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The

F. Scott

Fitzgerald

Society Newsletter

Volume 20 DECEMBER 2010

The Fitzgerald Society will hold its Eleventh International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in Lyon, France, from July 4-9, 2011. The host for the conference will be Jean Moulin Uni-versity and its downtown historical precincts by the Rhône river. A UNESCO World Heri-tage Site since 1998, ―the capital of Gaul‖ and ―silk capital of the world‖ will not fail to ap-peal to those who delight in historical sites. For those with more earthly concerns, keep in mind that Lyon is known as the French capital of gastronomy. A guided tour will introduce the delegates to the city and will, most certainly, make them feel like strolling around its old districts, all within very rea-sonable walking distance from downtown and university. Besides the usual academic sessions at the university, the conference directors have planned a full day at the ―Institut Lumière,‖ home of the Lumière brothers, who shot the first film there. This day will include paper presentations, a tour of the museum, a cock-tail party and a public showing of a Fitzger-ald screen adaptation. Papers will be de-voted to Fitzgerald and cinema but also to all aspects of modernity in his work.

Another day will take attendees less than two hours away to Alpine Annecy, where the Fitzgeralds spent time in 1931 and Zelda said ―[they]‘d never go [...] again because those weeks had been perfect and no other time could match them.‖ A boat will take the Fitzgerald Society members for a cruise to the Palace de Menthon where the Fitzgeralds stayed and where the delegates will have lunch while enjoying the panoramic view of the lake and surrounding mountains. The rest of the afternoon will allow free time to discover the old town of Annecy dominated by its medieval castle, and there will be a stopover in nearby Aix-Les-Bains on the way back to Lyon. Like Rosemary in Tender Is the Night and many other prestigious visitors such as poet Lamartine or Queen Victoria, delegates will briefly enjoy the Roman re-mains and Belle Epoque flavor of the small thermal spa. The closing banquet will again take delegates into the past with a visit to the medieval town of Pérouges, 35 kms from Lyon, and its welcoming ―Hostellerie.‖ Eventually, a final ―à la carte‖ excursion will give delegates the opportunity to visit the Beaujolais vineyards.

The Eleventh International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference: Lyon, July 4-9, 2011

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For an easier trip to Lyon, practical informa-tion has been placed on the Fitzgerald Society website and the IETT Lyon website (http://www.iett.eu/acti/events/page134/page134.html) which also includes details about the excursions. A variety of accommo-dation possibilities has been suggested for everyone to find what suits him/her best in terms of finances (some hotels have granted preferential rates), all suggestions being within walking distance from university and downtown. For those wishing to go to Paris or the South before or after the conference, Lyon is connected to many other French cities via the TGV high-speed train with departures several times a day from both its downtown railroad stations (Perrache and Part-Dieu). We are looking forward to welcoming Fitz-gerald Society members to stimulating aca-demic sessions and introducing them to the historical and natural treasures of Lyon and the Rhône-Alpes area.

Elisabeth Bouzonviller, Catherine Delesalle, Marie-Agnès Gay, and Laura Rattray (conference directors).

The Fitzgeralds in Annecy (1931)

Lyon 3 University Lyon

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The Lumière Institute, and The Lumière Brothers (inset)

Palace de Menthon (Annecy)

The Eleventh Int’l Fitzgerald Conference: Lyon, July 4-9, 2011

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American Literature Association,

May 2010

The Fitzgerald Society had a strong presence at the American Literature Association‘s 21st Annual Conference on American Literature, held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in Embarcadero Center, May 27-30, 2010. The society sponsored two stimulating panels on the author‘s work; both panels were chaired by Maggie Gordon Froehlich of Pennsyl-vania State University, Hazleton. The first of the Society‘s two panels, ―F. Scott Fitzgerald,‖ examined the author‘s relation-ship to popular culture and fashion. ―Fitzgerald‘s Screenplay for ‗Babylon Revis-ited‘: Writing ‗Out of a Weary Mind and a Sick Body,‘‖ on Fitzgerald‘s work in screen-writing and adaptation, was presented by Martha Davidson, a Professor of English in the Communications Department at Central Texas College. Davidson examined illumi-nating changes Fitzgerald made in his own 1940 screenplay adaptation of his 1931 short story; although never produced, the screen-play, originally titled Cosmopolitan, was pub-lished in 1993 as Babylon Revisited: The Screenplay, with an introduction by Fitzger-ald‘s screenwriting colleague and friend Budd Schulberg. David M. Earle, a Professor of Transatlantic Print Culture and Modern-ism at the University of West Florida and author of All Man! Hemingway, 1950s Men’s Magazines, and the Masculine Persona, deliv-ered the presentation ―‗Bona-Fide Piece of Printed Matter‘: Gatsby, Pulp magazines, and the Language of Class.‖ Earle‘s work exam-ined how reading matter becomes a marker of characters‘ social identity in The Great Gatsby. The panel was rounded out by Deidre Clemente‘s exploration of Fitzger-ald‘s relationship to clothing, his depictions of fashion trends as cultural history, and his use of fashion and grooming routines as a

means of character development in ―Fashion Trends as Cultural History in F. Scott Fitz-gerald‘s Life and Work.‖ Clemente this year received a PhD in History from Carnegie Mellon University. October 29, 2009 marked the 80th anniversary of the ―Black Tuesday‖ stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. As we found ourselves in a similar period of global economic crisis in 2009, two publica-tions offered different perspectives into Fitz-gerald‘s finances and into the economics of his literary legacy. The illustrated compen-dium F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Marketplace: The Auction and Dealer Catalogues, 1935-2006, ed-ited by the late Matthew J. Bruccoli with Ju-dith S. Baughman, documents Fitzgerald‘s rising reputation through the author‘s in-creasing collectability. An analysis of Fitz-gerald‘s income tax returns over the course of his working life, 1919-1940, appeared in the August 2009 American Scholar, in the es-say ―Living on $500,000 a Year: What F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s Tax Returns Reveal about his Life and Times,‖ by Princeton graduate and University of South Carolina Law School Professor William J. Quirk. Wealth and poverty are, of course, central recurrent themes in Fitzgerald‘s life and works. Less explored, however, has been the association in both his life and his fiction of health and wealth, poverty and illness. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway observes that ―there was no difference between men, in intelli-gence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well‖—a remark that particularly resonates with contempo-rary discussions of health care reform.

On Saturday, the second of the Society‘s panels took this subject as its theme, in an assembly of innovative emerging scholars entitled ―The Health of the Economy: Fitz-gerald, Health Care, and Financial Crisis.‖

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Adam J. Meehan presented ―L‘objet introu-vable: A Lacanian Reading of Gatsby‘s De-sire,‖ an examination of Gatsby through a reading of Jacques Lacan‘s concept of the objet petit a. Meehan is pursuing a PhD in English at University of Arizona. Harvard University PhD candidate Marcella Frydman is writing a dissertation entitled ―New Money in the American Novel‖; her presentation, ―The Pathology of Wealth,‖ examined the author‘s representation of mental illness in Tender Is the Night as inter-ruption, metaphor, and metonym, arguing that the novel stages the interrelationship of wealth and mental illness as interrelated pa-thologies. Sarah Ruth Jacobs‘ ―Disjunct Nar-rative and Neurosis in Tender Is the Night‖ complemented Frydman‘s work, incorporat-ing elements of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald‘s biographies in arguing that the novel‘s in-completeness is indicative of the mental neu-roses it depicts. Jacobs is pursuing a PhD at The CUNY Graduate Center. The American Literature Association annual conference alternates its location between east and west coasts. In 2011, the conference will be in Boston, Massachusetts, May 26-29 (Thursday through Sunday of Memorial Day weekend). We hope to see you there! As al-ways, the Society will sponsor panels of in-novative research providing fresh insights into the author‘s life and work.

