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| Cover of A Short Autobiography, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, taken across the street from a restaurant named after him in Saint Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor) |
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| F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940. |
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s non-fiction writings are not as famous
as his novels and short stories, but they contain some superb pieces that shed
light on the life of this fascinating author. One reason that might explain why
Fitzgerald’s non-fiction writings are less well-known is that they have been
scattered all over the place. It would be
wonderful to have one volume that collected all of his major non-fiction pieces
in one place.
A Short Autobiography,
edited by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III, was issued in 2011 with
the aim of collecting Fitzgerald’s non-fiction works that reveal more of his
personal life. Unfortunately, A Short
Autobiography doesn’t include any of the “Crack-Up” essays, but it does have
many other excellent pieces.
Another issue with Fitzgerald’s non-fiction is that some of
the pieces are hard to categorize. Is “An Author’s Mother” fiction or
non-fiction? It’s been published in collections of Fitzgerald’s fiction, but it
also appears in A Short Autobiography.
There’s obviously some fiction in it, as the name of the author in the piece is
not F. Scott Fitzgerald, and unlike the author in the piece, Fitzgerald didn’t
have a brother. However, the piece does seem to be a pretty accurate portrait
of Fitzgerald’s mother, Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was constantly
borrowing from his own life to inform his fiction, and the line between the two
is often blurred.
In the very first line of the first piece in A Short Autobiography, “Who’s Who-and
Why,” from 1920, Fitzgerald writes: “The history of my life is the history of
the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of
circumstances bent on keeping me from it.” (p.1) Little did he know how true
this would be throughout the rest of his short life. There were always parties,
and alcohol, and many other distractions for Scott that would keep him from his
work. However, that being said, he was still very prolific despite all the
distractions, turning out roughly 180 short stories, four completed novels and
one unfinished novel in his forty-four years.
In “Princeton,” an affectionate look at the university
Fitzgerald attended, (and didn’t graduate from) he mentions that 5% of his
class at Princeton were killed in World War I. That’s a staggering fact that
makes clear what a large impact the war had on Fitzgerald’s generation.
One of the pieces that showcases Fitzgerald’s sense of humor
is “Salesmanship in the Champs-Elysees,” which is written in the voice of a
French car salesman. For me, one of the highlights of A Short Autobiography was hearing Fitzgerald’s authorial voice in a
more personal way.
In “One Hundred False Starts,” an essay from 1933 in which Fitzgerald
detailed the many ideas for stories he had that never panned out, he wrote: “There
is the question of dog stories. I like dogs and would like to write at least
one dog story in the style of Mr. Terhune.” (p.126) Two years later, Fitzgerald
finally did write his dog story, “Shaggy’s Morning,” an odd account of a day in
the life of a dog, written from the dog’s perspective. It was an interesting
experiment, although perhaps not entirely successful. “Shaggy’s Morning” is one
of the few Fitzgerald stories to be published during his lifetime that has
never been collected in a book.
In “Author’s House,” another essay written for Esquire in 1936, Fitzgerald wrote: “A
writer’s temperament is continually making him do things he can never repair.”
(p.139) This was certainly true in Fitzgerald’s case, as he wore out his welcome
with friends again and again through his drunken behavior.
One of the most beautiful pieces in the book is “The Death
of My Father,” which Fitzgerald wrote after his father’s passing in 1931. He
never finished it, and it was first published in 1951 in The Princeton University Literary Chronicle. It’s a short piece,
only three pages long, but it paints a vivid picture of Scott’s relationship
with his father Edward. In it, Fitzgerald wrote: “I loved my father—always
deep in my subconscious I have referred judgements back to him, to what he
would have thought or done. He loved me—and felt a deep responsibility for me—I
was born several months after the sudden death of my two elder sisters and he
felt what the effect of this would be on my mother, that he would be my only
moral guide. He became that to the best of his ability. He came from tired old
stock with very little left of vitality and mental energy but he managed to
raise a little for me.” (p.118)
This passage was repeated almost word for word in Tender is the Night, when Dick Diver
learns of his father’s death: “Dick loved his father—again and again he referred
judgements to what his father would probably have thought or done. Dick was
born several months after the death of two young sisters and his father,
guessing what would be the effect on Dick’s mother, had saved him from a
spoiling by becoming his moral guide. He was of tired stock yet he raised
himself to that effort.” (Tender is the
Night, p.203)
A Short Autobiography reveals
parts of Fitzgerald that we don’t often get to see in his fiction. For this
reason, it’s an essential read for fans of Fitzgerald’s writing.
