Monday, May 20, 2013

The Real Jay Gatsby (Young F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, 1918-1920)

Good  morning!

How was your weekend? I've recently been giving great and deep consideration to a topic near and dear to my heart, and thought I might spill it all out for you kids-- guys, the Fitzgeralds. No, seriously, the Fitzgeralds. Let's talk.

In spite of deep and abiding distaste for the film career of Baz Luhrman, I'm glad he's re-made The Great Gatsby for a modern audience for one very important reason. All the hubbub surrounding a 3D, twenty-first century version of THE great American novel means a resurgence in interest in one of my own biggest interests-- the lives and love of F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

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I may be misjudging Luhrman right-out-of-the-gate without having seen the movie yet. As a biography-thumping Bowie fan, I was deeply disappointed in the movie Velvet Goldmine, and held a grudge against writer/director Todd Haynes for something like ten years. How could he get glam rock so wrong? Who did he think he was to misinterpret something that was fun and edgy and camp and silly and provocative as something gothic and tortured and b-o-r-i-n-g? Had he done any research beyond flipping through the album sleeves in his local record shop? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I was mad, folks. So a few years back, when I heard he was remaking James M. Cain's pulp noir masterpiece Mildred Pierce for HBO, I was all ready to put on my comfortable shoes and my good lipstick to get in the picket line against his performing another travesty upon the hallowed halls of "Things I Love". Oops, though. My bad. With the exception of not-having-Joan-Crawford in it, the 2011 mini series was engrossing, beautifully adapted and shot, and actual better-in-some-ways than the 1945 Curtiz production. Act like that does not actually burn my tongue to say it, but it's true.

Yes, and no, respectively. That's all we need to say about that.
So, for all I know, this movie could be another judge-not parable for me to ad to my scrapbook of times I was wrong (a slim volume, or wouldn't I like to think it was, haha). Keep in mind, however, that the only thing I loved in my formative years more than David Bowie circa 1972 was the fair-haired young man of letters Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald circa 1918. You can see where my heart might beat with a tiny tremolo of fear at thinking of Fitzgerald's delicate, sensitive storytelling in the hands of such a bombastic, overwrought director. Moulin Rouge is one of the only movies I've ever walked out of in the theater. I had that same dreadful feeling I did when I accidentally went into a toy store in a mall on vacation, thinking maybe I could score some out of print 3D puzzle of the Biltmore, or whatever, only to realize it was a store specifically dedicated to selling wind-up toys. Everything in the entire freaking room hissed and popped and writhed and swizzled at me until I ended up just walking back out directly. I didn't care much more for Romeo + Juliet. The soundtrack to that movie was in the floorboard of probably every friend's car I ever rode in my high school years, but the sis! boom! BANG! of the directing style leaves me cold, cold, cold.

Would it be too much to ask that Gatsby be sold to the Downtown Abbey crowd? Or the Mad Men crowd? Or even the Boardwalk Empire crowd. People who are truly interested in a historically and emotionally accurate rendering of a time period that's complicated and exciting and by virtue of the passing of time, getting to be almost unfathomably remote? Wouldn't I like to understand the time period and the motivations of the people therein from the context of that time period, without any gimmicks or fancy plaster underpinnings to make it more palatable to everyone?


My interest in the Fitzgeralds was sparked by a chance reading of Zelda by Nancy Mitford maybe around 10th grade. The Mitford book itself is dry as toast but the STORY, folks, the STORY! Was it not the most thrilling discovery of my young life up until that moment to find that the romance of Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby was biographically moored to FSF's own experiences in meeting, wooing, losing, and then triumphantly marrying a wild and beautiful Southern girl, the former Zelda Sayre? Trying to imagine a dashing but disadvantaged Fitzgerald in his Brooks Brothers army uniform (see above-- he'd specially ordered it) going after the most vivacious girl in Montgomery, Alabama, year of our Lord 1918, put stars in my eyes. The chance of it all... that he happened to be stationed there, that she allowed herself to be wrested from the many local beaux she held favor with by an essentially prospect-less writer who'd flunked out Princeton... all the little quirks of fate that put the two of them together. If the book on their lives ended in 1920, with the publication of This Side of Paradise, you'd have thought every dream had come true. Fitzgerald got the girl, became an important name in literary circles, sold a blue million copies of the first book of the "Jazz Age", and was practically bathing in champagne down at the Ritz, spending his new money on cars, clothes, and good times. 

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The Capote quote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones" seems to be a fitting epitaph to the Fitzgerald marriage, however. Their very glamorous early 1920's lives fizzled out like a Roman candle in a ten year cascade of mutual recriminations, lost hopes, hangovers. While This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned were wildly successful, as were some collections of his short stories, more mature works such as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night did not receive the critical or popular acceptance they may have deserved. Fitzgerald found himself cranking out short romances and comic sketches for the Saturday Evening Post and other popular periodicals to pay their ever-mounting bills. In Cap d'Antibes, as they spent the summer with the famous Sara and Gerald Murphy, Zelda fell into an infatuation with a Spanish aviator, and Scott spend a lot of time trailing a teenage silent film star, both viciously jealous of the other's flirtations. Back in America, Zelda was institutionalized in 1932 and spent the rest of her life in various mental hospitals on the east coast, while a broken FSF headed west in a mostly unsuccessful bid to write for the movies. The momentum with which "things went bad" at the end of their relationship is just heart-rending.