Maggie Gordon Froehlich

First Collaborative: FSF Society Sponsors Session at

NCTE Convention

On Friday, November 29, 2010, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society presented a five-person panel on the works F. Scott Fitzgerald at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention in Orlando, Florida. Titled

―Teaching Fitzgerald: New Pedagogies,‖ the session offered fresh ideas on teaching The Great Gatsby, ―A Diamond as Big as the Ritz,‖ and ―Absolution.‖ It also included a presentation on using Fitzgerald-related ma-terials to produce cross curricular products such as dramatic scripts and music. Featured speakers were: Dr. Gail Sinclair, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; Dr. Jonathan Fegley, Middle Georgia College, Cochran, Georgia; Leann Doty, Bullhead City Middle School, Bullhead City, Arizona; Colette Silvestri, Hershey High School, Her-shey, Pennsylvania; and Janice Byrne, Col-lege of Dupage, Glynn Ellen, Illinois, and Geneva High School, Geneva, Illinois. The event marked the first session of what is proposed as ongoing partnership of the two organizations. By mutual agreement the Fitzgerald Society will provide speakers while NCTE will provide space at its annual national conventions. With over 4,000 peo-ple attending the conference this year alone, NCTE provides a vast network through which the Fitzgerald Society can both inspire classroom teachers and invite them to be-come members. During this year‘s session, Janice Byrne and Gail Sinclair introduced the audience to the Fitzgerald Society web site, invited them to attend the summer confer-ence in Lyon, France, and suggested submit-ting a paper topic for the program. Each teacher attending the session received a membership form as well. In 2011 NCTE will celebrate its centennial at the convention to be held in Chicago. Fitz-gerald Society member Chris Messenger, University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, has agreed to organize the session. A volunteer is needed to organize a group for the 2012 convention in Las Vegas.

Janice Byrne

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Alice McDermott Receives Fitzgerald Award at 2010

Rockville Conference Alice McDermott received the F. Scott Fitz-gerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature at the Fifteenth An-nual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference at Montgomery College in Rockville, Mary-land, on October 16, 2010. The day‘s events began with workshops de-voted to Nonfiction: One Day in the Life of a Literary Agent (Shannon O‘Neill); Narrative Nonfiction: How to Do It and Why It’s Impor-tant (David Rowell); Creative Fictional Charac-ters with Skin (Stacy Barton); Writing Prose Poems (Nancy Naomi Carlson); and Flash Fiction (Kirk Nesset). The conference‘s keynote address was deliv-ered by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post book critic and Ring Lardner biographer Jonathan Yardley. In his talk—entitled ―Washington: A Literary Hub?‖—Yardley entertainingly traced the distinguished liter-ary history of the Washington area and then discussed some prominent contemporary writers who currently reside there. His sub-ject effectively established the theme of this year‘s Literary Conference, which, for the first time, was giving its major award to a lo-cal DC-area writer. During the lunch hour, Literary Conference president John Moser announced the names of the Montgomery County Fitzgerald Schol-ars, students representing Montgomery County high schools who had been desig-nated by their teachers as outstanding litera-ture students. Each honoree received a certifi-cate and a book signed by Alice McDermott. Also during the lunch hour, the winners and runners-up in the Literary Conference‘s two

short story contests were announced. Judge Katherine Smith presented the awards in the Thirteenth Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald High School Short Story Contest. To be eligible, entrants must be students in a Montgomery County high school. The runners-up were Arpan Ghosh (Montgomery Blair High School) for ―Via Domus,‖ Vanessa Newman (Blake High School) for ―Koinophilia,‖ and Gabriella Rubin (Jewish Day School) for ―Tears of a Soldier.‖ The winner, David Beye (Richard Montgomery High School) for ―Why I Quit My Job at the Broken Dam County Fair,‖ spoke briefly about his story, which was printed in the Literary Conference program. Judge Richard Peabody then presented the winner and runners-up in the Fifteenth An-nual F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest, open to residents of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.. The runners-up were Mary Claire Mahaney (McLean, VA) for ―Laurel‘s Song,‖ Sarah Collins Honenberger

Alice McDermott

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(Orange, VA) for ―Catcher Caught,‖ and Adrienne N. Guyer (Washington, DC) for ―Fear.‖ The winner, Shweta Sen (German-town, MD) for ―The Essay,‖ was unable to be present to receive her award; her story was also printed in the Literary Conference program. The first event after lunch was a lively panel, ―Washington: A Literary (not just a political) Capital.‖ Moderated by Marie Arana, novel-ist, memoirist, and the former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post, the panel featured DC poet Kim Roberts, local novelist Mary Kay Zuravleff, and Evan Thomas, Newsweek editor and author of several nonfiction books. Alice McDermott was introduced by former Montgomery College English teacher and former Maryland congresswoman Con-stance (―Connie‖) Morella; the Fitzgerald Award was presented by Literary Confer-ence president John Moser and Congress-

woman Morella. After saying a few words about Fitzgerald, Alice McDermott read from her fiction. The day‘s activities concluded with after-noon workshops devoted to The Journey to Finish a Novel (Deanna Fei); From DIY to Inde-pendent Publisher: Mixing the Art & Commerce of the Poetry Book (Amy Holman); What Does a Successful Article Query Look Like? (Lisa Schroder); Screenwriting (Jeff Porro); Poto-mac Review Editors Speak: How to Get Out of the Slush Pile (Will Grofic and Lynn Stearns); and a special workshop on Finding the Right Market for Your Work (Richard Peabody). For information on the 2011 Sixteenth An-nual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, call 301-309-9461 or visit their Website, www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/fscott/.

Jackson R. Bryer

Alice McDermott with former Congresswoman Connie Morella and John Moser, chair of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference committee

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Michel Viel: A Remembrance

J. Gerald Kennedy

Editor‘s note: We were saddened to learn of the passing in January of Michel Viel, a founding Fitz-gerald Society member and professor at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, known to most of us for his excellent commentaries on the nature of translation and Fitzgerald‘s style. Professor Viel‘s close friend J. Gerald Kennedy of Louisiana State University sent us this wonderful remembrance, which

