

PLEASE RUSH THE COPY AIR MAIL TO SATURDAY EVENING POST ATTENTION
JOE BRUAN1 STOP I GUESS THERE ARE NO GREAT MAGAZINES EDITORS LEFT ALWAYS YOURS
SCOTT FITZGERALD.

Notes:

1 Joseph Bryan. The Saturday Evening Post was unable to negotiate with Fitzgerald because the material in The Last Tycoon was considered too strong for the magazine.

369. FROM: Maxwell Perkins

Wire (typed draft). Princeton University

Nov. 29, 1939

A beautiful start. Stirring and new. Can wire you two hundred fifty and a thousand by January.1

Max.

Notes:

1 Perkins was making a personal loan to Fitzgerald—not an advance from Scribners on The Last Tycoon.

370. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

VANNUYS CALIF 316P I939 NOV 29 PM 6 44

THANK YOU WILL YOU GET THE PROSPECTUS I SENT COLLIERS HAVE IT RETYPED IN YOUR OFFICE AS IF IT HAD BEEN ORIGINALLY SENT TO YOU AND SEND IT TO THE POST. YOUR TELEGRAM WAS VERY ENCOURAGING ON A DAY THAT LOOKED RATHER BLACK. THE COLLIERS BUSINESS WAS WISH FULFILLMENT ANYHOW AS I HAVEN'T SEEN A PIECE OF FICTION IN THERE FOR SEVERAL YEARS THAT WOULD SERVE THE PURPOSE OF A SEARS ROEBUCK CATALOG. EVER YOURS

SCOTT.

371. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

VANNUYS CALIF 1939 NOV 29 PM 11 29

LELAND HAYWARD WILL CALL YOU TOMORROW PLEASE TRY TO SHOW HIM THE OUTLINE I SENT TO COLLIERS IN YOUR PRESENCE NOT BECAUSE I DISTRUST HAYWARD WHO IS AN OLD FRIEND BUT BECAUSE DISCRETION IS RARE AND NECESSARY IN THIS CASE POSSIBLY HE MIGHT MAKE A DEAL WITH THE STUDIO TO FINANCE THE WRITING OF SUCH A PICTURE BUT OF COURSE NOT WITH THE STUDIO IDENTIFIED WITH THE LEADING CHARACTER ASK HAYWARD TO COME AND SEE ME WHEN HE GETS BACK AND DONT TELL HIM HOW POOR I AM THIS WOULD SERIOUSLY INTERFERE WITH NEGOTIATIONS1

SCOTT.

Notes:

1 Agent Hayward was unwilling to negotiate for Fitzgerald until the novel was completed.

372. To Fitzgerald

Nov. 30, 1939

Dear Scott:

I had meant to write you right after I wired you, but was too terribly rushed. I thought the book had the magic that you can put into things.* The whole transcontinental business, which is so strong and new to people like me, and to most people, was marvellously suggested, and interest and curiosity about Stahr was aroused, and sympathy with the narratress. It was all admirable, or else I am no judge any more. I think Littaur had a preconception.^ He had not read “Tender Is the Night” and he was thinking that it was way back to Gatsby since you last wrote. Anyhow he is wrong,—though for all I know he may be right as to serialization.

I sent you $250 because Littaur told me—and I hope you won't mind this—that you had wanted it. And I thought you might need it badly. I spoke of a thousand more. Before the first of January I ought to receive a small bequest. I need most of it to pay off a small debt that I got into by going on a man's note.—I didn't do it like a fool, but because he had to have the help at the time, and I realized he almost certainly would not ever be able to meet it himself. But anyhow, I shall be left with a thousand which is what they used to call “velvet” and you are welcome to it if it will help with this book. I can believe that you may really get at the heart of Hollywood, and of what there is wonderful in it as well as all the rest.

I got your telegrams and I called up Leland Hayward89 so as to try to arrange to show him the outline.—But although it is a quarter of three, he has not yet come in. I shall follow instructions though, and I hope you will push on with courage, for you have a right to. I also sent the manuscript to Braun.** I'll give you any pertinent news as it comes along.

Shut your eyes and ears to the war if you can, and go ahead.

Always yours,

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had sent Perkins the first part of his new novel (posthumously published, unfinished, as The Last Tycoon), and on November 29th Perkins had wired, “A beautiful start. Stirring and new.”

^ Littauer had decided that he needed to see more of the novel before deciding and Fitzgerald broke off negotiations with Collier's.

** Joe Braun of the Saturday Evening Post, in the hope that he might want to serialize it.

89. Fitzgerald had wired Perkins to show producer Hayward the outline of the novel in the hope that Hayward “might make a deal with the studios to finance the writing of such a picture.” After Hayward's visit, Perkins reported, on December 1st, that Hayward was of the opinion that “nothing in a movie way could be done until after the book was out (or the serial),” although “he did seem to be really impressed by the outline.”

373. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 7, 1939

Dear Scott:

I don't want to keep bothering you but I do want you to know how deeply interested I am in this book. I think what you have done is most excellent, and if anyone thinks differently, he is wrong. I am not interested in it only for Scribners or even only for you, but because I want to see what you have in you justify itself.—So any time you have a chance to tell me how things go on, do it as briefly as you please.

Always yours,

374. To Perkins

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

December 19 1939

Dear Max: -

The opinion about the novel seems half good and half bad. In brief, about four or five people here like it immensely, Leland likes it and you like it. Collier's, however, seems indifferent to it though they like the outline. My plan is to just go ahead and dig it out. If I could interest any magazine, of course it would be a tremendous help but today a letter from the Post seems to indicate that it is not their sort of material. The plan has changed a bit since I first wrote the outline, but it is essentially as you know it.

Your offering to loan me another thousand dollars was the kindest thing I have ever heard of. It certainly comes at the most opportune time. The first thing is this month's and last month's rent and I am going to take the liberty of giving my landlady a draft on you for $205., for January 2nd. This with the $150. that you have already sent me is $355. For the other $645., will you let me know when it is available?90

I am not terribly in debt as I was in 1935-7, but uncomfortably so. I think though my health is getting definitely better and if I can do some intermittent work in the studios between each chapter of the novel instead of this unprofitable hacking for Esquire, I shall be able to get somewhere by spring.

Max, you are so kind. When Harold withdrew from the questionable honor of being my banker I felt completely numb financially and I suddenly wondered what money was and where it came from. There had always seemed a little more somewhere and now there wasn't.

Anyhow, thank you.

Ever your friend,

Notes:

Leland Hayward.

90. Replying on December 21st, Perkins indicated that “any time after January 1st” would be all right. “Or in fact, if important to you, any time after December 26th.” On December 26th, Fitzgerald proposed that, after Perkins sent him $372.66, he, Perkins, could then pay $150 for a back rent owed and $122.44 for a long overdue telephone bill, making the total of $645. This Perkins did.

Also Turnbull.

375. FROM: Maxwell Perkins

TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Jan. 2, 1940

Dear Scott:

I hope you got safely through the so-called holidays. I feel pretty exhausted though I didn't do much but read manuscripts.—Only one party.

Now these drafts are raising Cain. I think we have at last got them straightened out, but they wouldn't take a Connecticut bank check, and I had to do a lot of shifting things around. But Scott, do remember that I have done all I can for the present. There was one draft more than I expected at that. I am still in debt in that matter I told you of, though not much; and the bequest I told you of begins to seem somewhat improbable. It appears that the sum was badly invested some twenty-five years ago, and at least has seriously diminished. I just have to tell you about it because of the way things are.

Always yours, Max

[drawing of Max Perkins]

376. TO: Maxwell Perkins

3 January 1940

TLS, 1 p. Princeton University

January 3 1939

Dear Max:—

I'm sorry that your kind impulse should have brought trouble down upon you. If it is any consolation the effect on my morale of getting your letter offering to lend me $1000. was tremendous and has already born the most tangible results—enabled me to get off a piece that should bring in something substantial and to approach the matter of working here with much more confidence.

Now that I learn that you may not get the bequest I have put you on the first list to be paid with one other friend and the groceryman. What a mess the drafts must have caused, my God! But it still adds up in my calculation to $1000.—unless you meant that the $250. you first sent me before the $1000. was intended to have been part of it. Here is the account.

On or about November 29 you sent me $250. and spoke of $1000. more which you could lend me before the first of the year. To my debit there stands:

1 draft—$205.

1 draft— 150.

1 draft— 122.44

12/14 you sent— 150.00

12/28 your check— 372.56

total $1000.00

I have checked with the bank and find that this is right. But I'm sorry you were disappointed in the inheritance and that the drafts should have caused you trouble on perhaps a busy day and in the middle of the holidays. I know you must feel a little like Scottie makes me feel, sometimes.

Ever yours, gratefully, apologetically and a good deal more,
Scott

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

377. TO: Maxwell Perkins

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Before 9 January 1940

Encino, California

Dear Max:

Beneath the surface of your letter and in the cartoon of the man with coco cola I detect a certain perturbation. What happened the first part of December or thereabouts was that I quarrelled with S.G.,1 and then encountered a New Orleans prick named —— from Colliers who told me my novel was no good. Christ, how did I think the editorial staff that goes for the servant girl romances of Kathleen Norris could ever like any serious effort of mine!

That was all—after about five heavy days in which I stayed close to home, S. G. and I were reconciled. Even while I was tight I wrote a short Esquire piece.

And that's all. I havn't had a drop for four weeks tomorrow—no question of virtue. It has come to make me deathly sick—even a single drink.

