Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life ofF. Scott Fitzgerald
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
many American newspapers, the most absurdly overplayed event in sports is the 'competition' for the America's CUP. This is a boat race in the horse player's sense of the term. Under the terms...
...why there is a visit to a canoe manufacturer in Maine, an examination of the 1951 basketball scandal, and a column about Ted Williams, who hit .406 in 1941, going after the tarpon, bonefish, and Atlantic salmon triple crown...
...Saul David Van Nuys, California 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982...
...In that endeavor, Bruccoli has in large part succeeded...
...after all, we were em~ied...
...Scott had himself prevented her from throwing herself under a train...
...Under the terms dictated by the New York Yacht Club, it is almost totally devoid of competition...
...For exampl e , in the Preface he notes that Fitzgerald "wrote" the best American prose," and in his conclusion, some 500 pages later, he avows,"F...
...At one point in the furious exchange, Zelda remarks that their marriage had "been nothing but a long battle ever since I can remember' '--to which Scott responds: "I don't know about that...
...Where he belongs...
...He's got Nolan Ryan's fastball and Sandy Koufax's curve...
...One further example, and I shall retire to the nearest monastery...
...I'm an elderly crank...
...I am fed up with being an exotic and irritated by the reminders issued to me alone--that I am wonderfully (or fearfully) unassimilable and that everyone else's rights are my privileges...
...Scott Fitzgerald is now permanently placed with the greatest writers who ever lived, where he wanted to be all along...
...To repeat: This is an accounting of the life, not of the work, of Fitzgerald...
...Aside from a few general William H. Nolte is C. Wallace Martin Professor of English at the University of South Carolina...
...Consider how often you...
...In this summing up of the Life he has made a definite contribution to our understanding of one of the saddest figures in our literature...
...have heard or said something to the effect that the PLO must recognize Israel's right to exist before the U.S...
...But not for The American Spectator...
...This is why in the Reader you can read coverage of a dog show as well as the 1937 "Red Trotsky Talks to Red Smith...
...The druggist would not give it to him...
...To place Fitzgerald so high on the golden list merely indicates that Mr...
...His final years, as everyone by now surely must know, were spent in the Abyssinian night of_ Hollywood...
...Bruccoli's critical judgment is untrustworthy--as I have on occasion informed him...
...But what of Fitzgerald, man and boy, at Work and play, at home and abroad, sober and in his cups (where he spent most of his adult life...
...Nor should we forget that pity, as Nietzsche long ago reminded us, is more often than not tinged with revulsion...
...But I wanted to kill him for what he was doing to that crazy woman, who kept telling me that she had to be locked up before the moon- came u p . " I should add that during that period Zelda had made several attempts to kill herself...
...He is, after all, our most industrious digger in that particular corner of the literary garden...
...Israel's right to EXIST...
...Okay...
...Logic: We must have been happy...
...It is incredible--but Israelis hear it all the time--quite directly...
...And let me say at once that much of what I know, or knew, I attribute to the spade work done by Bruccoli over the last twenty or so years...
...In Bruccoli's minute bookkeeping of Fitzgerald's personal and literary accounts we see the darkest side of a life largely wasted and a talent unused...
...As a matter of fact, he has succeeded rather beyond his expectation...
...The truth is, as the numerotrs such quotations make clear, that both parties in that disastrous marriage were vampires, using each other as fictional prey...
...Were I a man of true candor, without fear of reproach from the Irish Mafia or the romantic barbarians in our midst, I should have to say that Scott Fitzgerald was so insensitive to the feelings of others as to be a certifiable, unimpeachable, incandescent, A-1 cad, and so selfindulgent and self-pitying as to be undeserving of the pity that has been so abundantly bestowed upon him...
...In fact, he presents his subject in utter nakedness and utter forgetfulness, trailing precious few clouds of glory whence he came...
...Who makes it one...
...That he refuses to listen to me only further indicates his poverty of taste...
...Nevertheless, I find in my heart of hearts ample room to forgive him...
...Has any other state, any other people, and any other person ever been told that life itself was its sole stake...