we share by way of sending condolences to the Viel family: ―Michel Viel was a good friend for many years—I met him in 1992 at the Hofstra confer-ence that launched the Fitzgerald society, and we hung out in Paris in ‗94 and at Princeton in ‗96, and after the 2002 Nice conference, Sarah and Molly and I stayed with Michel and his family at their beach house in Le Treyas on the Cote d‘Azur. Molly played with Helene and Sophie (his daughters) a few times in Paris during the summer and, while I was direct-ing the LSU program in Paris in the 1990s, we shared quite a few meals with Michel and his wife, Catherine. Strangely enough, the last time I saw Michel alive was during the summer of 2009, when Sarah and I were in Paris for a few days. We had lunch with Michel and Catherine at a restaurant on the rue des Ecoles around the corner from their apart-ment. Michel was kind, witty, and thoughtful at lunch, but a little distracted, I thought. Much later I learned from his colleague Yann Migoubert, who edited the Festschrift, that it was in walking to the restaurant that day in July that Michel first realized he had some kind of neuromuscular problem. I first heard about his illness when Yann contacted me in March 2010 to contribute to the Festschrift. A specialist in English phonology and grammar as well as director of the Sorbonne‘s Cul-tural Service, Michel was a renowned linguist who worked on Fitzgerald and the Ameri-can expatriates as a passionate diversion and also as an exercise for his formidable skills as a translator. His 1991 translation, Gatsby le magnifique, is a brilliant rendering of Fitzgerald‘s lush prose into French. Michel also published an anthology of short stories and memoirs by American expatriates, with glosses in French, as a textbook for French students learning English. Nearly to the end of his life, as ALS made him increasingly unable to perform eve-ryday tasks, Michel continued to work on Fitzgerald projects and was exploring the idea of publishing an electronic edition of the Gatsby manuscript, based on his study of extant ver-sions. Of course permissions problems emerged to block the way. Michel and I were in regular email contact through the middle of October. Once, as I feebly attempted to express my grief about his dire situation, I alluded to Lou Gehrig‘s famous goodbye to the fans at Yankee Stadium. Michel wrote back: ―I see what Lou Gehrig meant. Life is precious when you have little of it ahead. I‘m more lucky than ‗the luckiest man on the face of the earth‘ because I have email.‖ Much of the email that followed expressed his ardent desire to make all of his manuscript study of Gatsby available electronically, but that was not to be. In the Festschrift, Pierres gravées, chiffres d’une voix, Michel himself has howe-ver supplied some last notes on problematic passages in Fitzgerald‘s novel (as well as a piece on George Orwell and the passive voice in English). He died January 5, 2011, and at his funeral on January 12, his ashes were deposited in the Salle de la Coupole of the crema-torium at Pere Lachaise cemetery. Michel will be greatly missed by his family, friends, and colleagues as well as by many Fitzgerald scholars.‖

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New Research on Fitzgerald at Princeton

W. Barksdale Maynard

Lately I have become interested in Fitzgerald‘s experiences as a Princeton undergraduate and in his lifelong commentary about the university‘s distinctive, elite culture. In an article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly I described the career of Christian Gauss, the romance-languages professor who inspired Fitzgerald and his peers Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop (April 22, 2009). In short pieces in the same magazine I highlighted the artistic interests of Bishop (Jan. 19, 2011) and commemorated the 70th anniversary of Fitz-gerald‘s death (Dec. 8, 2010)—reproducing what may be the last snapshot ever taken of him, along with a photograph of his suitcase keys, now at Princeton‘s Firestone Library. My goal with these articles has been to rekindle Princetonians‘ interest in Fitzgerald, which has seemingly waned lately. In an article I wrote on campus tours (Nov. 18, 2009), I pointed out that tour guides no longer mention Fitzgerald‘s name. Considerable attention is given to Fitzgerald in my book, Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency (Yale University Press, 2008). I examine This Side of Paradise in light of Woodrow Wilson‘s controversial efforts as Princeton president (1902-10) to reform undergraduate life and stamp out snobbery. Fitzgerald was intrigued by Wilson, whose sanctimoniousness strangely jarred with rumors of sexual misbehavior (hence Fitzgerald‘s spoof of Wilson fathering a ―bastard from Trenton‖ in a letter to Bishop). More about Fitzgerald will appear in my forthcoming book, Princeton: An Architectural His-tory of the Campus (Penn State University Press, 2012). A social history, it investigates This Side of Paradise for evidence of how the place functioned in Fitzgerald‘s day. I discuss Fitz-gerald‘s love of Princeton‘s long history, going back to Aaron Burr, and his enthusiasm for Collegiate Gothic architecture. Buildings where he lived, studied, and played are de-scribed, whenever possible, from his viewpoint. There is still much to be learned about Fitzgerald‘s undergraduate years, which were so powerfully formative, and I hope to spark renewed interest in this subject among research-ers at Princeton and elsewhere. W. Barksdale Maynard is the author of five books on American history and has taught at Johns Hop-kins and Princeton Universities.

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The End for Lands End: An Inessential House Melts Away

Robert Beuka

As this edition of the Newsletter was being finalized, plans were in place to commence work on the destruction of Lands End, the estate formerly owned by New York World editor and epic party thrower Herbert Bayard Swope. The house has long been thought of as hav-ing provided a model for Tom and Daisy Buchanan‘s East Egg mansion in The Great Gatsby. The once-grand home, situated on the water in the Gold Coast village of Sands Point, on the North Shore of Long Island, features 14 bedrooms, 25 rooms in all, and 24,000 square feet of living space, as well as a private beach and 75-foot swimming pool set amidst 13 acres of property.

Before acquiring Lands End, Swope was a neighbor of Fitzgerald‘s good friend Ring Lard-ner in Great Neck, on the other side of Manhasset Bay. Fitzgerald and Lardner attended some of the elaborate parties Swope threw at his Great Neck estate, affairs that clearly made an impact on Fitzgerald and the novel he was planning at the time. Though Swope would not acquire Lands End until after the Fitzgeralds had left Great Neck for Europe, the view of the great house across the bay had likely left a lasting impression. Pace University professor and Fitzgerald Society member Walter Raubicheck told the New York Post it was

House and grounds in better days: An aerial view of Lands End

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―certainly possible,‖ though not verifiable, that Lands End served as a model for the Bu-chanan house. Hofstra University professor and Executive Director of the Fitzgerald Soci-ety, Ruth Prigozy, was a bit more convinced of the connection; she told the Post, ―I think it‘s probable that he used the physical aspects of Lands End as a model‖ for the Buchanan estate, saying of the house, ―It was the view—that‘s what set it apart.‖1 As reported by Emily C. Dooley in Newsday, the estate‘s current owner, Bert Brodsky, has had it on the market for five years and no longer wishes to maintain expensive upkeep on the house and property. Instead, the home will be torn down and the property subdivided into five more modest homes. Modesty, of course, is a relative concept, and on today‘s Gold Coast, these smaller mansions are expected to fetch as much as $10 million apiece.2

How one is expected to feel about this news is an open question: While Fitzgerald admirers may hate to see another tie to the Gatsby era erased, it is difficult to imagine, in these trying economic times, the person on the street caring much whether the house gets sold as-is for thirty million or torn down and its property subdivided for fifty million. The demise of Lands End represents not so much the end of an era as another step in the remaking of a landscape that once symbolized the realization of the American dream, in all its glory and excess. In 1922, the time of the novel‘s action (and the year when Fitzgerald moved to Great Neck), Long Island‘s Gold Coast accommodated over 500 estates similar to the Bu-chanan and Gatsby mansions, according to Gold Coast historian Monica Randall. Built by millionaires and industry tycoons, these palatial homes both utilized and reshaped the

Faded glory: Boarded-up windows and damaged columns attest to the house‘s condition