Scott

Notes:

1 Sheilah Graham.

378. FROM: Maxwell Perkins

TL (CC), 1 p. Princeton University

Jan. 9, 1940

Dear Scott:

I am not a subtle fellow. I am a simple fellow. There was nothing implied by that drawing. I thought you would admire the art.—And the man was not meant to be you. It was meant to be me, and to indicate my own good resolutions. Don't read any hidden meanings into what I write or draw. I only wanted to reveal to you another talent.

Always yours,

379. TO: Maxwell Perkins

TLS, 1 p. Princeton University

January 13 1940

Dear Max:—

I thought drafts were something that everybody knew about except me. I had to ask somebody how they were drawn. The fact that you did not know about them completes my disillusion as to New York and New Yorkers. It represents the utmost in unsophistication.

But I shall never draw a draw a draft again, nor even sit in one, nor get in the one they're going to have for the next war.

Ever your friend, Scott

P.S. I insist on reading meanings into things. Do you remember when I accused you of sending me the memoirs of General Grant because you thought I was a failure?

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

380. To Perkins

5521 Amestoy Avenue Encino, California

February 21, 1940

Dear Max:

Thanks for sending the release on “Babylon.” I haven't yet gotten the money but it will be something over $800.00, very little as Hollywood prices go. However, it will give me a chance to try another short story and if either that or the one that is out now finds a home I ought to produce a few chapters of the novel. Meanwhile things do not move here at all in a moving-picture way, but one makes a certain adjustment.

I am glad John Bishop is in good spirits. The affairs of the world never really worried him much. The fact fills me with great envy. I can see ahead no further than finishing this book and getting Scottie through Vassar. The rest looks no brighter than it has for a long time. The greatest privilege would be to be able to do work so absorbing that one could forget the trouble abroad and at home.

I will keep you informed.

Ever yours,
Scott

Notes:

From Turnbull.

381. TO: Maxwell Perkins

TLS, 1 p. Princeton University

Encino, California

April 19 1940

Dear Max:—

“You remember a couple of weeks ago I asked you to mail a letter for me in New York. To explain: it was the answer to a dunn for some money which I do not owe. The claimant is, of all things an undertaker. Not that I owe him for a corpse, but for an ambulance which he claims that I ordered. In any case he now writes me threatening to serve me with a summons and complaint.

“Now you will notice that this letter is headed by date only. Actually I am leaving my old address and I have no new one as yet. This is an actual fact. Also I have a new agent here whose name you do not know, so if this man tries to serve a summons and complaint on me through Scribner's you can conscientiously and truly tell him that you don't know whether I'm in New Orleans or the North Pole.”

I hope they don't bother you with this. The sum is just $50., but it is an absolute gyp and I don't intend to do anything about it. I hope I'll have some good news of myself pretty soon. I worked on the novel for two weeks last month.

Ever your friend, Scott

382. To Perkins

c/o Phil Berg Agency 9484 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, Calif.

May 20, 1940

Dear Max: -

I've owed you a decent letter for some months. First—the above is my best address though at the moment I'm hunting for a small apartment. I am in the last week of an eight week movie job for which I will receive $2300. I couldn't pay you anything from it, nor the government, but it was something, because it was my own picture Babylon Revisited and may lead to a new line up here. I just couldn't make the grade as a hack—that, like everything else, requires a certain practised excellence—

The radio has just announced the fall of St. Quentin! My God! What was the use of my wiring you that Andre Chamson has a hit when the war has now passed into a new stage making his book a chestnut of a bygone quiet era.

I wish I was in print. It will be odd a year or so from now when Scottie assures her friends I was an author and finds that no book is procurable. It is certainly no fault of yours. You (and one other man, Gerald Murphy)* have been a friend through every dark time in these five years. It's funny what a friend is—Ernest's crack in The Snows, poor John Bishop's article in the Virginia Quarterly (a nice return for ten years of trying to set him up in a literary way) and Harold's sudden desertion at the wrong time, have made them something less than friends. Once I believed in friendship, believed I could (if I didn't always) make people happy and it was more fun than anything. Now even that seems like a vaudevillian's cheap dream of heaven, a vast minstrel show in which one is the perpetual Bones.

Professionally, I know, the next move must come from me. Would the 25 cent press keep Gatsby in the public eye—or is the book unpopular. Has it had its chance? Would a popular reissue in that series with a preface not by me but by one of its admirers—I can maybe pick one—make it a favorite with class rooms, profs, lovers of English prose—anybody. But to die, so completely and unjustly after having given so much. Even now there is little published in American fiction that doesn't slightly bare my stamp—in a small way I was an original. I remember we had one of our few and trifling disagreements because I said that to anyone who loved “When Lilacs last—” Tom Wolfe couldn't be such a great original. Since then I have changed about him. I like “Only the Dead” and “Arthur, Garfield etc.”, right up with the tops. And where are Tom and I and the rest when psychological Robespierres parade through American letters elevating such melo as “Christ in Concrete”** to the top, and the boys read Steinbeck like they once read Mencken! I have not lost faith. People will buy my new book and I hope I shan't again make the many mistakes of Tender.