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In spite of how things resolved themselves, I love the idea of, again and again, Fitzgerald writing and re-writing their lives. Every face in every one of his books would have been familiar to him, as they were almost all based on real life people and events, artfully rearranged to suit a narrative plot. There was a lot of scholarly ink put to paper in the seventies' about whether or not Zelda was the "true" writer in the couple, as her  now-lost diaries were incorporated into many of her husband's books and her autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, showed a real gift for imagery. I'm not sure how much I can invest into a conspiracy theory of what one might have done, in different circumstances, versus what FSF actually did, but reading their love affair continually unfolding and going to cinders throughout the course of Fitzgerald's novels is one of the most compelling text-to-biography comparisons in all of twentieth century American literature.

So! Wouldn't that make a fascinating movie/mini-series/something? Wouldn't that, in your mind, hold the interest of the movie-going public without adding baroque visuals and extra-noise? Why can't they make one movie that is just pitch-perfectly what-it-was? I've lived through the TNT teledrama Zelda, in which Natasha Richardson and Timothy Hutton speed through a soft-focus-lens Cliff Notes of the Fitzgerald's lives...through Mira Sorvino (?!?) as Daisy in a USA network adaptation of Gatsby... but my dearest hope is that with renewed interest in the Jazz Age, someone at HBO will plunk down some real Hollywood money on a real version of a compelling, true story of these tragic figures. Is that so much to ask?

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What are your impressions of the Fitzgeralds? Did you snooze through Gatsby in high school, or did the lure of the green light at the end of the Buchanan's pier mesmerize you as much as it did me? Read anything on the Fitzs outside of an American Lit class? Did you see the new movie yet? What did you think? Let's talk!Oh, and if you're interested in more biographical information on the Fitzgeralds, there's an AMAZING resource in scans of (and get your hands on a copy of it if you can, it's marvelous) the book The Romantic Egoists here. Enjoy!

Ah, that's all the self-righteous indignation/rambling I can do for one day. More tomorrow! Til then.

8 comments:

  1. i saw gatsby and loved it, but i like the over the top baz lurhman style. i haven't ever read much about f. scott and zelda but now i'm dying too! i'll have to pick up a book, or hope for some kind of beautiful mini series!

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    1. I'm hearing a lot of good things about it, so maybe my misgivings were misplaced! Grab a copy of Dearest Scott, Dearest Zelda from the library if you get a chance-- we have it, and it's wonderful! I'm still waiting for my miniseries, though. :)

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  2. If you weren't my sister, I in all likelihood wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn more about this truly fascinating love story. The fact that we have such a detailed account of what happened (and what didn't happen) is incredible. Preserved for the ages! While I'm worried about the new movie's take on the book, I'm also really excited about the opportunity for a great movie that introduces a whole new generation of Fitzgerald readers (hopefully!). Let's keep our fingers crossed!!

    P.S. Thank you so much for sharing the scans! :)

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    1. We'll find out on Friday! YAHOOO! Get ready for an earful if they get it wrong, though!

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  3. Snooze through Gatsby?! NEVER! From the moment I read the book in the 9th grade, I wanted to be a happier more well adjusted and not quite so tragically ending version of "Gatsby" (completely destroys the books intentions I know.) The thought he did everything for Daisy is truly heart grabbing. Zelda and F. Scott have always been fascinating to me. Have you ever seen the movie "Midnight in Paris"? The pair pop up and they create a small but very close-to-life window of their relationship and wilder days when it was in vogue for American Artists to live in Paris for Muse! As for the current 2013 Great Gatsby movie... Visually it was STUNNING My word so much work went into costumes(I love that Brothers Brooks summer line is all outfits from the movie.) The sets are resplendent, believe me I am a stickler for period details, and I think my favorite set of all was Nick Calloway's summer cottage! However- brace yourself the "Jay-Z" score SLAUGHTERED the film for us. My girlfriend turned to me while watching and said "If you block out this rap crap, and substitute it with Cole Porters "Anything Goes" soundtrack (or anything Cole Porter) its really quite lovely!" I, much like you, was dissatisfied with the lack of period music. THERE WASN'T EVEN A CHARLESTON MELODY THE WHOLE MOVIE! It was just beautiful to look at, it truly captured the wonder and mystique of Gatsby.

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    1. I. LOVE. THIS. COMMENT. Thoughts:

      1)I know! I was completely entranced by the book and the love story, again, even if that might have NOT been the point of the narrative.

      2) I LOVE the characterizations in "Midnight in Paris"! I feel like they were spot on, even if they were supposed to be funny, in capturing the real people rather than the caricatures of historical figures(loved Hemingway and Dali, too!).

      3) Oh, I'm so glad I wasn't just being a weirdo about that and that it IS a legitimate worry that the soundtrack is non-contemporaneous to the story space. I'm going to go see it with your girlfriend's comment in mind and know that I'm not crazy, and that's good info to have!

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  4. Read Gatsby in high school, liked it, didn't give it much thought until about seven or eight years ago...since then I've devoured every Scott Fitzgerald piece I could get my hands on (though I had to give up on "Tender is the Night"). "This Side of Paradise" is my favorite of his, and the short stories in "Flappers and Philosophers".

    I haven't seen the new Gatsby (yet) but I'm thrilled that, if anything, it's brought both Scott & Zelda and my beloved 1920s back into mainstream focus. :)

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    1. I am very grateful for times in my life where I've given something I didn't care for the first time around a second shot-- some of those cases have turned out to be my favorite books/movies/albums upon further inspection! I'm glad to hear about a fellow rabid Fitz fan, he's really too wonderful to just be on summer required reading lists.

      I'm hoping the movie is good! Will report next week. :)

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