As I was driving home this evening, I listened to a rebroadcast of the wonderful On Point NPR program. Today's topic (2nd hour) was George Dawes Green, who founded a storytelling club known as "The Moth." At one point in the show a caller mentioned that he had been taking part in a group similar to 'The Moth." He remarked that those storytellers whose stories revolved around their successes tended to fall flat; audiences, however, hung on every word of those who shared stories---well told, naturally--- of personal humiliation and failure.
www.onpointradio.org/2010/07/storytelling
This comment begged the questions in my mind: does the sound-bite culture lend itself, and thuse reward, shameless boasters? Does such ridiculous grandstanding fail in the presence of a live audience, which can see the raconteur as a fellow in the flesh and thus criticize him more harshly? It is, after all, much easier to manipulate the message in sound-bite form than it is when the audience can hurl rotten tomatoes at you. Live audiences call for a measure of humility and a bit of common touch.
Do soundbites beget pompous asses?
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald poured everything he had into this novel, and it shows. If ever an author exposes his soul and his heart to the public, FSF did so with Tender is the Night. It is clear that Dick Diver is Fitzgerald himself, and that Nicole is Zelda, beautiful and out of her mind. That Nicole grows stronger than Dick in the noevl's third act is an indication of Fitzgerald's fear--and it was indeed a fear--that Zelda might recover enough to surpass him artistically. He had always drawn heavily on his own life for the material in his novels, and it is remarkable to see how threatened he was by his wife, who in the early 1930s had been consigned to a mental institution.
Tender is the Night has been roundly criticized for focusing on the lives of the wealthy in the middle of the Great Depression. That may have hurt its popularity when it was published in 1934, but are we then to read this wonderful and tragic story only during periods of economic expansion? Isn't the demise of Dick Diver sad in any event?
My only complaint about the novel is Fitzgerald's depiction of Nicole's sudden recovery and independence. Fitzgerald certainly knew the psychological theories of the day and was familiar with the literature. Why, then, does he not explain her recovery sufficiently? Did he really think that Zelda's case was so hopeless? If so, then why was he threatened by her?
Still, the novel is worth reading for Fitzgerald's prose. Consider the closing paragraph of the novel:
After that he didn't ask for the children to be sent to America and didn't answer when Nicole wrote asking him if he needed money. In the last letter she had from him he told her that he was practising in Geneva, New York, and she got the impression that he had settled down with some one to keep house for him. She looked up Geneva in an atlas and found it was in the Finger Lakes Section and considered a pleasant place. Perhaps, so she liked to think, his career was biding its time, again like Grant's at Galena; his latest note was post-marked from Hornell, New York, which is some distance from Geneva and a very small town; in any case he is certainly in that section of the country, in one town or another.
Thsi passage speaks volumes about Fitzgerald's view of himself, always impermanently arranged, always alone--his wife must consult an atlas to place him on a map, after all. The ocean that separates Nicole and Dick is little different than the chasm that Zelda's breakdowns caused between her and Scott.
Next: The Tale of Genji, among other projects.
Tender is the Night has been roundly criticized for focusing on the lives of the wealthy in the middle of the Great Depression. That may have hurt its popularity when it was published in 1934, but are we then to read this wonderful and tragic story only during periods of economic expansion? Isn't the demise of Dick Diver sad in any event?
My only complaint about the novel is Fitzgerald's depiction of Nicole's sudden recovery and independence. Fitzgerald certainly knew the psychological theories of the day and was familiar with the literature. Why, then, does he not explain her recovery sufficiently? Did he really think that Zelda's case was so hopeless? If so, then why was he threatened by her?
Still, the novel is worth reading for Fitzgerald's prose. Consider the closing paragraph of the novel:
After that he didn't ask for the children to be sent to America and didn't answer when Nicole wrote asking him if he needed money. In the last letter she had from him he told her that he was practising in Geneva, New York, and she got the impression that he had settled down with some one to keep house for him. She looked up Geneva in an atlas and found it was in the Finger Lakes Section and considered a pleasant place. Perhaps, so she liked to think, his career was biding its time, again like Grant's at Galena; his latest note was post-marked from Hornell, New York, which is some distance from Geneva and a very small town; in any case he is certainly in that section of the country, in one town or another.
Thsi passage speaks volumes about Fitzgerald's view of himself, always impermanently arranged, always alone--his wife must consult an atlas to place him on a map, after all. The ocean that separates Nicole and Dick is little different than the chasm that Zelda's breakdowns caused between her and Scott.
Next: The Tale of Genji, among other projects.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Love with the Left Hand
After football season the father drove his young son out to a cabin in the woods, told the boy to take serious stock of himself, and abandoned him there with a sawed-off shotgun loaded with a single shell. One evening about a week later, the son appeared at his father's door and, thrusting the gun under the old man's snout, held him to merciless account. The son then withdew into the darkness. Soon afterwards they discovered the boy's carcass, relieved of its head, in the ditch along the road that led to the middle school.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Circa 1935
After the Good Gay Times, by Tony Buttitta.
I was browsing the stacks of a univesity library recently when I came across this title wedged in among the other books about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had never heard of this title before, though I have read most of the Fitzgerald biographies---Arthur Mizener, Scott Donaldson, Turnbull.
