Book Review: Business is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Writer, by James L.W. West III (2023)

Business is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Writer, by James L.W. West III, 2023. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III

F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III’s most recent book is Business is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Writer. Released in March of 2023, the book collects West’s recent essays about different aspects of Fitzgerald’s writing. For Fitzgerald scholars, it’s a must read, as West has deep insights into Fitzgerald’s work.  

One of the essays examines a 1924 letter that Fitzgerald wrote to Moran Tudury, an author who wrote short stories for pulp magazines. In the letter, Fitzgerald wrote of his 1922 novel The Beautiful and Damned “it was a false lead. Its attempted naturalism was a concession to Mencken—perhaps unconscious. The business of creating illusion is much more to my taste and my talent.” Fitzgerald writes that “my new novel...is a new thinking out of the idea of illusion.” (p.18) This is of special interest because the novel Fitzgerald is referencing will become The Great Gatsby.  

West writes of Fitzgerald, “one of his great strengths as an artist was the internal tension in his work between romantic and naturalistic elements, neither of which ever came fully to dominate his thinking or writing.” (p.20) I think West is absolutely correct, Fitzgerald’s work is a fascinating mix of naturalism and romanticism, and that’s part of what makes his work so beautiful.  

One of the most fascinating chapters was about the Broadway play of The Great Gatsby, which opened in 1926. The script, by Owen Davis, took considerable liberty with Fitzgerald’s story. Davis's adaptation is chronological, so the play opens in Louisville in 1917, and Gatsby’s background, which is revealed late in the novel, is told to the audience at the beginning of the play. West details the plot of the play, which has some significant differences from the novel. West also reveals a great line that Davis added, as Tom Buchanan says to Gatsby during their confrontation, “You’re out of your class, old sport! You can’t speak her language.” (p.54)  

In one chapter, West examines Fitzgerald’s ledger, a large book where Fitzgerald kept track of his writings and offered monthly summaries of his life. West writes: “Through 1932 Fitzgerald’s attitude is confident and forward-looking. After that, however, his mood becomes increasingly elegiac, melancholy, and regretful...As time goes on he seems less interested in himself and, indeed, increasingly less interested in life.” (p.84) As depressing as this conclusion is, it’s hard to argue with it. Fitzgerald certainly had many reasons to be melancholy after 1932, as both his personal and professional lives were filled with difficulty.  

There’s a fascinating chapter on Fitzgerald’s 1927 short story “Jacob’s Ladder,” and how the original publication of the story in The Saturday Evening Post did not perfectly match Fitzgerald’s intentions for the story. In the last three words of the story, an error crept in, and Fitzgerald’s “vast throbbing darkness” became “fast-throbbing darkness” when the story was published in the Post.  

West reveals to us how fastidious a good editor needs to be, as he chronicles the many options available to someone wanting to edit The Great Gatsby. Now that Gatsby is in the public domain, anyone can edit it. So, should Daisy and Tom’s daughter remain “three years old,” as Daisy tells us she is? From the chronology of the novel, their daughter is actually two years and three months old. West tells us “When Fitzgerald originally drafted this scene he had a different chronology in mind for the novel.” (p.136) But Fitzgerald forgot to change the daughter’s age. So, what is the editor to do? Of course, it’s a minor point, but if we take Daisy at her word, that would mean that she was pregnant when she married Tom, which is probably not the implication that Fitzgerald wanted to make. Perhaps Daisy’s error in stating her daughter’s age is an indication of her light-headedness. This may not have been Fitzgerald’s intention, but it certainly fits with her character.  

My only quibble with West’s book is in the first chapter, he writes that in the summer of 1917, Fitzgerald “traveled to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, thirty miles to the south of St. Paul, and took the examination for a commission.” (p.11) As a Saint Paulite, I can tell you that Fort Snelling is not thirty miles south of Saint Paul—it’s right next to Saint Paul, and only about seven miles from where Fitzgerald was living in Saint Paul in 1917. But that’s a small quibble compared to the many pleasures that West’s book brings.  

