Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0125/01256.txt

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$Title{Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Critical Review}
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$Author{Fitzgerald, F. Scott}
$Affiliation{Department Of English, Simon Fraser University}
$Subject{fitzgerald
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Title:       Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book:        Study Guide
Author:      Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Critic:      Cooperman, Stanley
Affiliation: Department Of English, Simon Fraser University

Critical Review

     "I talk with the authority of failure," F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote in
his notebooks, soon after his break with Ernest Hemingway, "Ernest with the
authority of success. We could never sit across the same table again." Whether
or not Fitzgerald considered himself a "failure" in his own lifetime, however,
one thing is clear: during the last decade, his reputation among literary
critics and non-specialized readers has grown to the point where no study of
American literature - and certainly no anthology of American literature - is
complete without either a discussion or representation of his work.

The 'Failure' of Fitzgerald.

     The question of Fitzgerald's "failure" has been to a great extent the
result of two elements in his career: first, the fact that he did produce an
enormous number of "slick" stories for the high-priced magazines, while two
of his four novels (This Side of Paradise in 1920, and The Beautiful and the
Damned in 1922) were "best sellers" from a financial, if not completely from
a literary point of view.

     Fitzgerald, in short, was preoccupied with financial success throughout
his career, and much of his work was indeed produced with the market rather
than with the muse foremost in his mind. As Arthur Mizener points out, most
of the 160 stories that Fitzgerald wrote between 1920 and 1940 were frankly
written for money. For this reason, if for no other, Fitzgerald's literary
reputation was indeed vulnerable; critics have always tended to look askance
at undue financial success (or preoccupation) on the part of literary artists,
a fact which is obvious in the careers of such writers as John Steinbeck, W.
Somerset Maugham, and Ernest Hemingway, among many others.

     The fact that Fitzgerald did produce a great deal of semi-hack writing,
and the fact that he became a literary celebrity too early and too richly in
his career, undoubtedly shaped critical attitudes toward his work. In addition
to this aspect of the Fitzgerald career, however, there was also the fact
that he became so thoroughly identified with the world of "flappers,"
disillusions, and "early sorrows" romantically a part of the mythology of
the American Twenties, that critics often seemed to be rendering a judgment
not on Fitzgerald's work, but rather on the cultural environment which
provided its raw material. The newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler, for
example, summed up this sort of blanket dismissal by referring to Fitzgerald
as being both spokesman for and representative of a "group or cult of juvenile
crying-drunks."

     It is always dangerous, however, to confuse the theme which a writer
uses for his work, with the status or value of the work itself. A novelist
such as Virginia Woolf, for example, is not to be considered aesthetically
"sterile" merely because psychological and emotional sterility is a theme of
her books. And if "failure" is a basic theme of F. Scott Fitzgerald, one must
remember that he was attempting to render a society which had indeed "failed"
precisely because of its universal preoccupation with "success."

     That Fitzgerald himself illustrated this paradox-a worship of "success"
so intense that it virtually insures a conviction of personal failure-in no
way invalidates his artistic vision. On the contrary, the fact that Fitzgerald
was so completely a man of his own time and culture, explains to no small
degree his ability to render cultural reality in his stories and novels.

     Fitzgerald was not invulnerable to the American dream of "success without
sweat"; ironically (and sometimes bitterly) aware of his own "mixed motives"
as an artist, he saw in himself precisely those moral and intellectual flaws
which were shaping the direction of America as a nation. Granted that he was
extremely sensitive to his times, one must remember that such a sensitivity is
hardly a disadvantage to a literary artist; that Fitzgerald possessed this
sensitivity, enabled him to use, in his work, what the critic Glenway Wescott
has called an "extreme environmental sense."

Early Work.

     In his early work, however, Fitzgerald seemed to have the "environmental
sense" without the aesthetic objectivity which alone serves to shape
literature into something more than a refraction of prevailing intellectual or
social modes. Quite aside from the financial and personal necessities which
drove him to "selling big" to the "big markets," one might almost say that
Fitzgerald had been too close to "his times"; that he had not yet succeeded in
viewing the times themselves - and the tensions within himself so vitally
characteristic of them - through a structuring of fiction which would stand
alone, independent of fashionable literary postures, or current intellectual
preoccupations, or personal anticipations in which the writer almost seems to
view his own achievement before the work itself has been achieved.