Tell me news if you have time. Where is Ernest and what doing? How about Elizabeth Lemmon, the lovely, & unembittered and sacrified virgin, the victim of what I gradually and depressingly found was the vanity of her family. How I disliked them—the heavily moustached Mrs. Doctor, the panting Virginian hausfrau sister who fancied herself an aristocrat, the Baltimore bond-salesman who will inherit. And, in the midst, the driven snow of Elizabeth. It was too sad to bear.

Love to all of you, of all generations.

Notes:

* Gerald Murphy and his wife, Sara, had been close friends of the Fitzgeralds since meeting them in the south of France during the Twenties and, to some extent, served as models for Nicole and Dick Diver in Tender Is the Night.

** A novel of 1939 by Pietro Di Donato, which was a very great popular success.

Also Turnbull.

383. To Fitzgerald

May 22, 1940

Dear Scott:

I am mighty glad to have an address again. I wanted to write you. I could not make head or tail of that undertaker episode, but I never would let an undertaker take me alive, in any kind of vehicle. I would think it too much of a temptation to him. But you came through.

Your letter sounds sombre but good. There are a few straws of good news in the paper today to grasp at. I am terribly pessimistic, and I think I am naturally an optimist. Anyway they give me a little cheer to work with. As for your position, it is a mighty high one. I never see an editor or writer, hardly, but they ask about you. It shows what you did, for think of all the writers who were thought to be notable and whose output has been much larger, who have simply vanished without a trace. But we knew the Gatsby was a truly great book.—I don't think there is much use in the 25c publishing though. You know that you are in almost all the school anthologies. I hope you are able to press on with this book that begins with such promise.

Ernest is still finishing a novel3, but he is to be up here on the 10th of June. Ernest's “Fifth Column” was a notable success in its revised form,—I suppose you have heard about all that. And now I understand there is to be a sale of movie rights at any moment.

As for Elizabeth,4 I just this morning got a letter from her. She lives in that Church house, as they call it, which she has fixed up and is very happy in, it seems. She will be here Friday, and I’ll see her that afternoon, and she will want to know whatever I can tell her about you. It must be mighty interesting, and a happy event, to work on the production of your own story in a movie. Of course you couldn't be one of the regular hacks, and you don't want to become a professional at it.

I follow Scottie's career with great interest. In spite of what you once said, there must be a very large proportion of Scott in her. There is certainly courage and enterprise. Jane tells me of her whenever she comes down,—of the play she wrote and produced up there, and of the club, MGIMA, My God It's Monday Again. Maybe I haven't got it just right. By the way, Thomas Wolfe has Jane in his book,—a sort of combination of Jane and Nancy, but physically Jane at the age of fourteen,—says she entered the dining room as silently and swiftly as a ray of light. I'll write you more later.

At the “sales conference” 5 about the fall books, the salesmen were all anxious to know what you were doing.

Always yours,

Notes:

3 For Whom the Bell Tolls, Scribners, 1940.

4 Elizabeth Lemmon, of Middleburg, Va.

5 Semiannual discussion of forthcoming publications, in which the Scribner editorial staff, advertising department and sales force take part.

384. To Perkins

This should have been recopied but no facilities at the moment S.*

1403 Laurel Avenue Hollywood California (new address)

June 6, 1940

Dear Max:

Thanks for your nice long letter, and for the book—or did I thank you for the book?^ I was fascinated, not only by the excellent coverage of the battles (though the man's extreme bias and the necessity of compression threw some of them out of focus), but by the curious philosophic note which began to run through it, from the discussion of Pharsalla on.

The note was reminiscent, exultant and dumb, but not until I found the name Spengler did his psychology become clear to me. Up to then I had thought: “What a wide range for a military man!” Then the truth became plain. Poor old Spengler has begotten Nazis that would make him turn over in his grave, and Fuller makes his own distortion. Spengler believed that the Western world was dead, and he believed nothing else but that—though he had certain ideas of a possible Slavic re-birth. This did not include Germany, which he linked with the rest of western Europe as in decline. And that the fine flower of it all was to be the battle of Vitorio Veneto and the rise of Mussolini—well, Spengler's turn in his grave must have been like that of an aeroplane propeller.

In his last four chapters Fuller begins to get ridiculous. I wonder how he feels now when that admirable Mr. Franco is about to batter down Gibralter. This of course does not detract from the interest of the book, especially through the Napoleonic era. Did you ever read Spengler -specifically including the second volume? I read him the same summer I was writing “The Great Gatsby” and I don't think I ever quite recovered from him. He and Marx are the only modern philosophers that still manage to make sense in this horrible mess—I mean make sense by themselves and not in the hands of their distorters. Even Mr. Lenin looks now like a better politician than a philosopher. Spengler, on the other hand, prophesied gang rule, “young peoples hungry for spoil,” and more particularly “The world as spoil” as an idea, a dominant supersessive idea.