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natural geography of the North Shore, signifying social class through elaborate architec-ture and appropriation of the rural, seaside landscape. Randall calls the creation of these homes ―an architectural phenomenon unparalleled both in excessiveness and originality.‖3 Fitzgerald scholar Ronald Berman has argued that this architectural phenomenon was most notable for its symbolic overtones, for the sense that ―a new American history could be created in twenty-four hours, an illusion of ancestry long in the land.‖4 Professor Berman‘s observation points us back to central concerns of The Great Gatsby, a novel filled with landscapes of illusion and memory. Tom Buchanan‘s fraudulent pose as an embodiment of the ―civilized‖ virtues of an American aristocracy is grounded in the stateliness and isolation of his East Egg home and landscape; the democratic onrush of life just across the ―courtesy bay,‖ best exemplified in Gatsby‘s raucous parties, to which hordes of people just ―show up‖ from parts unknown, debunks Tom‘s pretensions to ex-clusivity and represents instead a landscape in transition. To readers of The Great Gatsby today, Fitzgerald‘s glamorous Gold Coast might seem, at best, a distant cultural memory. On the other hand, the connections between Jay Gatsby‘s gaudy West Egg estate and the architecturally outrageous ―McMansions‖ that tower over today‘s cul-de-sac suburbia seem almost too obvious to miss. Similarly, by the middle of the twentieth century, when the glory days of the Gold Coast were over, Long Island once again became a symbolically important American landscape, with the rise of Levittown and the postwar suburban dream. As Fitzgerald makes clear throughout The Great Gatsby, particularly in Nick‘s haunting, lyrical closing to the book, when he sprawls out on the sandy shore of Long Island Sound and senses the ―inessential houses‖ that surround him beginning to ―melt away,‖ places change and landscapes evolve, inexorably. The desire to affix permanent symbolic meanings to living landscapes is inherently futile, Nick tells us, but also a peculiarly American preoccupation.

Perhaps the end of Lands End can be thought of as life imitating art. Tom‘s attempt to buy himself a ―civilization‖ apart from society was bogus from the start, as Nick could see well enough. And now, back in the real world, the crumbling, long-abandoned solitary mansion in Sands Point will make way for five new homes, for five more wealthy adherents to the gaudy American dream. Will the house be mourned? Clifford Fetner, the construction manager on the new subdivision project, would say no. The house isn‘t even the point, as he told Newsday: ―The value of the property is the land.‖5

It is the land that matters. One imagines that Nick Carraway—and his Dutch sailors—would agree, wistfully.

__________________________ 1 qtd. in Selim Algar, ―Bulldozer Due for Mansion Linked to ‗Great Gatsby,‘‖ New York Post, 8 March 2011: 21. 2 Emily C. Dooley, ―History Takes a Hit on Gold Coast,‖ Newsday, 6 March 2011: A13. 3 Monica Randall, The Mansions of Long Island’s Gold Coast (New York: Hastings House, 1979), 11.

4 Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Modern Times (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 41. 5 qtd. in Dooley, A13.

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News and Notes

Luhrmann’s Grate Gatsby

It‘s nice to know that Australian film critics are both literate and in possession of proper sensibilities. An article from Melbourne‘s Sunday Age (December 28, 2008) published just after Australian filmmaker Baz Luhr-mann acquired the rights to The Great Gatsby (but long before the recent announcement that he plans to shoot it in 3-D!) caught our eye. In it, Kenneth Nguyen, a Melbourne cor-respondent, implores Luhrmann, ―Please, Baz, tone down the kitsch.‖

―Put simply, there is little in Luhrmann‘s re-cord to suggest he is capable of delivering an adaptation of The Great Gatsby that will be anything other than a travesty. Luhrmann‘s gift, such as it is, is his ability to spin kitsch into occasionally affecting pop art: hence, ballroom dancing became Strictly Ballroom, the visual language of MTV became Romeo + Juliet. Even on this home territory, however, his gift can fail him: witness Moulin Rouge, which turned a stew of kitschy ingredients—Bollywood choreography, the music of Elton John, the face of Nicole Kidman—into ... well, kitsch. And forgettable kitsch at that.‖

―…The prospect of a Luhrmann-directed Great Gatsby is nothing less than frightening. The Great Gatsby would be difficult for even the highest master. How could one ever do justice to Scott Fitzgerald‘s achingly beauti-ful sentences, without taking the cop-out route of the voice-over? In Lurhmann‘s hands, we could well be in for two hours of that of which Gatsby was once accused: ap-palling sentimentality.‖

―I offer some humble advice: 1. Get the themes right. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lurhmann intimated

that his Great Gatsby would be a commentary on capitalism. ―If you wanted to show a mir-ror to people that says, ‗You‘ve been drunk on money,‘ they‘re not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time, they‘d be willing to,‖ Luhrmann said. ‗People will need an explanation of where we are and where we‘ve been, and The Great Gatsby can provide that explanation.‘‖

―It is as if Luhrmann imagines his film can comment on the current crisis just as the book commented on the Great Depression. There is one problem, of course. The Great Gatsby was published in 1926, a full three years before Black Friday. Gatsby is about many things—the inescapability of the past, the dangers of the romantic temperament, the simultaneous beauty and folly of the American dream—but the risks inhering in securitised debt structures is not one of them.‖ (Good analysis, but the novel was published in 1925, maybe 1926 in Australia.)

2. Keep the imagery subtle. Luhrmann loves his grand visual gestures: the Kings Cross Coca-Cola sign that served as a backdrop to Strictly Ballroom, the red, serif-lettered ―L‘Amour‖ sign… in Moulin Rouge, the ex-travagant jump-cuts of Romeo + Juliet. But one of the enduring qualities of The Great Gatsby is how simple much of the imagery is: the brutality of a breast swiped off a body, the solitude of a man throwing his arms over dark water. Luhrmann would do well to rep-licate this subtlety in his adaptation. Know this much, Baz: if the green light at the end of Daisy‘s dock becomes a flashing neon sign that says ―LOVE‖ in 800-point Arial, some of us are going to be really cheesed off.‖

―So we beat on, boats against the current, hoping that Baz Luhrmann doesn‘t com-pletely screw up The Great Gatsby.‖ Submitted by Robert Beuka

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Fitzgerald Bio from the 60s At the 2009 Fitzgerald Conference in Balti-more, one of the organizers, Joan Hellman, showed a VHS video copy of a 16mm film biography of Fitzgerald, Marked for Glory, that a TV station in Baltimore did in the early 60s. It is an excellent work, with many pic-tures, video clips, and interviews. The family of Gwinn Owens, who made the film, had the original from the TV station stored in their house. Mr. Owens has since passed away, but several years ago the TV station was moving, getting rid of some old things, and allowed him to keep the film. Don Skemer at the Firestone Library said they would preserve the 16mm film and make it available to scholars, so the family agreed to give it to Princeton. Now the work is done, so the DVD can be viewed at the Li-brary Reading Room in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, which is in the Firestone Library. One must first reg-ister as a reader, which simply requires some form of photo identification, plus a laptop and earphones. It is well worth watching if you are ever in the vicinity of Princeton. The university‘s lawyers were worried about who really owns all the rights, and perhaps the TV station would object to their just handing it out to anyone, so it may only be viewed at the Firestone Library. Remember to bring laptop and earphones. Submitted by Tom Adams

Gatsby and Charlie Brown

M. Thomas Inge‘s essay, ―Two Boys from the Twin Cities: Jay Gatsby and Charlie Brown,‖ originally read at the St. Paul Fitzgerald Con-ference and first published in 2004, was re-cently selected for inclusion in a textbook anthology of ―the best scholarly writing on the history and significance of the comics,‖ A Comics Studies Reader, edited by Jeet Heer

and Kent Worcester (University Press of Mis-sissippi, 2009). Inge has published an edition of the essays of Charles M. Schulz under the title My Life with Charlie Brown (also University Press of Mississippi, 2010). One of the essays in-cludes Schulz‘s response to the question, who is your favorite author? ―F. Scott Fitzgerald. I have read almost eve-rything Fitzgerald wrote except maybe a few short stories. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books, although it took about four readings before I understood it.‖ Schulz was well read in modern literature. He once took a community college course on the novel in 1965 and chose to write his main essay on Katherine Anne Porter‘s Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The paper is published in My Life with Charlie Brown for the first time. Submitted by M. Thomas Inge

The Great Gatsby Saves a Bookstore— For a While Skyline Books, a part of New York City‘s al-ready diminished Book Row located on West 18th St. between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, was opened 20 years ago by Rob Warren. As his monthly rent gradually rose from $2,500 to $8,000, Mr. Warren paid the bills by selling signed first editions, earn-ing $100,000 for a copy of The Great Gatsby, bought from ―a kid who wanted a few thou-sand bucks, which he took right up to Manny‘s Music Shop and bought an electric guitar.‖ But Skyline can no longer hold off the rent increases or behemoth bookstores and Web sites. So Mr. Warren will begin sell-ing online, taking with him the store‘s be-loved cat, Linda. Even Gatsby can only do so much. From Corey Kilgannon‘s column Open & Shut in the New York Times, January 31, 2010.

