IL CROLLO


Maxwell Parrish. È l’azzurro fatato delle illustrazioni di Maxfield Parrish, azzurro come i registri azzurri, l’olio azzurro, gli occhi azzurri…

O Capitano! Mio capitano!…
Sono tanti anni, troppi, che non rileggevo questo libro.
E ancora lo shock della seconda parte (libro secondo) che molto presto introduce le lettere di Nicole a Dick, la prima delle quali inizia proprio così, Mon Capitaine, ben meno enfatico della poesia di Whitman e di Robin Williams nel film, e per spiegare lo stato di lei quale miglior spiegazione di:
La guerra è finita e a stento sapevo che c’era una guerra…
Siamo a Zurigo, Svizzera, e la guerra in questione è tutt’intorno quella passata alla storia come Grande Guerra.


Gerald e Sarah Murphy sulla spiaggia di La Garoupe ad Antibes nell’estate del 1926: sono i modelli cui Fitzgerald si ispira per Dick e Nicole. Hemingway, sempre critico verso Fitzgerald, gli scrisse: ”Tenera è la notte” mi è piaciuto e non mi è piaciuto. Parte con quella descrizione meravigliosa di Sarah e Gerald. Poi ti metti a giocare con loro, li fai diventare altre persone e questo, Scott, non lo puoi fare. Se prendi delle persone vere, non gli puoi far fare cose che non farebbero.

Lo shock del libro secondo, la meraviglia del primo, lo strazio emotivo del terzo e ultimo (moglie e marito solo di rado trovavano la parola giusta quando sarebbe servita; arrivava sempre un istante troppo tardi, quando l’altro era ormai fuori portata.)
Sono le stesse dell’altra volta, molto tempo fa? Sì e no: il piacere è sempre tanto, la bellezza che leggo e trovo è la stessa, ma ovviamente l’occhio e l’anima sono diversi, quindi mi pare ovvio che questa volta mi concentri su aspetti che l’altra volta invece…


I coniugi Murphy fotografati nel 1923 insieme ad alcuni amici.

Ancora ricchi, e ancora belli nelle pagine di Fitzgerald. Personaggi seducenti, irresistibili. Fisicamente perfetti. Tutti belli e bianchi, preferibilmente con occhi e capelli chiari.
E se il sospetto che la giovinezza (leggi adolescenza) influisca molto sulla bellezza (sia Rosemary che Nicole quando entrano in scena e fanno innamorare Dick sono adolescenti, la prima appena diciottenne, la seconda ancora più giovane), il sospetto è dissolto dallo stesso Dick che si autodefinisce di mezz’età: Rosemary lo contraddice, si scandalizza per questa definizione che trova esagerata, ma in effetti, nel 1925, 34 anni portavano Dick piuttosto vicino a quel gradino della vita.


Tra gli amici dei Murphy, oltre Scott e Zelda, anche Pablo Picasso, qui insieme a Gerald.

Tender Is the Night rischierebbe di essere uno sdolcinato romanzo rosa eccessivamente romantico se non ci fosse lo sterminato talento di Fitzgerald che riesce a essere più grande del suo Grande Gatsby: quello era un capolavoro, questo è un altro capolavoro, per qualcuno perfino superiore.
…ricordando di non aver mai conosciuto nulla che sapesse di gioventù come le sue labbra, ricordando la pioggia come lacrime piante per lui che si posava sulla dolce luminescenza di quelle guance di porcellana…


Ancora i coniugi Murphy, questa volta in compagnia di Cole Porter e Genevieve Carpenter a Venezia nel 1923.

E Fitzgerald sembra in grado di insegnare cinema anche ai bravi registi: il suo uso di tecniche che appartengono alla settima arte è così accorto e attento da renderlo maestro davanti ai maestri: l’alternanza dei piani temporali - non quella del punto di vista, che è tecnica prettamente letteraria, e Fitzgerald si appropria di tutti, da narratore onnisciente abbraccia prima la prospettiva di Rosemary, per poi alternare quella di Dick a quella di Nicole - di ‘inquadrature’ dal ‘taglio’ diverso, totale, panoramica, campo lungo, primo piano, campo medio…
Colpisce pensare che la settima musa avesse nemmeno quarant’anni quando Fitzgerald pubblicò il romanzo: 1934 il libro, 1895 la nascita convenzionalmente riconosciuta del cinema.
Quando inizia il romanzo, 1925, il cinema è ancora quello muto. E quindi di arte giovane, molto giovane si trattava. Ma Fitzgerald era già in grado di maneggiarne i segreti, di mettere al centro della sua narrazione una giovanissima attrice cinematografica, di metterle intorno registi e colleghi attori, di scrivere che un bacio era più sfocato di quelli dei film.
Eppure non si può dire certo che la sua carriera di sceneggiatore l’abbia reso molto felice o soddisfatto!