Max, what becomes of copyrights when a book goes out of print? For example: in the case of “Flappers.” For the sake of possible picture rights and so forth should I renew that copyright now? I haven't an idea about this.

How does Ernest feel about things? Is he angry or has he a philosophic attitude? The Allies are thoroughly licked, that much is certain, and I am sorry for a lot of people. As I wrote Scottie, many of her friends will probably die in the swamps of Bolivia. She is all right now, by the way. I got what I wanted a year ago last Fall a year ago. I kept her out of New York while she was sixteen and kept her in Vassar, through an interview with the Dean in which the Dean told her that she had only twenty-five per cent chance of staying in. This stiffened her back bone and did the work. All this time that wretched Mrs. Ober was buying her party dresses for New York, and putting me in the awful humor I was in that day you mention. She (Scottie) is a very different person now, Vassar has done wonders for her (sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to Jane that day) This wasn't meant to be parenthetical—the typist put it in the wrong place. Excuse the messy letter* and I feel a proper paternal pride. It was close going there for a while. I finished the “Babylon Revisited” and may do a revise next week. Do let me know about the copyright business,91 and I would be interested in at least a clue to Ernest's attitude.

Ever your friend,

Notes:

* This note, in Fitzgerald's handwriting, appears above the salutation.

^ Decisive Battles: Their Influence Upon History and Civilization by J. F. C. Fuller.

* These two sentences, in Fitzgerald's hand-writing, appear at the bottom of the letter, with an arrow inserting them in the text at this point.

91. On July 8th, Perkins reported that it made no difference as to copyright whether or not a book was out of print. The copyright still held and Scribners would renew when it expired.

Also Turnbull.

385. To Perkins

1403 Laurel Avenue Hollywood, California

August 15 1940

Dear Max:

I suppose the pilgrims are on their way across the country by this time.^ I was sorry I didn't get to see them again but there was nothing in the studios that week to attract them back—that is nothing I could have arranged by myself with Sheilah** gone. Unless someone goes around with them the guides simply show them the outsides of the sets and that's no fun. As usual, I was in bed during the whole time they were in California except for the one day I got up and had dinner with them. I'm glad that at least Jane and one other had a glimpse of the real thing.

I finished the job for Shirley Temple, working the last weeks without pay on a gamble. But it may possibly bring enough money to let me get back to the novel.

I feel rather lost out here now. What do people in the East say? Why aren't the isolationists mobbed and hung to lamposts? It all seems so mysterious from here, like people living in a dream. What about Ernest? What does he think? The only cheerful thing is the game scrap the British are putting up.

Ever your friend,

Notes:

^ Perkins' daughter Jane and four of her friends had visited Fitzgerald on their crosscountry motor tour.

** Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham, who had become Fitzgerald's constant companion.

386. To Fitzgerald

August 20, 1940

Dear Scott:

I was mighty grateful for all you did for Jane, and I never gathered from all that she wrote that you weren't up and about. Also Sheilah couldn't have been kinder. I hope you will come on some day again with her and that Louise and I can thank her personally, because she plainly went to a great deal of trouble. I'd write you all I think and hear about the war, etc. except that Miss Wyckoff* is away and almost everyone else, on account of vacations. People hereabouts are very much alive to the war and anxious we should get prepared and should help England in all ways “short of war” in the meantime.

As for Ernest you know how he is situated at the present. Pauline, I think, is out your way, somewhere in California. Hem has quite a large house on a hill and is very happy. Martha^ is with him (though this is supposed to be a secret). He has just finished, or all but finished, a novel and we hope to publish it in the fall. Ernest was up here some three weeks ago and in very good form, better than in years. I could write you a great deal about the novel**—it is a magnificent one—also about one that Bunny Wilson is doing etc. but I had better wait until Miss Wyckoff is here to do it.

Always yours,

Notes:

* Irma Wyckoff (Mrs. Osmer Muench), Perkins' secretary.

^ Martha Gellhorn, who became Hemingway's third wife late in 1940.

** For Whom the Bell Tolls.

387. To Fitzgerald

Sept. 19, 1940

Dear Scott:

I was delighted by what John O'Hara told me yesterday over the telephone,—that you had actually written about 25,000 or more words, and that they were extraordinarily expressive words. I had no idea you had got that far. As this was to be a short book too, you are probably half through it. He didn't tell me much more than just that, and in fact I would rather not know any more than I do know from having read the first chapter and a little beyond it. But it is splendid you have done it, and especially in the circumstances, with other things to do and having been ill too.

I called up Scottie and everything was O.K. and her voice sounded like it used to. Isn't it odd that she has turned out to be so much of a scholar in a way, and determined to finish her course and pleased with the Harvard summer school. I asked her about her stories and she told me what she had done. I'll now hear of her occasionally through Jane who went back for her senior year.