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Class Notes of 1917 In an article from the online edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly (posted April 7, 2010), Gregg Lange (class of 1970) provides this interesting look at Fitzgerald‘s standing in the Class Notes section of the PAW. ―In three years, we‘ll actually be referring to him as F. Scott Fitzgerald 1917. In April 2013 the Class of 2017 pops into being, and Fitz-gerald‘s epoch, always otherworldly in many important senses anyway, officially will be of another century. ―He and Zelda Sayre were married 90 years ago, a week following the publication of This Side of Paradise—a convenient juncture that allows us to dwell on the vicissitudes of ce-lebrity, the strengths of literature and ideas, and the weaknesses of humankind. Since Fitzgerald died only 20 years later with a copy of PAW [Princeton Alumni Weekly] in his hands (making notes about the football team, which regrettably over time has had that effect on others, too), we here at Your Favorite Periodical owe him no less. ―But as mesmerizing a paean as This Side of Paradise is, as much as Fitzgerald went nuts for Hobey Baker 1914 (greetings, brand-new Class of 2014!) and the Triangle Club, he fit far better with the Prospect Avenue end of Princeton than the Pyne Library side. His class card resembles more a World War I battlefield than an academic experience; leaving Princeton for the war after two un-successful assaults on his junior-year aca-demic load may not have seemed as dra-matic a change to him as to us. ―Is Fitzgerald‘s noblesse oblige Princeton really important anymore? Is there really anything left to say about the Jazz Age, ex-cept that he named it? As the tenured his-tory faculty grapples with those … why

don‘t we focus instead on that fateful issue of PAW, and the reason ol‘ Scott was proba-bly perusing it in the first place? Let‘s look at the Class Notes of 1917; as you certainly should be aware, Class Notes are by far our most-read feature (I don‘t take that person-ally, mostly). Believe it or not, Fitzgerald even kept a chart tracking his classmates. ―The ‘17 class secretaries faced an 800-pound gorilla from the day This Side of Paradise was published until the day Fitzgerald died, and even afterward: How do you publicly han-dle a classmate who‘s a lightning rod, whose writings and wanderings are the stuff of the gossip mags, whose notoriety more than overbalances the other 483 guys in the class? Let‘s take a glimpse at how they did it. ―In college, Fitzgerald hardly was the most notable guy in the class, but classmates knew him well. The Class Poll in his Nassau Herald mentions him only twice: as seventh ‗wittiest,‘ and very tellingly as fourth ‗thinks he is.‘ The die was cast, although perversely he listed as his career goal: ‗He will pursue graduate work in English at Harvard [??], then he will engage in newspaper work.‘ Maybe he was just trying to be witty. ―In any event, his Army career (mostly in Kansas) appears only perfunctorily among the notes of the extensive military exploits of the self-named War Baby class—21 of whom (5 percent) died in Europe. But in March of 1919 he showed up at a class dinner in New York while living there, one of the very few organized class events he ever attended; his civilian occupation is unmentioned. Then the following January ‗it is reported‘ that a prominent publishing house has accepted one of his books. ―The March 3, 1920, Class Notes mention that The Saturday Evening Post is to publish some of his stories—no note of the novel.

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This Side… came out on March 26, sold out in days, by the next week was a sensation for Scribner‘s, and his entire role in the world changed. The effect on his generation was so pervasive that there was a short sat-ire of the book in a class reunion promotion only six weeks later. It was assumed every-one already knew who ‗Amory‘ was. ―The class secretary notes in May that ‗most of the characters are members of our Class, and are easily discernable,‘ and that Scott and Zelda are now married. By December, he notes the ‗great diversity of opinion‘ over This Side…, but opines ‗that [Fitzgerald] is no mean businessman, and is writing a movie scenario for D.W. Griffith for $15,000.‘ The strangeness of this is hard to overstate: Realize, this is Scott Fitzgerald writing a si-lent movie. In short order—April 1921, only a year after his first publication—perhaps the most foreshadowing note of all: ‗Mr. and Mrs. Scott Fitzgerald will sail for the Conti-nent in early May.‘ He left behind his com-pleted The Beautiful and the Damned [sic] for publication. ―From that point, common traits in his doz-ens of PAW Class Notes items accrue rap-idly: ―He‘s removed. Always in the third person (who knows which items were submitted by Fitzgerald, which by classmates?) and never quoted directly, the blurbs have a social-page feel to them: ‗The Scott Fitzgeralds have returned from Bermuda.…‘ ―He‘s famous. Names are dropped: Scrib-ner‘s, Esquire, Cavalcade, D.W. Griffith, Gertrude Stein, Edmund Wilson ‘16, Jimmy Stewart ‘31. ―He‘s sophisticated. He and Zelda are for-ever going somewhere, but somehow never arriving for long: Capri, Great Neck, Holly-

wood, Bermuda, Baltimore, Paris. ―He‘s the novelist. He is always ‗working on a novel,‘ his often-brilliant stories somehow an afterthought. Noted in early 1923, The Great Gatsby comes out in 1925. Already promised in 1926, Tender Is the Night is pub-lished serially in 1934. Wistful novel prom-ises recur after that, but notes on movie-script assignments and dramatizations of his previous work begin to intrude by the mid-‘30s. Three weeks before he died in 1940, Fitzgerald wrote class secretary Harvey Smith ‘17 that his new novel was done. The Last Tycoon, of course, wasn‘t close. ―Along the way, bit by bit, things changed. Defensiveness begins to intrude in the notes: Gertrude Stein‘s observation that he sparked a new generation with This Side of Paradise and Gatsby, and that he‘ll be read when most of his contemporaries are forgotten, actually appears twice under separate secretaries. Tender Is the Night is immediately praised overshrilly as ‗the best thing he has written.‘ Then acceptance of decline begins to surface, beginning with the notice of his Esquire auto-biographical article ‗The Crack-Up‘ in 1936. He starts to give published interviews about his long-ago escapades and his wistful feel-ings for Princeton, sounding like he‘s in the Old Guard; he is 40 years old. ―Then, unexpectedly, there‘s a blaze of light. In March of 1939, Fitzgerald writes to the secretary—for quotation—of a chance en-counter with Bert Hormone ‘17, the imagi-nary bon vivant and world traveler who acted as a 1917 talisman and in-joke. Bert, in mid-trip from Brazil to Tahiti, has confided to Fitzgerald his bitter disappointment that his ne‘er-do-well son has been turned down by an ever-more-selective Princeton. Fitzger-ald commiserates, reminding Bert that his own child—his beloved daughter Scottie—also couldn‘t get in, and was forced to settle