Those biographies may be more polished than this book, but this one contains the first-hand recollections of one who had known and befriended Fitzgerald during the summer of 1935. The summer of 1935. That phrase alone summons thoughts of desperation and great want.
That summer Tony Buttitta was an aspiring writer and owner of a small bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina. His description of his first encounter with Fitzgerald elides smoothly with our image of a faded author with an undying lust for alcohol, but his character soon grows wider and more complex.
By 1935 Fitzgerald was in bad shape---The Crack Up essays would appear within a year---alcoholic and still stung by the failure of Tender is the Night, the book into which he had thrown all he had. Most biographers write about the Fitzgerald of these years in piteous tones, and this wonderfully lyrical writer assumes tropic dimensions. Fitzgerald becomes a plaything. But this book gives Fitzgerald a new voice, one that bridges the long gaps between novels after 1925. Buttitta recalls a man still in possession of a sharp mind, concerned about the fate of civilization, and whether drunk or sober willing to discuss Spengler and Marx. Fitzgerald was still attractive to women; he broke off a relationship---too late, it turned out--- with an adoring woman willing to pay off his ample financial debts, in part out of loyalty to Zelda but also because he was well aware of the the ruinous effect he had on the women around him. Meanwhile, he admitted and regretted that he pushed his ailing wife Zelda into dancing--this contradicts the claims of some biographers that he attempted to prevent it. His feelings toward Ernest Hemingway were complex: a mixture of envy, respect, and tenderness.
There is a chapter about 2/3 of the way into the book, where Buttitta and Fitzgerald, with an eye to taking a room, pay a visit to the mother of Thomas Wolfe, whose Look Homeward, Angel Fitzgerald had admired. Wolfe's mother was loquacious, and she spoke at some length about the effect that her son's autobiographical novel had had on her and her family. At the end of the visit, Mrs. Wolfe mentioned that she didn't take in drunks. Buttitta's recollection of the effect of that remark on Fitzgerald speaks volumes about the depth of his despair; he couldn't even rent a room from the mother of a far inferior novelist than himself.
Above all, Fitzgerald was alone, and hopelessly so. He spoke of friends but never seemed to have any. He had retained his honor through it all--conveying deep concern about his daughter and wife---but I got the impression of a man waiting impatiently for it all to end.
I was browsing the stacks of a univesity library recently when I came across this title wedged in among the other books about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had never heard of this title before, though I have read most of the Fitzgerald biographies---Arthur Mizener, Scott Donaldson, Turnbull.
Those biographies may be more polished than this book, but this one contains the first-hand recollections of one who had known and befriended Fitzgerald during the summer of 1935. The summer of 1935. That phrase alone summons thoughts of desperation and great want.
That summer Tony Buttitta was an aspiring writer and owner of a small bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina. His description of his first encounter with Fitzgerald elides smoothly with our image of a faded author with an undying lust for alcohol, but his character soon grows wider and more complex.
By 1935 Fitzgerald was in bad shape---The Crack Up essays would appear within a year---alcoholic and still stung by the failure of Tender is the Night, the book into which he had thrown all he had. Most biographers write about the Fitzgerald of these years in piteous tones, and this wonderfully lyrical writer assumes tropic dimensions. Fitzgerald becomes a plaything. But this book gives Fitzgerald a new voice, one that bridges the long gaps between novels after 1925. Buttitta recalls a man still in possession of a sharp mind, concerned about the fate of civilization, and whether drunk or sober willing to discuss Spengler and Marx. Fitzgerald was still attractive to women; he broke off a relationship---too late, it turned out--- with an adoring woman willing to pay off his ample financial debts, in part out of loyalty to Zelda but also because he was well aware of the the ruinous effect he had on the women around him. Meanwhile, he admitted and regretted that he pushed his ailing wife Zelda into dancing--this contradicts the claims of some biographers that he attempted to prevent it. His feelings toward Ernest Hemingway were complex: a mixture of envy, respect, and tenderness.
There is a chapter about 2/3 of the way into the book, where Buttitta and Fitzgerald, with an eye to taking a room, pay a visit to the mother of Thomas Wolfe, whose Look Homeward, Angel Fitzgerald had admired. Wolfe's mother was loquacious, and she spoke at some length about the effect that her son's autobiographical novel had had on her and her family. At the end of the visit, Mrs. Wolfe mentioned that she didn't take in drunks. Buttitta's recollection of the effect of that remark on Fitzgerald speaks volumes about the depth of his despair; he couldn't even rent a room from the mother of a far inferior novelist than himself.
Above all, Fitzgerald was alone, and hopelessly so. He spoke of friends but never seemed to have any. He had retained his honor through it all--conveying deep concern about his daughter and wife---but I got the impression of a man waiting impatiently for it all to end.
Reading List
China: Empire of Living Signals, by Cecilia Lindquist
Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Living with Jazz, by Dan Morgansten
I Will Bear Witness: 1942-1945, by Victor Klemperer
Autobiography, by Mohandas Ghandi
My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk
Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas A. Blackmon
Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
Oracle Bones, by Peter Hessler
It's all over the map, but so is my existence.
Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Living with Jazz, by Dan Morgansten
I Will Bear Witness: 1942-1945, by Victor Klemperer
Autobiography, by Mohandas Ghandi
My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk
Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas A. Blackmon
Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
Oracle Bones, by Peter Hessler
It's all over the map, but so is my existence.
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