I suppose you have heard of the good fortune that has befallen Ernest. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” has been taken by the Book of the Month Club.—The stamp of bourgeois approval. He would hate to think of it that way, and yet it is a good thing, practically speaking. I'll send you a copy of the book as soon as we get one, which will be early in October, but I won't say any more about it now. You know, I guess, that Pauline and he are to be divorced, and presumably he will marry Martha Gellhorn.—This is so well known about that you must have heard of it, but otherwise it ought to be regarded as strictly confidential.

Bunny Wilson is working on a novel that we are to publish.—John* was to try to do another novel, but he doesn't seem to have got forward with it, and one of the people who has visited him says he fears John is too deeply occupied with dogs and children, and too much under the surveillance of his wife. Maybe he will master the situation somehow.

Anyway, Scott, I am awfully glad you have been able to make all that progress, and it may have magnificent results.

Always yours,

Notes:

*John Peale Bishop.

388. To Perkins

1403 N. Laurel Avenue Hollywood, California

October 14 1940

Dear Max:

I'm finishing up a job here at Twentieth Century and hope then to be able to turn again to the novel. I wish I could work on it steadily from now to the first of February. It seems too much to hope for but it is just possible if this producer sells the Shirley Temple story for any decent sum.

…

It will be odd to think of Ernest married to a really attractive woman. I think the pattern will be somewhat different than with his Pygmalion-like creations. I think Bunny Wilson's book* is magnificent and I think he's had a dirty deal from that slick and superficial Fadiman and a rather stupid review from Malcolm Cowley who should know better. They seem to have expected a sort of Vincent Sheehan burst of prophecy. My God, why shouldn't he start with the philosophy of history? That's where Marx started. Most of these ignorant bastards seem to think that Das Kapital is a sort of refutation of Adam Smith.

Ever your friend,

Notes:

* To the Finland Station, published by Harcourt, Brace.

389. To Fitzgerald

Oct. 16, 1940

Dear Scott:

I have got to get at Bunny's book. I was only afraid that a certain inconclusiveness and perhaps inconsistencies in it—which might well make it a much better book in reality—would hurt its sale. I only gathered that it did have these supposed defects, in common with some of the greatest books in the world, from several reviews I saw. I don't think Cowley does good reviews anyhow.—By the way, I think Bunny is back with us now for all his work. I told you that we had contracted for a novel which he says is going beautifully, and he is a good critic of his own writings. But before that, should come a book somewhat in the nature of “Axel's Castle” to be called “The Wound and the Bow” which will examine certain writers including Dickens, which was in the Atlantic, and Kipling which will be, and—which fills me with apprehension—Hemingway. This book was contracted for by W.W. Norton, but we have all but taken it over from him.—I had lunch with Bunny not long ago to discuss these matters, and I was mighty glad to talk to him again. You were right about him. He has a most unusual intellect, and great integrity.—But he despises publishers.

Ernest wrote me to send him your address, and so I did.—I am sure he will be sending you a copy of the “Bell” and so I am not doing it. There is a great stir among the movie people over it, and its success as a book seems absolutely certain.

In writing Jane the other day, I asked her to let me know how Scottie seemed if she took any courses with her, or saw her. But Scottie now assured me of the greatest interest in scholarship, and so here she will have got through the discipline of Vassar, which I judge to be greater than that of either Princeton or Harvard, at a very early age. Even if she only gets the advantage of that, it will be something of value to her.

Well, here's hoping that the story you have been working on does bring enough to let you give your whole time to the novel.—I told you what John O'Hara said about it. He isn't talking “poor old Scott” nor anything like it.

Always your friend,

390. To Perkins

 [1403 North Laurel Ave.] [Hollywood, Calif.]

December 13 1940

Dear Max:

Thanks for your letter. The novel progresses—in fact progresses fast. I'm not going to stop now till I finish a first draft which will be some time after the 15th of January. However, let's pretend that it doesn't exist until it's closer to completion. We don't want it to become—“a legend before it is written” which is what I believe Wheelock* said about “Tender Is the Night”. Meanwhile will you send me back the chapters I sent you as they are all invalid now, must be completely rewritten etc. The essential idea is the same and it is still, as far as I can hope, a secret.

Bud Shulberg, a very nice, clever kid out here is publishing a Hollywood novel with Random House in January + It's not bad but it doesn't cut into my material at all. I've read Ernest's novel and most of Tom Wolfe's and have been doing a lot of ruminating as to what this whole profession is about. Tom Wolfe's failure to really explain why you and he parted mars his book but there are great things in it. The portraits of the Jacks (who are they?) [and] Emily Vanderbilt are magnificent.

No one points out how Saroyan has been influenced by Franz Kafka. Kafka was an extraordinary Czchoslovakian Jew who died in '36. He will never have a wide public but “The Trial” and “America” are two books that writers are never able to forget.92

This is the first day off I have taken for many months and I just wanted to tell you the book is coming along and that comparatively speaking all is well.

