Book Review: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (1989)

 

Paperback cover of The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, 1989. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

F. Scott Fitzgerald at his desk, 1920's.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is best known today for his novels The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, but he was also a prolific short story writer, publishing around 160 short stories. Only 45 of those stories were collected in books during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection, edited by Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, and first published in 1989, attempted to put together a definitive collection of Fitzgerald’s best short stories.

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald essentially replaced the 1951 collection The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The 1989 collection has the advantage of length: it contains 43 stories, compared to 28 in the 1951 collection. One can always quibble with an editor’s selections, but Bruccoli did a fantastic job of collecting Fitzgerald’s most important stories, while also highlighting the breadth and scope of Fitzgerald’s short stories.

Fitzgerald’s stories show the optimism and disillusion of one man, emblematic of his generation. Fitzgerald’s life was a touchstone for many of the momentous events of his lifetime. Born in 1896, just before the dawn of the American century, Fitzgerald served in World War I, (although he didn’t see combat) spent a good chunk of the 1920’s in Paris and made his first foray to Hollywood just as silent pictures were ending. His wife Zelda’s mental health collapsed just months after the stock market crash. Fitzgerald’s stories of the 1930’s often took a darker tone as his alcoholism worsened and his cynicism deepened.

Fitzgerald writes so movingly of loss, and the yearning for the past. The last three paragraphs of “The Last of the Belles” are a beautiful example of his evocative style. In the story, the narrator is searching for the Army camp where he was stationed a decade earlier during World War I, but he can find no trace of it:

“I tried to sight on a vaguely familiar clump of trees, but it was growing darker now and I couldn’t be quite sure they were the right trees…No. Upon consideration they didn’t look like the right trees. All I could be sure of was this place that had once been so full of life and effort was gone, as if it had never existed, and that in another month Ailie would be gone, and the South would be empty for me forever.” (p.463)

Fitzgerald’s main themes of love, class, and money reverberate through many of his stories, but in this collection the reader can get a sense of Fitzgerald’s range as an author. Yes, he wrote about beautiful, privileged people searching for love, but he wrote about many other things too. Fitzgerald’s sense of humor is on display in “The Jelly-Bean,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “Financing Finnegan” and the Pat Hobby story “’Boil Some Water—Lots of It.’” He examines the South in “The Last of the Belles,” “The Jelly-Bean,” and “The Ice Palace.” There are short stories about Catholicism, (“Absolution”) college football, (“The Bowl”) and Hollywood (“Crazy Sunday,” “Last Kiss”).

Fitzgerald would be so proud if he could hold this collection of his short stories in his hands. It’s 775 pages of his best writing, a summation of more than 20 years as a professional author. Fitzgerald sweated over these stories, working hard to capture his times on paper. He was a writer blessed with a remarkable gift: the ability to write perceptively about his own time, yet his writing transcends his own time as his words echo down the generations to us all these years later. In every story, no matter how contrived the plots may sometimes be, there are sentences and phrases that will take your breath away and will remind you of the power and beauty of the written word.

Some of my own favorite stories in this volume are:

“The Ice Palace”

“May Day”

“The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”

“Winter Dreams”

“The Sensible Thing”

“The Last of the Belles”

“The Swimmers”

“Babylon Revisited”

“Crazy Sunday”

“Afternoon of an Author”

Book Review: The Twilight World, a novel by Werner Herzog, translated by Michael Hofmann (2022)

Hardcover edition of Werner Herzog's novel The Twilight World, 2022.

 

The German film director Werner Herzog.

The German film director Werner Herzog is one of the great cult figures in 21^st century pop culture. An acclaimed director, both for his narrative films and his documentaries, Herzog is known in pop culture for his deadpan speaking voice and his bleak outlook on life. There is something mystical and otherworldly about Werner Herzog: he pulled Joaquin Phoenix out of a car crash. Herzog was once wounded by a bullet from an air-rifle during an interview, but he continued the interview.