Business is Good is ample proof that there is still more for us to learn about the life and career of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  

Book Review: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned: New Critical Essays, edited by William Blazek, David W. Ullrich, and Kirk Curnutt (2022)

The lovely cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned: New Critical Essays, 2022.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel The Beautiful and Damned celebrated its’ centennial in 2022. You’d be forgiven for not marking the occasion, since The Beautiful and Damned is slightly less famous than the novel that followed it: a little book called The Great Gatsby. Ironically, The Beautiful and Damned was Fitzgerald’s best-selling novel during his lifetime: it sold over 50,000 copies, more than twice as many as The Great Gatsby, and more than three times as many as Tender Is the Night. But while Gatsby and Tender were rediscovered and became best-sellers after Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, there has never been a similar revival of The Beautiful and Damned.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned: New Critical Essays shines needed light on the novel’s themes. Edited by William Blazek, David W. Ullrich, and Kirk Curnutt, the book presents 11 new essays from leading Fitzgerald scholars. New Critical Essays came out at the perfect time for me, as I had just re-read The Beautiful and Damned in preparation for a program I would be co-hosting in December. (My co-hosts were the talented authors Nicole Kronzer and Katharine Woodman-Maynard.) New Critical Essays aided my understanding of the many themes that Fitzgerald offers up in his second novel. The Beautiful and Damned is still my least favorite of the four novels Fitzgerald published during his lifetime, though. (I can’t fairly evaluate The Last Tycoon, since it was unfinished.) But I’d argue that some of the themes of The Beautiful and Damned have been overlooked. I think some of the novel is meant to be satirical, for example the scene where Gloria has a meltdown over not being able to order a tomato stuffed with celery. I’m pretty sure that Fitzgerald is mocking Gloria, although it’s hard to know for sure. Because the entire novel isn’t satirical, that scene may just go unnoticed by the reader.  

I won’t recap every essay in the book, but all of them made me think more about the points the authors were making, and they all enhanced my understanding of the novel.  

Jackson R. Bryer’s essay “The Critical Reception of The Beautiful and Damned, 1922-2022" was a fascinating look at how the novel has been overlooked and criticized by virtually every critic and biographer of Fitzgerald, in a pattern that now goes back decades.  

“The Periodical World of The Beautiful and Damned” by Kirk Curnutt examines how the novel appeared in its serialization in Metropolitan magazine in 1921-22. Curnutt shows how sharp Fitzgerald’s satire was, an element in Fitzgerald’s writing that often gets overlooked. Fitzgerald’s dissatisfaction with the serialization of The Beautiful and Damned was one reason why The Great Gatsby was not serialized. The only offer to serialize Gatsby was from the magazine College Humor. Fitzgerald wrote to Harold Ober, his literary agent, that he was turning down the offer: "most people who saw it advertised in College Humor would be sure that Gatsby was a great halfback and that would kill it in book form." (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.74)   

Walter Raubicheck’s essay “Fitzgerald Among the Smart Set,” examines the influence of naturalism and H.L. Mencken on The Beautiful and Damned. Raubicheck shows how naturalism was fundamentally opposed to Fitzgerald’s own romanticism. This is one of the reasons why the novel never quite works. Fitzgerald also seems to offer almost a parody of Mencken’s cynicism: if everything is meaningless and nothing we do really matters, then Anthony Patch seems determined to literally do nothing for the course of the entire novel. Anthony is taking Mencken’s ideas to the extreme. 

And while Fitzgerald is cynical about all kinds of subjects in The Beautiful and Damned, there is always a spark of optimism or romanticism in all of his finest writing. Fitzgerald was cynical and distrustful of most institutions of American life: organized religion, business, government, the military. All of these institutions come under fire in The Beautiful and Damned. What gave Fitzgerald hope? Perhaps the beauty of the written word, the way a shaft of sunlight falls upon a pretty girl’s face at noon as she hurries towards lunch, the way the green light from Daisy’s dock reflects upon the water as the waves gently swell in the moonlight.  