     This Side of Paradise, for example, which made Fitzgerald a literary
celebrity in 1920 and (which, of course, enabled him to "earn" Zelda and build
his own Golden Palace of Success) was attacked by literary critics on
precisely these grounds: that it was far too completely a "mixed bag" of
assorted literary modes, prevailing intellectual "smartness," moral exposes
which themselves indicated a certain naivete on the part of the author, and
a rather sophomoric anxiety to "shock" as well as please. As Heywood Broun
rather dyspeptically remarked of the book: "There is too much footwork and too
much feinting for anything solid and substantial being accomplished. You can't
expect to have blood drawn in any such exhibition as that."

     Critics were generally agreed that Fitzgerald's own enthusiasm as a
storyteller, his own romanticism as a person, his own delight in the "smart"
and topical, his own view of literature as a kind of ticket-of-admission to
"the good life," and his sometimes obvious debt to those writers (such as
Tarkington, Wells, and others) who had been fashionable among Princeton
undergraduates, resulted in a kind of grab bag of literary mannerisms. There
was, indshort, general agreement that while Fitzgerald might be a brilliant
addition to the American literary scene, he was as yet what Frederic Hoffman
calls a genius manque-a rather precocious young man who seemed to be playing
a "brilliant" role in some drama of his own creation, a drama in which the
novel itself was merely an episode.

The Need For Objectivity.

     The need for objectivity in Fitzgerald's work, the need for less
self-conscious play-acting at literature and "being in the know," was a
criticism reiterated by literary commentators such as Edmund Wilson, Paul
Rosenfeld, and many others. Certainly Fitzgerald's first two novels are marked
by a lack of what James E. Miller, Jr., in his excellent study of the
narrative form of Fitzgerald's work, calls the principle of selectivity.

     Still very much the bright young author, Fitzgerald in This Side of
Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned (although to a somewhat lesser
extent in the latter work) tends to sacrifice control and structure to a kind
of aesthetic self-indulgence: a pyrotechnic display of random witticisms for
the sake of the witticisms themselves, doubtful social judgments, fashionable
comment (or condescension), irrelevant "self-expression" - all the flaws, in
short, of a young writer impressed with himself and with the need to be
"successful" at least as much as he is impressed with the art of literature.

The Great Gatsby.

     With The Great Gatsby in 1925, however, this structural control was
achieved-achieved through two basic narrative methods. First, there was the
use of "dual narrative": the technique, partly influenced by the English
novelist Joseph Conrad, of filtering action and meaning through a narrator at
once involved with the action and commenting upon it, so that the rather
schizophrenic quality so distracting in the narrative of This Side of Paradise
is eliminated, and the two "sides" of both Fitzgerald's story and his own
attitudes (dramatized by Nick Carroway on one hand and Jay Gatsby on the
other) supplement rather than weaken each other.

     The second element which makes The Great Gatsby a vast improvement over
earlier Fitzgerald work, is the use of "organic" or "natural" symbols growing
out of the action and situation of the story rather than merely superimposed
upon the narrative itself. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, for example, or
the "green light" of Daisy Buchanan, or the "ritual of the silk shirts" in
Gatsby's mansion-such elements are infused with the meaning, and the power, of
"symbolic proliferation" - that is, they are part of the literal progression
of plot, but actually mean far more than appears on the literal surface alone.
The book, indeed, was praised by critics as a profound definition of the loss
of traditional American values, the loss of "The American Dream," and a work
of literary art in which ironic drama was all the more effective for being
controlled and absorbed within the substance of the work itself.