Herzog has always been drawn to extreme circumstances in his films, so it’s not surprising that his first novel, The Twilight World, translated from German to English by Michael Hofmann, is about survival in the most extreme conditions. The Twilight World is about Japanese Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who fought a guerilla war on the Philippine island of Lubang from 1945 until 1974. Onoda and three other Japanese soldiers hid in the jungle hills after the Japanese retreat from the island. Onoda was the last survivor of the four soldiers. When Herzog was directing an opera in Japan in 1997, he turned down an invitation to meet the Emperor of Japan. “My goodness, I have no idea what I would talk about with the Emperor. It would be nothing but banalities.” “Well, if not the Emperor, whom would he like to meet?” Herzog instantly replied, “Onoda.” Of course.

You can’t quite imagine Werner Herzog making small talk at a gala with the Emperor, can you? I suppose Herzog might suffer through such an event. But it would be a form of torture for him. You might see him standing out on a balcony in his tuxedo and go over to him and say, “What a beautiful event.” Herzog smiles and nods, mutters “Thank you” through clenched teeth. It’s a beautiful spring evening, and you venture forth a comment on the pleasant weather. Herzog says, “Uh huh” in a noncommittal tone. Inside his head, Herzog is thinking “There is nothing more insufferable to me than the self-congratulatory world of entertainment. Why did I even agree to attend this meaningless social charade? And this person who is standing before me, talking about the weather…don’t they realize the brutality of this nature they are so effusively praising? At any moment, a gust of wind could come along and cause them to lose their balance and fall over the low railing of this balcony and they would be squashed like a tiny bug on the sidewalk.”

The Twilight World is a fascinating tale. I do not know enough about Onoda’s story to know how much is true and what was invented by Herzog. But does it really matter? The tale itself is so unbelievable that it sounds like a wild fiction concocted by a deranged novelist.

When I read about The Twilight World, I knew I wanted to experience it. Fortunately, Herzog himself narrates the English version of the audiobook, so I could have his distinctive voice and cadences seeping directly into my ear. I’ve been a fan of Herzog’s since the late 1990’s, when I watched several of his films for my high-school German class. You must admire someone who is enough of a lunatic to haul a steamship over a mountain for the sake of a film. Herzog’s low-key intensity behind the camera was amplified by the brilliant, intense German actor Klaus Kinski, who delivered stunning performances in films like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. If you are a fan of Herzog’s, he will guide you into the jungle once again in The Twilight World.

Book Review: The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (1920)

 

My paperback of The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton. First published in 1920, this edition published in 2004. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937

Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel The Age of Innocence looked back at the Gilded Age of the 1870’s in New York City society. It was a world that Wharton knew very well—born Edith Jones, her family was supposedly the inspiration for the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.”

The novel opens with main character Newland Archer attending the opera, and Wharton makes it clear that there’s just as much action happening in the boxes of the wealthy as there is on the stage. The Age of Innocence follows Newland as he courts the beautiful but conventional May Welland. Newland is tempted by his attraction to Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin who married a Russian count and returned to New York when her marriage collapsed.

The Age of Innocence is a study of how an individual interacts with the society around him. Newland has a desire to break free of the strict role that society expects him to play. There’s a marvelous moment when Newland suggests to May that they elope. She tells him, “We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?” (p.70) Of course, the irony is that they are people in novels, although they both feel a strong pull to act within the conventions of upper-class society.

Another theme of the novel is the role of women in society. Wharton knew from her own life experience how limited women’s options were in upper-class society. Thankfully for literature lovers, Wharton was able to break free and enjoy a fantastically successful career as an author.