“’That Damned Beautiful Summer:’ The Fitzgeralds in Westport,” by Richard Webb, Jr., makes the case for the importance of Westport, Connecticut in The Beautiful and Damned, and as a partial inspiration for The Great Gatsby. Westport is called “Marietta” in The Beautiful and Damned, and it’s fairly easy to find the cottage Scott and Zelda rented, as its’ location is faithfully described in the novel. Webb also reminds us of the occasional Gothic touches in Fitzgerald’s work, as Gloria seems to be visited by spirits while they rent the cottage. These episodes stop once Anthony and Gloria stop going to Marietta.  

Fitzgerald was by no means a writer of the supernatural, but there are sometimes Gothic flourishes, as when Amory Blaine sees the Devil appear in a chorus girl’s apartment in This Side of Paradise. Amory seems on the path to having a sexual encounter with a chorus girl, but the sudden appearance of the spirit sends Amory headed for the exit before anything can be consummated. (This is perhaps the time to remind you that Fitzgerald was raised Catholic.) Fitzgerald’s 1927 short story “A Short Trip Home” also features a similarly malevolent spirit or apparition.  

David W. Ullrich’s essay “Fatherly Designs and Childish Behaviors: Anthony Comstock vs. Tanalahaka in The Beautiful and Damned” has excellent background material on Anthony Comstock, the model for Anthony’s grandfather Adam Patch. Ullrich also takes the Japanese servant Tana seriously, something the novel fails to do.  

Ullrich also writes about Joseph Bloeckman, the movie producer who is a supporting character. Towards the end of the novel, Gloria finally agrees to take Bloeckman up on his offer of a screen test. But then, horror of horrors, Bloeckman sends Gloria a letter saying the director wanted a younger woman for the main part. However, Gloria might be suitable for the role of “a very haughty rich widow.” (p.379) Gloria doesn’t even finish reading the letter; her dreams of movie stardom are crushed.  

Gloria’s father is a business associate of Bloeckman’s, and Ullrich finds it unlikely that “the tactful and ever-circumspect Bloeckman would risk alienating his supplier of ‘film material’ and their long-standing business relationship by writing such a rude letter to Mr. Gilbert’s daughter.” (p.158) However, by this point in the novel, Gloria’s father has been dead for nearly 100 pages, so Bloeckman doesn’t have to worry about possibly offending him.  

Meredith Goldsmith’s chapter “Trouble on the Home Front: Militarism, Masculinity, and Marriage in The Beautiful and Damned,” examines how Fitzgerald uses military language throughout the novel. It’s one of those details that you can easily overlook until someone tips you off to it. Goldsmith also looks at the connections Fitzgerald makes between the Civil War and World War I.  

Preeminent Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III has a superb essay, “The Beautiful and Damned and the Jewish People.” West makes a comparison I also recently thought of, as he likens Joseph Bloeckman, who is a German Jewish immigrant, to Simon Rosedale, the Jewish real estate dealer in Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth. Both Bloeckman and Rosedale are supporting characters who pop up every so often in the novels, and they progressively rise higher and higher in the course of the novels as the main characters fall lower and lower. West also reminds us that a good number of the supporting characters in The Beautiful and Damned are Jewish.  

“A Matter of Overcivilization: Fitzgerald’s Critique of Modernity in the Beautiful and Damned” by Joseph K. Stitt, focuses on one of Fitzgerald’s main intellectual ideas in his fiction: we’ve finished with the stale morality of the Victorian Age, but what comes next? What do we replace that morality with? Fitzgerald offers us no easy answers to those questions, but I think he spent a lot of time pondering the answers.  

New Critical Essays will give you a lot to think about, even if you’re a devoted fan of The Beautiful and Damned. Fitzgerald covers a lot of different topics and themes in the novel, which might be a shortcoming of the book, but it means there’s ample room for the many different essays in this volume.