Book Review: The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, by Thomas Wolfe, Edited by Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli (2008)

James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes.

Thomas Wolfe’s 1934 short story “The Four Lost Men” is a meditation on storytelling, the American past, and four obscure U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, I read the version of “The Four Lost Men” that appears in the 1987 book The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe. I just finished reading an expanded version of the short story in the book The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, published in 2008, and edited by Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli.  

The long version of “The Four Lost Men” is considerably longer than the version of the story that appears in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, as it’s expanded from 7,000 words to 21,000 words. The long version adds a lot of material, but is it actually better than the short version? I like the focus that the shorter version has, and I think the longer version ventures into some detours that don’t necessarily add much to the main story.  

The story begins with the narrator’s father spinning a tale on the porch of the family’s boardinghouse in 1917. Wolfe’s fiction often had a strong autobiographical flavor, and his mother ran a boardinghouse, which is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site in Asheville, North Carolina.  

The narrator’s father proclaims that he is a proud Republican, which makes him something of an oddity in the then “Solid South,” where nearly every politician was a Democrat. This was in large part due to the Civil War, and the South’s animosity towards the Republican party, which persisted until the 1960’s when the South flipped from Democratic to Republican, due to civil rights.  

The narrator’s father then recounts all of the presidents he has seen come and go, including “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes.” Wolfe writes: “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes—time of my father’s time, earth of his earth, blood of his blood, life of his life—living, real, and actual people in all the passion, power, and feeling of my father’s youth. And for me, the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea-depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis. 

And they were lost.” (p.38-9) 

Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison are not exactly household names, and even a dedicated student of American history would have trouble telling you much about these men.  

It’s no wonder these presidents seemed lost to Wolfe. Only Benjamin Harrison was still alive when Wolfe was born in 1900, and Harrison died the next year. To Wolfe, they were long gone, ancient. No one was penning odes to Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes. They were not inspiring sonnets, odes, poems, lyric dramas, great novels, or popular songs. Jazz Age underclassmen wearing racoon coats were not serenading sweethearts on their ukuleles with tunes about the Civil War heroism of these four forgotten men.  

The core of the story is the flights of fancy that the narrator’s mind goes on as he is pondering the lives of these four presidents. He imagines what their Civil War service was like—all four men became generals during the war.  

Wolfe writes: “Had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes been young? Or had they been born with flowing whiskers, sideburns, and wing-collars, speaking gravely from the cradle of their mother’s arms the noble vacant sonorities of far-seeing statesmanship?” (p.42) I love those sentences, it’s impossible for me to think of men from that era as having ever been young. But of course, they must have been.   

Wolfe originally wrote of the four presidents frequenting brothels, but when his editor Maxwell Perkins objected, Wolfe cut the references for the original publication of the story in Scribner’s magazine. In the version of the story included in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, the reference was put back in: “Did they not, as we, when young, prowl softly up and down past brothels in the dark hours of the night, seeing the gas lamps flare and flutter on the corner, falling with livid light upon the corners of old cobbled streets of brownstone houses?” (p.113) 

Curiously, the reference is changed in The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, as it reads “prowl softly up and down the doorless avenues of night.” (p.42) I’m not quite sure why the Bruccolis made this change to the text. Wolfe did take the word “brothel” out, but it seems clear that he had originally intended to use the word brothel and then changed it at Perkins’ request. I prefer the Complete Short Stories version, as it paints a more interesting portrait of the presidents as brothel visitors. And it seems in keeping with Wolfe’s idea of making these remote historical figures into real, flesh and blood humans.  

The flights of fancy that Wolfe embarks upon in the story are fantastic. He has the four presidents proclaiming the virtues of American women from the different regions of the country, like a Greek chorus. “’And there are women in the North,’ cried Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes, ‘who wait for us with Viking eyes, the deep breast and the great limbs of the Amazons. There are powerful and lovely women in the North,’ they said, ‘whose eyes are blue and depthless as a mountain lake.’” (p.47)  

“The Four Lost Men” was cut by quite a bit when it appeared in Wolfe’s 1935 collection of short stories, From Death to Morning, and this version, also included in the book, is inferior to the original magazine version, and the long version.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an admirer of “The Four Lost Men.” Fitzgerald wrote to a friend, asking “did you notice that in the second issue of Scribner’s that really great story by Tom Wolfe,” which was “The Four Lost Men.” (Correspondence of FSF, p.323) 

Fitzgerald also expressed his enthusiasm for “The Four Lost Men” in a letter to Maxwell Perkins, written after Wolfe’s death. Fitzgerald wrote: “I like ‘Only the Dead’ {Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, another Wolfe short story} and ‘Arthur, Garfield, etc.’ {The Four Lost Men} right up with the tops.” (Letters of FSF, p.316) Obviously, the story made an impression on Fitzgerald. 

I don’t envy the task that the Bruccolis faced in putting together the long version of “The Four Lost Men.” Basically, they found all kinds of additional material in Wolfe’s archives that seemed to belong to the story “The Four Lost Men” and so they included it. But because Wolfe’s authorial intent is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, it’s very hard to say, “This is how Thomas Wolfe wanted this story.” But for fans of Wolfe’s powerful writing, The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version highlights one of his great short stories.  

Book Review: Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman (2004)

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, 2004.

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by noted Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, and published in 2004, fills an important gap in the collection of books by and about Fitzgerald by collecting 37 interviews with the author that were originally published during his lifetime.  

It’s fascinating to see how Fitzgerald was presented in the press during the 1920’s and 1930’s. In his lifetime, Fitzgerald was much more famous as “the author of This Side of Paradise” rather than “the author of The Great Gatsby.” None of the interviews in the book mention Gatsby in any detail, an indication of how the book was neglected by the public at the time it was published in 1925.  