Ever your friend,

P.S. How much will you sell the plates of “This Side of Paradise” for? I think it has a chance for a new life.

Notes:

* Scribners editor John Hall Wheelock.

+ What Makes Sammy Run.

92. Replying on December 17th, Perkins said he was returning the manuscript of the novel but he didn't think that Schulberg's book would interfere with it. He admitted that he knew nothing about Kafka but would look him up. His last words to Fitzgerald were: “Well, I hope that 'some time after January 15th' will come soon.” Fitzgerald died of a heart attack, in Hollywood, on December 21st.

Also Turnbull.

391. FROM Max Perkins TO NANCY HALE

Nov. 19, 1941

Dear Nancy:

You cannot worry me about your novel.1 I remember so well the quality of all that I saw of it, and I know that you have a rich and sensitive mind and memory. In fact, I would be much more concerned if you did not have to go through periods of despair and anxiety and dissatisfaction. It is true that a good many novelists do not, but I think the best ones truly do, and I do not see how it could be otherwise. It is awfully hard work, writing of the kind you do.

I, myself, feel certain that it will end very well indeed, if you can endure the struggle. The struggle is part of the process. There is no sign that Jane Austen had any trouble at all, but I am sure Charlotte Bronte must have had, and almost all of the really good ones except Jane, who is good as gold, of course.

I sent you a copy of Scott Fitzgerald’s book2 just because I thought you would be interested to see how he worked out a thing. It shows especially in the notes at the end of “The Last

Tycoon.” I didn’t send it with any idea at all that you should follow his method, because each real writer has his own method, and sometimes nobody can define it, not even the writer himself.

If you ever feel inclined to show me anything, I would be always delighted to see it. And I am glad you got the Charlottesville matter fixed up more favorably.

Always yours,

Notes

1 The Prodigal Women, Scribners, 1942.

2 The Last Tycoon, Scribners, 1941.

392. FROM Max Perkins TO MAXWELL GEISMAR

April 12, 1943

Dear Mr. Geismar:

I liked the reviews you gave me very much and wish I had time now to read some of the book.1 I thought you showed great ingenuity in bringing all that miscellaneous group into a unified article, so that the discussion of each book led naturally into the next.

I thought of a story I once told in a letter about Scott.2 It shows how perceptive he was of other people’s feelings. I only wish I could give it the way he did, because it was most effective. This very charming woman3 was motoring us from Washington down to Middleburg to dine at the house her family had lived in for a very long time. Its members were very deep in the Civil War. I once asked her to go to see the field of Gettysburg with me, and she said, “Do you think I would like to see the scene of my country’s defeat?” In a rough way, and on a small scale, the house rather resembles Mt. Vernon. It was built some time considerably before the beginning of the Civil War. There is a cannon ball half-submerged in the wall of one of the stables. Quite a long avenue leads into it, through an untended lawn. There are the Civil War portraits, and older ones too. We passed all kinds of bronze tablets on the road, put there in commemoration of battles and incidents of the war. Scott and I, both being Yankees—though that lady who was hanged in connection with the assassination of Lincoln was a relative of his—took a kind of interest in all this, which Scott, who was very sensitive, perceived was not considerate of our companion’s feelings. So he suddenly launched into an account of the surrender at Appomattox. “Well,” he said, “it was all a great mistake, the surrender. The facts never got out. The camera men flashed the pictures at the wrong moment, and then it couldn’t be changed to the truth. For the truth was that when Lee handed Grant the written terms in that farmhouse, Grant said, ‘General Lee, there is no pen here. May I borrow your sword to sign with?’ For Grant, of course, had no side-arms, as history records. And in the moment when Lee courteously handed him his sword for that purpose the press pictures were taken.” This doesn’t sound like much when written, but Scott in all his high spirits made a fine thing of it. He was fascinated with the quality of that place, and thought the house was haunted with the old South, and once tried to do a story about it, but it did not turn out well.

Always yours,

Notes

1 Writers in Crisis by Maxwell Geismar, Houghton Mifflin Go., 1942.

2 F. Scott Fitzgerald.

3 Miss Elizabeth Lemmon of Middleburg, Virginia.

393. FROM Max Perkins TO ALICE D. BOND (Fragment)

July 17, 1944

Dear Miss Bond:

<…>

It is true that Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise” was declined by two publishers, but it was also declined by us, in the first version, and it was I who, Scott being in the Army then, sent it to the two other publishers, and I was afraid to death they would take it. I felt that it showed an amazing talent and that if Scott came safely back from the war, he might revise it—as he did.