     As Andrew Turnbull, remarks, it was not so much that The Great Gatsby
was "less autobiographical" than Fitzgerald's earlier works, as it was that
the autobiography had been used more relevantly to the fiction. In posing the
"Jay Gatsby" part of his own vision against the "Nick Carroway" assertion of
traditional values, Fitzgerald had achieved the sort of objectivity which
makes it possible for a novelist to "stay out of his book" - or rather, to
let the book say what it has to say, without intrusive explication. There is
less of Fitzgerald "talking at" his readers as Fitzgerald (and talking down to
his characters) than in either of his earlier novels, and this is also true of
what most critics consider to be the novel ranking next to Gatsby for
intrinsic literary merit: Tender is the Night, which appeared in 1934.

     The Great Gatsby, at any rate, was highly praised; William Rose Benet,
for example, in a Saturday Review essay, remarked that "for the first time
Fitzgerald surveys the Babylonian captivity of this era unblinded by the
bright lights," and commentators such as Malcolm Cowley, Dennis Hardy, James
Thurber, Edmund Wilson, John Peale Bishop, and many others sensed a new
substance in Fitzgerald's work.

     This is not to say that Fitzgerald had achieved any sort of literary
apotheosis or sainthood. The critical voices were by no means unanimous, even
on the subject of The Great Gatsby; Mencken, for example, attacked both the
novel (which he considered little more than an "anecdote") and its chief
character, whom he considered so "vague" as to be a sort of disembodied
shadow of a literary protagonist. Tender is the Night received mixed reviews;
perceptive critics such as D.W. Harding, who in a 1934 Scrutiny essay both
praised and attacked the book, tended to feel that Fitzgerald had not
altogether purged himself of those elements of melodrama and self-pity which
had (with the exception of Gatsby) weakened his work in the past.

Critical Reservations.

     There remained, at any rate, much critical feeling that F. Scott
Fitzgerald had indeed "wasted" too much of his talent on unworthy projects,
while personal difficulties (his own and Zelda's) had wasted too much of him.

     So completely had the Fitzgerald reputation lost its glitter, that by
1939 the best of his novels-The Great Gatsby-was actually dropped from the
lists of Modern Library Editions because "it failed to sell."

     After Fitzgerald's death, however, the tide shifted, and by 1945, when
Edmund Wilson had edited and published The Crack-Up (a volume that included
serious critical essays), interest in Fitzgerald both as an individual and as
an artist reached considerable proportions. Gatsby was reissued with a
laudatory introduction by Lionel Trilling, and full-length studies soon were
appearing, together with critical anthologies and many articles in both the
scholarly and "middlebrow" magazines such as Atlantic Monthly. Most of the
significant criticism on Fitzgerald, certainly, is a product of the last two
decades; his works have been reprinted in both softback and hardcover
editions; his stories and novels-especially The Great Gatsby, Tender is the
Night, and This Side of Paradise-have been "rediscovered" by academic and
non-academic readers throughout the United States and many other countries.

The Fitzgerald Revival.

     Despite negative attitudes on the part of some critics (see Albert J.
Lubell's attack on "The Fitzgerald Revival" in the January, 1955 issue of
South Atlantic Quarterly), the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald has at last
"come into its own" wherever there is an interest in American Literature. And
this resurgence of interest is continuing. For if a writer like Ernest
Hemingway achieved his literary success by eliminating social complexities
and "confronting" only those experiences which could be mastered through
direct action and ritualized response, one might say that F. Scott Fitzgerald
made a success out of "failure" itself. And in the last analysis, we may well
wonder which of these two writers, each in his own way so thoroughly
"American," has more to tell us of our own culture, and our heritage.

Bibliography

General Background:

     Allen, Frederick Lewis. The Big Change. New York, 1952.

     Cowley, Malcolm. Exile's Return. New York, 1961.

     Callaghan, Morley. That Summer in Paris. New York, 1963.

     Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York, 1963.

     May, Henry F. The End of American Innocence. New York, 1959.

     Munson, Gorham. "The Fledgling Years, 1916-1924," Sewanee Review XL
(1932), 24-34.

     Powers, J.F. "Cross Country-St. Paul, Home of the Saints," Partisan
Review (July, 1949), 714-21.