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the reader aspects of Fitzgerald that might not always come across in his fiction. His sense of humor is usually on fine display in these interviews, and it’s interesting how often Fitzgerald mentions politics. Fitzgerald wasn’t a political writer, by any means, but it’s clear from these interviews that he viewed himself as a liberal. If all you know of Fitzgerald is his glittering portraits of the wealthy, you might not think that he would call himself a socialist, as he does in these interviews. Fitzgerald’s desire to show the corrosive effects of wealth in his fiction matches up with the personal political convictions that he espouses here.  

There are many fascinating tidbits for Fitzgerald fanatics to gather from Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’ll describe some of my favorites. A highlight is Thomas Boyd’s long interview with Fitzgerald, conducted in 1921 in Dellwood/White Bear Lake, just outside of Fitzgerald’s hometown of Saint Paul. (The difference depends on how specific you want to get with the location of the house the Fitzgeralds were renting.) Thomas Boyd was a book critic who wrote an acclaimed World War I novel, Through the Wheat. Scott recruited Boyd and his wife Margaret, who published under the name Woodward Boyd, to join him at his publisher Scribners. Thomas Boyd described reading some of the manuscript of Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. “He disappeared into the house and returned with the manuscript of The Beautiful and Damned. ‘Here it is.’ It was written on ordinary-sized paper and not typed. The pencil scrawl was in large letters and altogether it must have been two feet thick.” (p.17) It’s wonderful to have these kinds of firsthand details about Fitzgerald’s writing. You can’t help but put yourself in Thomas Boyd’s shoes and imagine the excitement of reading Fitzgerald’s handwritten manuscript.  

As a left-hander, I’m always on the lookout for references to other left-handers. One of the articles says of Fitzgerald: “He is left-handed in everything save writing.” (p.95) I wonder if Scott was a natural left-hander who was switched to writing right-handed, as so many children were in those days? I’ve seen photos of Fitzgerald wearing a watch on his right wrist, which is usually a good indicator of a left-hander. Anyway, I will gladly accept F. Scott Fitzgerald as an honorary left-hander.  

One of the most amazing interviews in this book is from 1927. The interview was titled “Fitzgerald, Spenglerian,” a reference to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler, whose book Decline of the West Fitzgerald was reading at the time. Fitzgerald sounds like a prophet: 

“Mussolini, the last slap in the face of liberalism, is an omen for America...The idea that we’re the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait until the next war on the Pacific, or against some European combination!”  

Fifteen years after 1927 was 1942, when the United States, after suffering through the Great Depression, was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy. Fitzgerald hit it right on the nose, although he didn’t live to see 1942. I’m not sure why some of the quotes from this interview aren’t more widely circulated, since they demonstrate Fitzgerald’s astute political thinking.  

It’s always interesting to see how Fitzgerald is described by people who knew him. Interviewers vary on the color of his eyes between blue and green. Fitzgerald was described in a 1927 piece by Margaret Reid as “probably the best-looking thing ever turned out of Princeton.” (p.90) I’m sure Fitzgerald delighted in that. A 1928 piece informs us that “His ties and pocket handkerchiefs are all brightly-colored.” (p.95) I approve of Fitzgerald’s sartorial flair—I always use my ties as a way to get more color into an outfit.  

Another reference to politics is made in a 1931 interview with the Montgomery Advertiser: “Mr. Fitzgerald, who said he was a Jeffersonian Democrat at heart and somewhat of a Communist in ideals, declared that the prohibition law was not only a foolish gesture but that it was a hindrance to the machine of government.” (p.101) It’s no surprise that Fitzgerald was against prohibition, but very interesting that he now moved even farther to the left in his politics. Perhaps the stock market crash of 1929 had made him slightly more radical.  

My only small quibble with the explanatory notes was the footnote following this sentence: “His novel This Side of Paradise was published before his graduation from Princeton.” The footnote reads: “Untrue. This Side of Paradise was published in 1920.” (p.102) Yes, TSOP was published in 1920, but since Fitzgerald never actually graduated from Princeton, it’s technically true that the novel was published “before his graduation” since his graduation never actually occurred. It’s splitting hairs, I know. But don’t worry too much, the Princeton Class of 2017 awarded Fitzgerald an honorary degree, 100 years after he should have graduated.  

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald ends on a sad note. The last extended interview Fitzgerald ever gave was in September of 1936, on his 40th birthday. Recovering from a broken shoulder, Fitzgerald was in a bad place mentally as well, and he was really in no shape to be talking to any members of the press. But ambitious reporter Michel Mok surprised Fitzgerald by coming unannounced and knocking on the door of his room at Asheville, North Carolina’s Grove Park Inn. Fitzgerald should have slammed the door in Mok’s face. But Fitzgerald’s kindness took over, and he invited Mok in and rambled on about what a shambles his life was in at the moment. When Fitzgerald saw the article in print, he attempted suicide by overdosing on morphine. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful.  

After Mok’s article, there’s just one more short piece in the book. Barely more than a single page, it’s a 1939 article from the Dartmouth College newspaper, and it focuses more on movie producer Walter Wanger than Fitzgerald. Neither man is directly quoted in the article. And so, F. Scott Fitzgerald fades out of Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, leaving his own book without a parting word. It’s like a move Gatsby might have pulled, leaving one of his own parties while all the guests are still there. 

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald is essential reading for Fitzgerald fans, and it gives us a glimpse of what a fascinating and intelligent man F. Scott Fitzgerald was.