<…>

394. FROM Max Perkins TO JAMES BOYD, JR.

Jan. 4, 1946

Dear Jim:1

I delayed answering your letter because I wanted to quote from Scott Fitzgerald, and it took me a long time to find the paragraph:

“So many writers, Conrad for instance, have been aided by being brought up in a metier utterly unrelated to literature. It gives an abundance of material and, more important, an attitude from which to view the world. So much writing nowadays suffers both from lack of an attitude and from sheer lack of any material, save what is accumulated in a purely social life.”

About twenty years ago, I was talking to Galsworthy in London about Scott Fitzgerald. I wanted to enlist his interest, and perhaps his help in England. But he was not sympathetic and, curiously enough, he said almost exactly what Scott said, many years later, in the quotation. He said these writers who become writers at the start are invariably disappointments. It is much better for a man to have been something else than a writer, so that he has viewed the world from a fixed position.

I thought that perhaps you might be able to infer from this quotation and anecdote some meaning for yourself in your perplexity. You have in fact had several years at sea, and in war, and perhaps that has done for you what Galsworthy and Fitzgerald thought so important. You are the only one who can tell, if you can. But, as for the question of the newspaper and style, I don’t think there is much in it. Just off-hand, here are four who began as reporters: Ernest Hemingway, Edmund Wilson, Stanley Pennell, Stephen Crane. I could name a good many more, who did not have a style but came out of the newspaper profession to be noted writers. Dreiser did, for one. I do think writing for a paper, when you must produce, say, half a column in half an hour, with a copy-boy standing by to tear the half sheets out of your machine, does tend to sloppy writing perhaps. But great writers have done it. Charles Dickens did it. I think if one has the nature to develop a style, he will certainly do it. And that working for a newspaper will not prevent it.

Anyhow, I fully understand your restlessness, and I do think you ought to do something. Next time you come to New York, we’ll have a drink and a talk, I hope. But nobody could have gone through what you have and not have difficulty in getting adjusted. That is just inevitable.

Yours,

Notes

1 James Boyd, Jr., son of James Boyd, served in the U. S. Coast Guard, on active duty, first in the Atlantic, then in the Pacific.

395. FROM Max Perkins TO ANN CHIDESTER

Jan. 6, 1947

Dear Ann :

I do not think anyone can read “War and Peace” too much. I read it six times, and pieces of it to Johnny and Jerry.1 It is said to be vastly better in the original, in point of style and language, but I really think maybe it is better for us that we do have to read it in a translation, for I think it might be too much of an influence, that one might tend to be overwhelmed by it, the other way, and to imitate it. I read “Smoke,”2 and I know what you mean. When Scott3 was writing “Tender Is the Night”4— he didn’t think he ought to talk about the books he was doing, and so put it this way—he said that the whole motif was taken from Ludendorf’s5 memoirs. They were moving up the guns for the great Spring offensive in 1918, and Ludendorf said, “The song of the frogs on the river drowned the rumble of our artillery.” When he told me this, it puzzled me, but when I read the book I realized that there was all this beautiful veneer, and rottenness and horror underneath. I am only saying this because of what you said about “The Great Gatsby.”6

Anyway, you can feel sure that everybody here is for “Mama Maria’s”7.

Always yours,

Notes

1 John and Jeremiah Gorsline, his grandsons.

2 By Turgenev.

3 F. Scott Fitzgerald.

4 Scribners, 1934.

5 Eric von Ludendorf, a German general, field-marshal in the First World War.

6 By F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribners, 1925.

7 By Ann Chidester, Scribners, 1947.

396. FROM Max Perkins To James Jones (Fragment)

May 28, 1947

<…>

I can understand the value of “The Last Tycoon,” and that it was enhanced for you in not having been completed. But, of course, each writer must have his own method. Hemingway didn’t know, except in the most general sense, the story he was going to unfold in “For Whom the Bell Tolls,”3 and, by the way, it took him five years, I think, to write that. He is not nearly through the one he has been working on now for two and a half years. You are all right on time, except for the fact that time is the enemy of us all, and especially of the writer. But don’t become obsessed with that feeling, as Tom Wolfe did.

I do get a little afraid that in thinking of the theory, and so much of the plot—though I suppose you cannot avoid it—you may become sort of muscle-bound. That is, you must be flexible. A deft man may toss his hat across the office and hang it on a hook if he just naturally does it, but he will always miss if he does it consciously. That is a ridiculous and extreme analogy, but there is something in it.

Ever sincerely yours,

WHO'S WHO

Maxwell E. Perkins (1884–1947), editorial director at Charles Scribner’s Sons, was Fitzgerald’s generous friend and closest literary adviser. He fought for the publication of Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, and thereafter provided encouragement and financial backing. At Scribners Perkins assembled a great stable of writers that included Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. His literary judgment and commitment to his writers have become legendary. See A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (New York: Dutton/Congdon, 1978).

The letters of Perkins were published in:

These letters were first published in books:

Перевод: «Уважаемый Скотт / Уважаемый Макс»: Переписка писателя Ф. Скотта Фицджеральда и редактора Максуэлла Перкинса.

Яндекс.Метрика