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for Vassar. This wonderful flight of fancy, an imaginative way to let the class know about Scottie, is a unique and simple piece of beauty. Two years later, he was dead. ―Lord, Lord this man could write. The Mod-ern Library lists Gatsby as the second-best English language novel of the 20th century (after Joyce‘s Ulysses, a pretty impressive work, to be sure), but bear in mind it also lists Tender Is the Night as 28th, above such as Animal Farm and Sister Carrie. Fitzgerald could make the mundane sing: In addition to the Bert Hormone whimsy for Scottie, consider the following from a 1927 article intended simply to describe Princeton to teenagers:

In my romantic days I tried to conjure up the Princeton of Aaron Burr, Philip Freneau, James Madison and Light Horse Harry Lee, to tie on, so to speak, to the 18th century, to the history of man. But the chain parted at the Civil War, al-ways the broken link in the continuity of Ameri-can life. Colonial Princeton was, after all, a small denominational college. The Princeton I knew and belonged to grew from President McCosh’s great shadow in the ’70s, grew with the great post-bellum fortunes of New York and Philadel-phia to include coaching parties and keg parties and the later American conscience and Booth Tarkington’s Triangle Club and Wilson’s clois-tered plans for an educational Utopia. Bound up with it somewhere was the rise of American foot-ball. ―A more succinct and evocative history les-son is impossible to imagine. His ability to feel and emote were monumental; his ability (and poor Zelda‘s, of course) to live life day-to-day fitful at best. When his heart gave out over the 5-2-1 football team, his classmates understood that better than anyone. His PAW memorial (Jan. 20, 1941), one of the very best of its kind, explains:

Many of us of the Class of 1917 felt that a bright page of our youth had been torn out and crum-pled up when we learned of the death of Scott Fitzgerald. We remember that every day of his life in Prince-ton he was, unconsciously perhaps, laying the groundwork for the very stories which afterward brought him fame. He continued until his death to be the gay young magician with words, still occupied with proms and debutantes, and as careless of the workaday world of middle age as in college he had been of any but his favorite studies. The Class has lost its best known member; its first to attain nationwide fame; its first to appear in Who‘s Who; and perhaps its only member who in spirit never grew much older than the college boy we all knew.

Submitted by Robert Beuka

A photo from the Nassau Herald, 1920

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Gatsby Electronica

The Great Gatsby has been reborn in a num-ber of electronic incarnations within the past year. Two different video game adaptations of the novel have hooked more than a few Fitzgerald scholars so far. The most recent release, ―The Great Gatsby for NES,‖ has been making the rounds on Facebook, at-tracting attention and fans due to its inten-tionally anachronistic design and graphics. Find it at www.greatgatsbygame.com. Made to look like a Nintendo game from twenty years back, ―The Great Gatsby for NES‖ mimics the novel‘s preoccupation with the power of the past, luring in fans by turning the aesthetic and technological clock back an entire generation. Blogger Oliver Miller (www.thefastertimes.com) sums up the ap-peal of the game: ―In standard video game style, the game has little to do with the book itself, although you do play as protagonist Nick Carraway, and you jump around and kill flappers, butlers, and giant crabs by throwing your standard felt hat at them, all of which makes very little sense—and all of which is awesome. Occasionally, you can upgrade to a more powerful golden hat, in a reference to Gatsby‘s epigraph.‖

Another computer-based video game, re-leased online by I-Play (www.iplay.com) in 2010, Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby, also got good reviews, though it lacks the kitschy appeal and hat-tossing action of its competitor. In this game the player, adopt-ing the role of Nick Carraway, navigates scenes from the novel while finding and col-lecting hidden objects to advance in the game. (There is evidence that the I-Play folks know something about the novel: One must, as the game begins, immediately find five clocks hidden in the surrounding scenery.)

Also debuting in 2010 was the ―Gatsby‖ ap-plication for social networking devices like Facebook and Foursquare.

From the promotional material for the Gatsby app: ―Whenever you check in, Gatsby will see if there is anyone nearby who shares interests with you, and if there is, he‘ll text you both with your first name and shared interests.‖ Well, he always did know how to throw a good party.

Submitted by Robert Beuka Nick drops in on Owl Eyes in the library

The logo for the Gatsby app: Apparently, the developers think Gatsby is a butler

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Fitzgerald-related Houses on Long Island In a New York Times story (September 30, 2010), Mary Jo Murphy examines Long Is-land real estate associated with Fitzgerald. She begins by citing Fitzgerald‘s continuing hold on America‘s imagination, and points as evidence to the opening of Gatz at New York City‘s Public Theater, an eight-hour staged reading of every word in the novel. The house he rented from October 1922 until April 1924 in Great Neck at 6 Gateway Drive, at which he parked his rented Rolls Royce, is featured in a picture by Joshua Bright at the head of the story. There is a seasonal Great Gatsby Boat Tour around Manhasset Bay, during which the guide, Eleanor Cox, invites passengers to select a mansion along the shore of Great Neck, then pivot east and choose a house at Sands Point for the Buchanans. Among the elaborate structures of Great Neck (West Egg) is the former house of Groucho Marx, now occupied by Bill O‘Reilly. A reputed inspiration for the Buchanan house in Sands Point (East Egg) is Lands End, formerly owned by newspaperman Herbert Bayard Swope and his wife Marga-ret, occasional hosts of the Fitzgeralds, but purchased by them after the Fitzgeralds had left for Europe. Before then the Swopes had lived in Great Neck, in a house that no longer exists, but close to that of Ring Lard-ner, Fitzgerald‘s drinking buddy, at 325 East Shore Road. Lands End is in disrepair, and the developers seek to tear it down and sub-divide the property (see related story on page 10 of this Newsletter). Margaret disin-vited the Fitzgeralds from their Great Neck parties ―after Zelda stripped at a party and tried to seduce Margaret‘s shy adolescent brother, who was terrified.‖ According to one account, ―That was it for Margaret.

Zelda was out. ‗Not with my brother, sister! Not in my house Mrs. F!‘‖

Ring’s Place

Cathrine Duffy reported in Newsday (February 5, 2010) that Ring Lardner‘s house at the tip of Great Neck is up for sale.

―This 19-room Colonial overlooking Man-hasset Bay in Kings Point was formerly owned by sports columnist and short-story writer Ring Lardner. ‗It‘s a special house,‘ says listing agent Patricia Black of Coldwell Banker Claire Sobel in Roslyn Heights. ‗It‘s solid as a rock.‘

―The house, built in 1853, is rumored to have been host to legends of the Jazz Age, includ-ing F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Gershwin, Black says, adding that Lardner lived in the house from 1921 to 1928.

―Its classic features include crown molding, inlaid hardwood floors, porcelain doorknobs and arched doorways.

