"--Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?
--Please do. It's too light in here" (93).
Fitzgerald allegedly advised his daughter to "absorb six good authors a year." If absorbing an author involves reading all of their publications, then such a feat could be quite a difficult one. While I can say that I do read the novels of more than six authors every year, I certainly cannot report having absorbed their writings in entirety. I both approve of this idea and shrug my shoulders in wonder that any fully employed person can achieve this goal.
Of course, Fitzgerald was never what anyone would consider "traditionally employed," as he spent his adult life alternately living the roaring '20s lifestyle of a successful writer and barely making ends meet in drier financial times. He lived mercurially, epically, tragically, curiously. His celebrity marriage was the stuff of supermarket tabloids and influenced every one of his novels, as far as I can tell.
Speaking of absorbing authors and Fitzgerald himself, I have reached the end of my journey in reading all of his published works. This journey began when I was in high school and first read The Great Gatsby, and I must say that I have been looking for the magic I found in one of my favorite American classics ever since. I'm not entirely sure that I've found it, although traversing so many of Fitzgerald's has certainly given me a very well-rounded and interesting reflection on the writer himself. I have chosen to conclude my time with Fitzgerald, for now, with his final novel, Tender is the Night.
1. "The faces were only formally sad but Dick's lungs burst for a moment with regret for Abe's death, and his own youth of ten years ago" (200).
Narcissism and the unreliable narrator. Nick from The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite unreliable narrators. He gaslights himself about so much of life; most dangerously, the magnanimous character of Jay Gatsby looms over him like an idealistic specter. To read the story of East and West Egg in 1920s New York is to experience a study in reading between the lines and seeing the villains amongst the glittering facades.
I have begun to think that perhaps these characters are less intentionally written than I originally believed, or else this style of characterization was all that Fitzgerald found interesting or within his capability to write. After awhile, the intensely internal focus of every character, along with their inability to see their own failures with any clarity or accountability, begins to wear on the reader.
Tender is the Night carries the internal ponderings of characters who wear their flaws upon their sleeves and seem to ascribe to certain un-relenting ideologies without self-awareness. Rosemary is young and beautiful, not yet jaded by her own magnetic attraction, but wisened enough to pursue her own every desire with impunity to consequences. Dick has a savior complex, which cannot come without some degree of narcissism. Perhaps the most self-aware of all is Nicole, his wife, who is in fact a schizophrenic suffering from supposed mad delusions.
The problem with all of the characters, but most especially Dick, is that they seem to barely hit upon awareness of their own shallowness and then fade away from it, back into the many attractive trappings of their privileged lifestyles. Tender is the Night did not do well when it was first published, as Americans steeped in the Great Depression and on the cusp of another world war were disillusioned by these tales of careless wealth and dramatic self-aggrandizement.
I can honestly see where this failure to appease his audience occurred. I believe that all three of these main characters--Rosemary, Dick, and Nicole--are supposed to be sympathetic in their own ways, whether because of their innocence, ignorance, or chronic unhappiness. However, each one falls short of this mark because of how wide the chasm is between their supposedly pure motivations and the nature of their mistakes.
2. "...it was Tommy Barban from Monte Carlo, saying that he had received her letter and was driving over. She felt her lips' warmth in the receiver as she welcomed his coming" (280).
Unsympathetic characters. Why do these characters, who are most likely intended to evoke our empathies, miss the mark so profoundly? At some point, the irresponsible consumerism, casual drunkenness, and ill-begotten marital affairs become too heavy a burden to bear. Dick "saves" Nicole and essentially sacrifices both his career and some semblance of his manhood (through financial, emotional, and sexual independence). But does he really save her? He crosses the bounds of ethics and marries his patient, against his own better judgement.
When everything goes wrong and their marriage erupts from within, the inevitability of it doesn't feel like a naturally occurring conclusion without real culpability. The unraveling of it all is written as a shoulder shrug--"This is how life is. They made the best decisions they could with the information that they had at the time. What can one do in the face of passion and desire but ride the wave to its end?"
I beg to differ. Dick is cowardly, selfish, a manipulator and womanizer. From beginning to end, the supposed sacrificial work that he does to serve those around him is in fact a thinly veiled narcissism masquerading as people-pleasing. He loves to think of himself as the perfect, ideal man, doing whatever is needed for the young and innocent women who fall prey to his orbit. But alas, a predator is all that he is, and this identity is proven true when he self-destructs through the above-mentioned vices of alcoholism, emotional instability, and unfaithfulness.
The women in the book are not much better. Rosemary is a self-centered actress who uses her innocence and reliance on older men and women to cover her extremely poor character qualities. She befriends Nicole while simultaneously romantically pursuing Dick until she gets what she wants. Nicole, although holding probably the most reasonable explanation for poor behavior (her mental unwellness), also cheats and lies and schemes her way out of her marriage and into the arms of another, although not in that order.
3. "Most of us have a favorite, a heroic period, in our lives and that was Dick Diver's" (119).
Disjointed plot. Fitzgerald published an edited version of Tender is the Night that was chronological rather than containing a flashback throughout the middle third of the text. I'm not sure if this change would have truly improved the story, but it may have somewhat prevented the disjointed feel of the plot. But the problems are not merely found within the order of the storyline.
The book seems to ramble and meander its way through explanations of events that don't seem to have much to do with the main characters' development, including a random duel in the first few chapters and the murder of a black man about halfway through. These vignettes contain no real consequences for the primary storyline whatsoever. I may need someone to educate me on the subversive symbolic importance found in these moments, because I am lost as to what value they actually add to the story at large.
4. "The vividly pictured hand on Rosemary's cheek, the quicker breath, the white excitement of the event viewed from the outside, the inviolable secret warmth within" (93).
Beautiful prose. Fitzgerald was a beautiful lyricist. He described everything from nature to internal motivations with the clearest of word choice and most poignantly placed phrases. My books are full of underlinings that indicate a moment in the text that stood out to me for its striking literary quality.
The characters are always emotionally driven, detailed, and imperfect. I can appreciate the somberly unsatisfying endings that were Fitzgerald's talent, wherein the villains aren't really punished and the good (if there is any) isn't truly rewarded. His novels are a strange mix of realism and romanticism that is so unique to his work and era.
The Beautiful and Damned, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night all hit at a singular note. The men in his stories either cannot quite make something of themselves despite unmet potential or find themselves incredibly dissatisfied with the success that they do achieve. The women are often tossed about by the whims of their romantic counterparts, but they also portray a searing determination to arrive at their own desires through any manipulative tactics available to them.
Understanding some of what plagued the short and vacillating lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, I can see that he unfalteringly wrote autobiographically. I can appreciate very much the talent that he clearly had, and I also mourn the artistic growth that he denied himself through an inability to move past personal pitfalls both professionally and personally. While Tender is the Night has great potential and maintained my attention, The Great Gatsby does most of the same work in a shorter and more polished form.