     Wilson, Edmund., ed. The Crack-Up. New York, 1945.

Criticism And Literary History:

     Beach, Joseph Warren. American Fiction, 1920-1940. New York, 1941.

     Bewley, Marius. The Eccentric Design. New York, 1959.

     Bishop, John Peale. Collected Essays of John Peale Bishop, ed. Edmund
Wilson. New York, 1948.

     Burgum, Edwin Berry. The Novel and the World's Dilemma. New York, 1947.

     Chase, Richard. The Modern Novel and its Tradition. New York, 1952.

     Daiches, David. The Novel and the Modern World. New York, 1940.

     Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. Cleveland, 1962.

     Geismar, Maxwell. The Last of the Provincials. Boston, 1947.

     Hoffman, Frederick J. The Twenties: American Writing In the Postwar
Decade. New York, 1955.

     Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds. New York, 1942.

     Millgate, Michael, American Social Fiction: James to Cozzens. New York,
1964.

     Mizener, Arthur. The Sense of Life in the Modern Novel. Boston, 1964.

     Muller, Herbert J. Modern Fiction: A Study in Values. New York, 1937.

     Savage, D. S. The Withered Branch: Six Studies in the Modern Novel.
London, 1950.

     Snell, George. The Shapers of American Fiction. New York, 1947.

     Thorp, Willard. American Writing in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge,
1960.

     Wagenknecht, Edward. Cavalcade of the American Novel. New York, 1952.

Studies And Critical Anthologies On F. Scott Fitzgerald:

     Eble, Kenneth E. F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York, 1963.

     Goldhurst, William. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his Contemporaries.
Cleveland, 1963.

     Kazin, Alfred, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and his Work. New York,
1962. (a critical anthology).

     Miller, James E. The Fictional Technique of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The
Hague, 1957.

     Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise. Boston, 1951.

     Turnbull, Andrew. F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York, 1962.

Periodical Essays And Articles:

     For an excellent check list of Fitzgerald criticism see the Spring, 1961
issue of Modern Fiction Studies. The attention of the student is drawn to the
fact that articles in periodicals are an extremely useful and perhaps major
source of Fitzgerald criticism. The check list in Modern Fiction Studies, and
the collection of critical articles noted above (edited by Mizener and
Kazin) are very useful secondary reading. Additional suggestions follow:

     Barrett, William. "Fitzgerald and America," Partisan Review XVIII
(May-June, 1951), 345-353.

     Bedingfield, Dolores. "Fitzgerald's Corruptible Dream," Dalhousie Review
XLI (Winter, 1961-62), 513-521.

     Bicknell, John W. "The Wasteland of F. Scott Fitzgerald," Virginia
Quarterly Review XXX (Autumn, 1954), 556-572.

     Cardwell, Guy A. "The Lyric World of F. Scott Fitzgerald," Virginia
Quarterly Review XXXVIII (Spring, 1962), 162-167.

     Freidrich, Otto. "F. Scott Fitzgerald: Money, Money, Money," American
Scholar XXIX (Summer, 1960), 392-405.

     Frohock, W.M. "Morals, Manners, and Scott Fitzgerald," Southwest Review
40 (Summer, 1955), 220-228.

     Fussell, Edwin. "Fitzgerald's Brave New World," English Literary History
XIX (December, 1952), 291-306.

     Hauserman, H.W. "Fitzgerald's Religious Sense," Modern Fiction Studies
II (Winter, 1956), 81-82.

     Jacobsen, Dan. "F. Scott Fitzgerald," Encounter XIV (June, 1960), 71-77.

     Lubell, Albert J. "The Fitzgerald Revival," South Atlantic Quarterly LIV
(January, 1955), 95-106.

     Mizener, Arthur. "Scott Fitzgerald and the Imaginative Possession of
American Life," Sewanee Review LIV (Winter, 1946), 66-86.

     _____ "Scott Fitzgerald and the 'Top Girl'," Atlantic Monthly CCVII
(March, 1961), 56.

     Troy, William. "The Authority of Failure," Accent VI (Autumn, 1945),
56-60.