―Included in the $2.25 million asking price is a narrow strip of Manhasset Bay waterfront. Gatsby, Tom and Daisy would be charmed.‖

Submitted by Robert Beuka

Banana Buchanan Eric Rauchway, professor of history and now first-time novelist, published in June, 2010 Banana Republican: From the Buchanan File with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Publish-ers Weekly, in its July issue, gave it this re-view: ―In his unfortunate fiction debut, historian Rauchway (Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America) imagines that Tom Bu-chanan, Daisy‘s loutish, unpleasant husband from The Great Gatsby, has written a memoir. For 30 pages, this is inspired: the famous lantern at the end of the dock dangles like a

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broken wine bottle in a drunk‘s loose grip, Daisy has grown pudgy, and the passage of time has tempered Tom‘s inherent unpleas-antness with rueful humor. But then, in a bewildering shift, Tom decamps to Central America and becomes a key player in the United States‘ official and unofficial inter-ventions in Nicaragua‘s turbulent politics circa 1925–1927. Tom goes everywhere and meets everyone (in the span of 20 pages, he runs guns for the rebels and goes on mis-sions for the State Department‘s Bureau of Secret Intelligence) with an increasing sense of tedium and implausibility. As he seeks to protect family business interests, his conser-vative stances and racist attitudes become a one-note joke that quickly sours. Given the cleverness of the first two chapters, the unre-lenting dreadfulness of the remainder of the book is bewildering.‖

Fitzgerald and Salinger

In his new biography entitled J. D. Salinger: A Life (New York: Random House, 2011), Kenneth Slawenski provides a few insights into Salinger‘s respect and admiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald. When Salinger was in prep school, the older sister of his friend ad-vised him to read Fitzgerald‘s fiction. ‖He found in Fitzgerald not only an author to emulate, but a kindred soul‖ (25). Salinger‘s joining the army might have been ―in emula-tion‖ of Fitzgerald (57), and both sold their first stories to The Saturday Evening Post. When in Paris, Salinger thought of the days when Sherwood Anderson and Fitzgerald had befriended Ernest Hemingway, thus helping the younger writer‘s fledgling ca-reer. Salinger met Hemingway in Paris and would remain in contact with him for many years. But unquestionably, he regarded Fitz-gerald as the greater writer. He moved to Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald had lived while working on his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, in 1920. Later,

when Salinger turned his eye to Hollywood, his agent was H. N. Swanson, a partner of Harold Ober Associates, the firm that repre-sented Fitzgerald. Slawenski notes that ―perhaps Salinger‘s most judicious words were reserved for the topic of F. Scott Fitz-gerald‖ (136), when he compared the beauty of Fitzgerald‘s writings to his many personal ―shortcomings‖ (137). Salinger‘s only some-what sharp criticism was his contention that it was probably better that Fitzgerald had died before completing The Last Tycoon, as any revisions would have ruined the work (137).

Submitted by Ruth Prigozy

Gatz Takes Manhattan 2010 was a huge year for Gatz, the hybrid performance piece/marathon staged read-ing of The Great Gatsby by New York‘s Eleva-tor Repair Service. (See Volumes 16 and 19 of the Newsletter for our previous coverage of this show.) After a highly successful run in Boston that garnered three Elliot Norton Awards— for Outstanding Visiting Produc-tion, Outstanding Director, Large Company (John Collins) and Outstanding Actor, Large Company (Scott Shepherd)—the show fi-nally received clearance from the Fitzgerald Estate to open in New York in the autumn of 2010. To say that Gatz took New York by storm would be an understatement. It made numerous year-end ―best of‖ lists from the critics, and was ranked as the best show of the year by both New York magazine and the New York Times, in which Ben Brantley, in a Dec. 19, 2010 column, referred to Gatz as ―The most remarkable achievement in thea-ter not only of this year but also of this dec-ade (which, gee, means this century too),‖ stating that the play ―captured—in inven-tively theatrical terms—the unmatchable, heady rush of falling in love with a book. And Scott Shepherd, as a common reader

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seduced by a great American novel, gave—hands down—the year‘s most heroic per-formance.‖

Fitzgerald and Sex In a Time article (May 3, 2010) on the fiftieth anniversary of the Pill and how it has changed life in America, Nancy Gibbs quotes from Fitzgerald‘s This Side of Paradise to show that sex has always been with us. ―Fitzgerald alarmed mothers by telling them ‗how casually their daughters were accus-tomed to being kissed.‘‖

From the Catalogs Royal Books (Baltimore, MD), in its Febru-ary 2010 catalog (28), offers a first edition, first issue of The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribners, 1925), sans dustjacket, $6000, and another first issue, in slightly less good con-dition, $3000. From its December catalog (31), Royal Books offers a first edition of All the Sad Young Men (New York: Scribners, 1926), first issue binding, with dust wrapper, $12,500. Peter L. Stern & Company (Boston) in its February/March 2010 catalog offers a treas-ure trove of Fitzgerald letters to Gilbert Seldes, starting with three holograph letters: First, two pages to Seldes from Ellerslie, in Delaware, undated, but likely 1927: ―The doll was beautiful—I sleep with it. You are the dearest grandmother a little girl ever had….As I sit here in my spacious twenty room mansion, hearing the howling of the winds outside and the groans of my toiling servants below, I think how wonderful to be born a German princelet….I don‘t blame ei-ther of you for being disgusted with our public brawl the other day.…we are sober and almost the nicest people I ever met….our difference of opinion which had been going on for a miserable fortnight for

two weeks before we came to New York and led to all the unpleasantness, is settled and forgotten.‖ Signed ―Scott,‖ with a marginal postscript in Fitzgerald‘s hand about a letter sent by Zelda to Seldes. $12,500. A second letter to Seldes, undated, probably 1929, sent from France: ―I was delighted, so was Zelda, to hear that you‘re back in Europe. Ring [Lardner] sent me a clipping about your play—I know how it feels to see one go pop before your eyes and I deeply sympathized with you…Zelda has been sick off and on for a year and we‘ve come to this lost town for a widely claimed salt cure for her….Our plans depend, as usual, on finance…Always your friend, Scott Fit-‖ $12,500. A third hand-written letter to Seldes from Switzer-land, where Zelda was being treated, un-dated, 1930-31: Fitzgerald thanks Seldes for a check, ―just emerging in company with Zelda from the biggest muddle we ever got into….Zelda is near well now that its now a question of a few weeks—but she had a damn narrow escape from permanent neu-rasthenia or worse. We have no plans. I am here in Switzerland near her….Your Affec-tionate Old Friend, Scott.‖ Seldes has pen-ciled an annotation on the verso, ―We were in Paris…,‖ $12,500. Then there are four typed letters to Seldes: First, a letter signed in ink, ―Scott,‖ written March 26, 1934, urging Seldes to come to Baltimore for an exhibition of Zelda‘s paint-ings, $6,000. Second, a letter signed in brown color pencil, ―Scott,‖ written in Baltimore July 10, 1936, thanking Seldes for his letter, saying that ―under other circumstances I would have voluminously answered, but this is moving day….I appreciated your in-terest tremendously and that I shall weigh what you have said,‖ $5000. A three-page letter sent from Baltimore, April 26, 1934, in which Fitzgerald thanks Seldes for his favor-able review of Tender Is the Night. ―…I never had any doubt after the weeks and months