Wharton writes of men understanding “the abysmal distinction between the woman one loved and respected and those one enjoyed—and pitied.” (p.80) Wharton underscores society’s role in determining these roles for women: “All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches.” (p.81)

At his wedding, Archer muses on the customs of his society, as there was debate as to whether or not the wedding gifts should be “shown”: “It seemed inconceivable to Archer that grown-up people should work themselves into a state of agitation over such trifles…Yet there was a time when Archer had had definite and rather aggressive opinions on all such problems, and when everything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had seemed to him fraught with worldwide significance.” (p.149)

Wharton’s sharp irony and sense of humor is on full display throughout the novel. One of my favorite lines was Newland’s response to his mother-in-law querying him as to how he intended to spend the afternoon: “Oh, I think for a change I’ll just save it instead of spending it—” (p.181)

Another humorous moment is Wharton’s explanation of why Archer has taken to reading history in the evenings rather than poetry. If May sees him reading poetry, she inevitably asks him to read it aloud. “In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now perceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide her with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.” (p.239-40)

There is heartbreak and pain as well, as the romantic Newland clashes with the demands of the pragmatic society around him. As he says to Ellen, “I want somehow to get away with you into a world…where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter.” Ellen responds, “Oh, my dear—where is that country? Have you ever been there?” (p.235)

Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors, and The Age of Innocence is a masterful novel—it is at once a detailed portrait of a specific time and place, and it also transcends that specific time and place to continue to speak to readers now, more than a century after it was first published.

Book Review: The Writing of Fiction, by Edith Wharton (1925)

 

Paperback of The Writing of Fiction, by Edith Wharton, 1925. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Edith Wharton, one of the great American authors.

I’ve read several of Edith Wharton’s novels, and one book of her short stories, but I hadn’t heard of her 1925 book The Writing of Fiction until recently, as was looking through her bibliography. Wait, Edith Wharton wrote a book about writing? I need to get it!

The Writing of Fiction is a short read, only 125 pages in the paperback edition. The book contains Wharton’s thoughts and theories about fiction writing. There’s not much in the book about American authors, as most of the influences that Wharton discusses are French, English, or Russian—very typical for the time Wharton was writing. I had to look up a fair number of the authors and novels Wharton discusses as I read the book, and chances are you will too, unless you’re very well-versed in 19^th century European literature.

My favorite name that I had to look up was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. I had to make sure that Edith Wharton wasn’t pulling my leg with that one. She wasn’t. Quiller-Couch published using the pseudonym Q, which seems to me a tragic waste of a fantastic name. I learned that Quiller-Couch was also a literary critic, and he coined the phrase, “Murder your darlings,” meaning sometimes you must sacrifice what you think is best in your art.

I liked Wharton’s quote about artistic inspiration: “Many people assume that the artist receives, at the outset of his career, the mysterious sealed orders known as ‘Inspiration,’ and has only to let that sovereign impulse carry him where it will.” (p.18) I think this is a common misconception about art: that you simply need to sit down at the pad of paper, typewriter, or computer, and you will be visited by the mysterious muse of artistic creation. Of course, it’s usually more complicated than that.

Throughout The Writing of Fiction, Wharton mentions authors she admires, such as Tolstoy, Stendhal, Jane Austen, and Balzac, to name a few. Wharton is generous with her praise and reserved in her criticism. Wharton mentions specific novels and short stories, but she doesn’t focus exclusively on one author until the last chapter of the book, when she does a deep dive on the work of Marcel Proust. She writes of Proust: “His endowment as a novelist…has probably never been surpassed.” (p.119) That’s high praise indeed.

When I finished reading The Writing of Fiction, it struck me that Wharton never tells the reader that she’s a novelist herself. I understand that Wharton came from a more restrained era, and she obviously didn’t write this book in order to blow her own horn about how great her own novels were. Nevertheless, what’s missing from The Writing of Fiction are any examples from Wharton’s own work as a writer. How did she come up with the marvelous beginning of The Age of Innocence, where Newland Archer surveys the crowd at the opera? How was she able to get inside the minds of characters like Newland, and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth? Wharton knew New York City society very well, but how did she also successfully write rural novels like Ethan Frome and Summer? I’d love to know the answers to those questions, but unfortunately Wharton doesn’t reveal anything about her own work in the book. For that reason, it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed by The Writing of Fiction.