...That is to say, he has drawn a portrait of Fitzgerald that reveals blemishes of which I was unaware, and I thought I knew about all there was to know about the writer...
...If those estimates seem to me overblown--even outrageously so--they do no harm...
...For example, Bruccoli includes in his study a long extract from a ll4-page typescript of a conversation between Scott and Zelda in 1933 when Zelda was a patient in "La Paix" in Towson, Maryland, a document that makes one wince...
...It is frequently deficient in sportsmanship...
...The Pope and Bill Buckley are entitled to the opinion that Jerusalem ought to be Something other than a Jewish capital--but I would love to hear that matter argued with a risen Jesus on "Firing Line...
...We stopped at a drug store to get him some gin...
...I t is to his credit that Bruccoli in no way attempts to sweep the crud under the rug...
...he later described the harrowing experience this way: "I had Scott and Zelda in my car and I wanted to kill him...
...What the hell are you all talking about...
...Unable or unwilling to call such behavior by its correct name, Bruccoli succeeds only in begging the question--thus: "Although Fitzgerald's behavior with Zelda was sometimes cruel or irrational, he retained a fidelity to their past, a sense of regret that was not always distinguishable from selfpity...
...From Reagan to Kissinger to Jane F o n d a . . . that's an accepted truism...
...You can say goodbye to Secretariat, and read how Americans responded to an attack on our shoresJin 1941, when a Japanese sub shelled some California oilfields...
...As O'Hara remarked, she was utterly deranged...
...deals with that organization...
...But this is really no more than what is expected of the good newspaper rePorter...
...I think the best way to remember Red Smith is this little quotation on the back of Red Smith's obit book, which is covered by testimonials "To An Absent Friend...
...In our pity for someone so naturally gifted and self-destructive as Fitzgerald there is probably also an element of self-approval or, anyhow, self-defense...
...I'm tired of the assigned role, tired of hearing that I can play Masada all I want hut I can never be the Roman winner...
...I told you I was ungrateful...
...Kill...
...176176176176176176176176176 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 21) f o r b e a r a n c e - - n e v e r f o r g e t i t . " , No...
...Okay--but I'm not a crank Elder of Zion...
...I'll go a step farther and admit that I know and like various people who subscribe to even more outlandish beliefsJreligious, literary, political, philosophical, whatever...
...I had to persuade the druggist to relent, and he got the gin...
...estimates of Fitzgerald the writer, Bruccoli eschews literary criticism...
...The Reader is divided into sectionson the Olympics, Racing, Football, Baseball, Politics~ Some Other Sports, Fishing, Offbeat, Boxing, and Pals, Colleague, and Himself, which ends with his last ~ column, "Writing Less--And B e t t e r ? " Some wiI1 no doubt say that i t is a tribute to his versatility, this variety of topics...
...We were taking her back to her Institution, and he kept making passes at her that could not possibly be consummated...
...Not long before the end in 1940, Fitzgerald wrote Max Perkins that "in a small way I was an original," giving proper emphasis, it seems to me, to the adjective...
...Jews hear it in the inner ear...
...And he goes on to explain why...
...We were about the most envied couple in about 1921 in America...
...Is that a negotiable item...
...And in his league he's the best there i s . ' " V] SOME SORT OF EPIC GRANDEUR: THE LIFE OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Matthew J. Bruccoli / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich / $25.00 William H. Nolte I n this thorough, meticulous, often engrossing biography of Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli has set himself the task of, in his own words, "providing a detailed account of [Fitzgerald's] career as a professional writer...
...It is somehow fitting that Death found him there in that tinsel land of shabby make-believe...
...In 1935 John O'Hara visited the Fitzgeralds in Baltimore...
...It is from Tom Seaver: "A rookie on the Reds, a few years ago, asked me who that little old man was--and I said 'that little old man is Red Smith, but don't let his size or age fool you...
...Exclamation point...
...He was indeed a sad case...
...Almost from the beginning, as far back as the Princeton years, Fitzgerald lived in hock, constantly borrowing on the future to pay bills current...
Vol. 15 • November 1982 • No. 11