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of half-sleepless work on the thing that it had some special merit and value….On the whole the press has been very good...[except] for some student who didn‘t seem to know what the thing was all about….The only tragedy of that…is that it is the refer-ence journal of the old maid librarians of the Great West. However, your review, more than any other, has given me the most satis-faction, and again I thank you for liking the book.‖ Signed in ink, ―Scott,‖ with the ad-dendum of a postscript: ―…I have just sold Amanda and Maxwell Perkins to the movies for a practically inexhaustible sum. I tried to throw you in…but they wouldn‘t take you….‖ Signed at end, ―S.‖ $15,000. And fourth, a three-page letter to Seldes from Bal-timore, May 31, 1934, signed in pencil, ―Scott.‖ Fitzgerald commented on Seldes‘s editing of a volume of Ring Lardner‘s work: ―…At first I was disappointed because I had expected there would be enough stuff for an omnibus and I still feel that it could have more weight.‖ Fitzgerald then discusses one-act plays and suggests that Seldes edit a collection of Grand Guignol dramas. The final paragraph comments further on re-views of Tender: ―…My novel seems to go pretty well…No two reviewers—and I am speaking only of the big shots—agree who was the leading character….My total im-pression is that a whole lot of people just skimmed through the book for the story and it simply cannot be read that way,‖ $17,500. There is an undated questionnaire with eleven questions, probably from the mid-thirties, which Fitzgerald answered in pen-cil, and seriously, however inane the ques-tion: i.e. ―Do you think that the more sensi-tive a person is, the more likely he or she is to choose the instant death?‖ Fitzgerald‘s answer: ―It‘s a question of vitality, not of ex-perience or logic. Read Eclisiastes [sic]‖—one of the few spelling errors apparent in

these letters. $17,500. Then there are five books, all first editions. Flappers and Philosophers (New York: Scrib-ners, 1922), sixth printing, chipped dust-jacket, inscribed: ―For Edward Everett Hor-ton from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Looking over these stories has made me feel somewhat of an ancient, thoroughly dated, but they go with the rap. Hollywood, 1939,‖ $35,000. Fitzgerald rented a guest house from actor Horton on his Encino estate (―Belly Acres‖) when he worked in Hollywood. A first printing of The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribners, 1925), without dustwrappers, $1750; and a second printing of the first edi-tion (one of 3000), also without wrapper, $875. All the Sad Young Men (New York: Scribners, 1926), $250. And a first printing, second state of Taps at Reveille (New York: Scribners, 1935), with dustjacket, inscribed: ―We are now at the end of the sequence—please accept this gift with admiration from the giver, whom you know, of you, as a man and as an artist. F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ed-ward Everett Horton. Encino 1939,‖ $75,000. And finally, there are two letters from Zelda to Seldes. The first is a duplicated religious message, signed in ink, Zelda Fitzgerald, undated, but probably 1944, $3000; the sec-ond is a two-page holograph from Mont-gomery, dated Jan. 4, 1944: ―Trusting that these years of dramatic intensities and so-compelling exigencies have not obliterated your contact with the theatre, may I ask your interest on behalf of Miss Eleanor Turnbull, a childhood protege of Scott‘s? He found her particularly endowed with emotional power and with spontaneity….I hope you will be able to give her some friendly advice…and greatly accomodate [sic] me? $7500. Bayard and Margaret Turnbull were his landlords at La Paix outside Baltimore, 1932-33; Eleanor was the sister of Fitzgerald‘s later biogra-

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pher Andrew Turnbull, who was about the age of the Fitzgeralds‘ daughter Scottie. Bauman Rare Books (New York City) adver-tised (March 14, 2010) a presentation/association first edition, second printing of Tender Is the Night (NY: Scribners, 1934), with first issue dustjacket and an inscription—from the newspaper ad it looks like ―For Sherman Kent (who has no book—Thank God) from F Scott Fitzgerald.‖ Kent is cred-ited with later founding modern intelligence analysis. $42,000. Bauman also advertised (June 13, 2010) a first edition, first issue of The Great Gatsby (NY: Scribners, 1925), in the first-issue dust-jacket, for a mere $168,000. For comparison in the same ad they offer an inscribed first edition of Hemingway‘s The Sun Also Rises, in the original dustjacket, for $85,000. And on October 13, 2010, Bauman offered a presentation first edition of The Beautiful and Damned (New York: Scribners, 1922)—mistitled in the ad as The Beautiful and the Damned”—inscribed to Hyatt Downing, bound in morocco-gilt, $20,000. Between the Covers (Gloucester City, NJ) in its Catalog 159 (March 2010), lists two Fitz-gerald-related items: Tony Buttitta‘s After the Good Gay Times: Asheville—Summer of ’35 A Season with F. Scott Fitzgerald (NY: Viking, 1974), a first edition, with dustwrapper; an account of Buttitta‘s friendship with Fitzger-ald that summer, $75. And Aaron Latham‘s Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (NY: Viking, 1971), first edition, with dust-jacket, $50. In its Catalog 163 for September, Between the Covers lists two Fitzgerald items: Tales of the Jazz Age (New York: Scribners, 1922), first edition, first printing, sans dust-wrapper, $2500, and a first edition, first

printing The Great Gatsby (New York: Scrib-ners, 1925), no wrapper, $4000. Between the Covers‘ holiday catalog, 166, lists two books by Fitzgerald and a paper about him: Flappers and Philosophers (New York: Scribners, 1920), first edition, lacking dustwrapper, $800; a first edition, second printing of All the Sad Young Men (New York: Scribners, 1926), with dustjacket, $6000; and an inscribed 17-page pamphlet, with stapled covers, by Andrew Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald at La Paix (Cambridge: MIT, 1956), $750. Lame Duck Books (Cambridge, MA) in its catalog 87 for October, 2010, offers a first edi-tion, first issue of The Great Gatsby (New York, Scribners, 1925), $2,500. Quill & Brush (Dickerson, MD) in its Christ-mas 2010 catalog lists a first edition of Tender Is the Night (New York: Scribners, 1934), il-lustrated by Edward Shenton, with dust-jacket and clamshell box, $22,500. Quill & Brush is also reoffering two holograph pencil-written letters and a telegram that Fitzgerald sent to Pauline Brownell, the nurse who took care of him in Asheville, N.C., after he broke his shoulder diving in 1936. (See last year‘s Newsletter for details about the letters.) Last year the price was $20,000; now it is $12,500. Also offered are two Esquire magazines with pieces by Fitz-gerald: the Christmas 1939 issue with ―The Lost Decade,‖ as well as stories by Irwin Shaw and Jesse Stuart; and the January 1940 issue with ―Pat Hobby‘s Christmas Wish,‖ as well as stories by John Collier and Jesse Stuart—$75 each. Submitted by Jackson Bryer

News and Notes is compiled by Peter L. Hays

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News and Notes: Please send items that you believe will be of interest to our members to Profes-sor Peter Hays, English Department, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616. Email: plhays@ucdavis.edu. You may also send items to Professor Robert Beuka, English Department, Bronx Community College, Bronx, NY 10453. email: robert.beuka@bcc.cuny.edu

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Newsletter is pub-lished annually by the F. Scott Fitzgerald So-ciety and is edited by Robert Beuka, English Dept., Bronx Community College, Bronx, NY 10453. The co-editor is Ruth Prigozy, English Dept., Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549. Society dues are $30 ($25 for students). Please send inquiries about membership and dues to Ruth Prigozy, English Department, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549. For more about the Society, please visit the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Website: http://www.fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org

Table of Contents

Conferences Eleventh International Fitzgerald Conference: Lyon, 2011…......…………….. 1 Fitzgerald Panels at ALA Conference, San Francisco, May 2010………….……. 4 Fitzgerald Society at the NCTE Conference, Orlando, 2010 ………….…………. 5 Alice McDermott Receives Fitzgerald Award at 2010 Rockville Conference… 6

Articles & FEATURES Michel Viel: A Remembrance J. Gerald Kennedy ………………………………………………….……... 8 New Research on Fitzgerald at Princeton W. Barksdale Maynard ……...……………………………………………... 9 The End for Lands End: An Inessential House Melts Away Robert Beuka………...………………………………………………………….. 10 News and Notes Peter L. Hays………………………………………………….………………... 13

ISSN-1-72-5504