La Costa Azzurra negli anni Venti quando il suo mito fu inventato dagli espatriati americani.

È un romanzo meno compatto di Gatsby, sia perché abbraccia un periodo più ampio (1917-1929), sia perché allarga il suo sguardo di qua e di là dell’oceano, Stati Uniti e ancor più l’Europa, sia perché è ricco di spunti e temi - oltre quello probabilmente principale, legato al denaro, alla crescita sociale, alla società classista, al sogno americano (leggi successo) che era già morto (il romanzo si ferma pochi mesi prima del celebre crack di Wall Street nel 1929 che dette inizio alla Grande Depressione), alle palate di autobiografia che spingono alcuni recensori a battezzare Nicole direttamente Zelda - si incontrano tanti altri temi e argomenti: la psicanalisi, la Grande Guerra, gli espatriati americani, la gioventù, l’omosessualità, la violenza sessuale…
Non per niente il cinema ha tentato un solo adattamento, e neppure particolarmente luminoso, nel 1962. Ma pare che siano in corso due versioni televisive, uno inglese l’altro americano: l’ampiezza della serie, o miniserie, sembra indispensabile per poter trasporre tutta la materia di queste pagine.


John Held: illustrazione per la copertina di una raccolta di racconti di Fitzgerald. Pag 420: Somigliava più alle maschiette senza seno di John Held che alla gerarchia di bionde alte e languide che da prima della guerra posavano per i pittori.

Le traduzioni invecchiano più delle opere che le generano. Per questo ho cercato quella che mi sembrava non solo più aggiornata ma anche la migliore. Non so se ci sono riuscito, qui e là qualche perplessità fa capolino – e pur non conoscendo il termine in inglese usato da Fitzgerald, ho problemi ad accettare “compagnia”, termine per palcoscenici, invece di troupe, regolarmente usato in Italia quando riferito al cinema.

Il classico libro che alla fine ti lascia da solo, ti fa sentire la sua assenza. Fitzgerald è solitamente riconosciuto come il grande cantore dell’età del jazz: ma qui, più che il jazz, io sento il blues.

Pensa a quanto mi ami. Non ti chiedo di amarmi sempre così tanto, ma ti chiedo di ricordartelo. Da qualche parte dentro di me ci sarà sempre la persona che sono stasera.


Scott e Zelda.

In 1932, F Scott Fitgerald was living in suburban Baltimore. His father had recently died and his wife Zelda had been committed to a psychiatric institution in Switzerland. He finally decided that the novel on which he had been working on and off since the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925 would be about the destruction of a man of great promise through an ill-judged marriage. In writing the novel, Fitzgerald liberally used material from his life. This material included his relationship with Zelda, their life together in France, the life-style of wealthy American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy, the death of his father, his alcoholism, what he had learned about psychiatry since Zelda had her first mental breakdown, and his despair at what he considered to be the waste of his potential as a writer.

The novel which emerged from this extraordinarily difficult period in Fitzgerald's life is not easy to read. At first I thought I didn't want to keep reading, so little did I care about the characters and their concerns. However, when the narrative moved into flashback, detailing the circumstances leading up to the marriage of the central characters, Dick and Nicole Driver, I became interested in the narrative and that interest was sustained until the end.

Knowing that this is the most autobiographical of Fitzgerald's works and understanding a little about the circumstances under which he wrote it adds poignancy to the reading experience. Fitzgerald clearly felt very sorry for himself, but from that self-pity was born a powerful and haunting novel.

The title is from Ode to a Nightingale by Keats. It is Fitzgerald’s last novel and is now thought of as one of his best, getting onto all the must read lists. It has also been touted as a feminist novel (I kid you not). His relationship with his wife Zelda and her mental ill-health are also well known. Fitzgerald is a chronicler of the Jazz age. He is undoubtedly a talented writer but he was also indifferent to politics and felt literature should not be used for political purposes or to support activism.
The plot I am sure is well known. Dick Diver is a doctor specialising in mental health. At a clinic he meets a very young woman (Nicole) who is there because she has had a breakdown following abuse by her father. To cut a long story short they marry, despite his being old enough to be her father. Some five or six years later they are living on the French Riviera with a couple of children and Dick and Nicole meet Rosemary Hoyt a young (17) American actress. Dick and Rosemary have an affair. The novel charts Dick’s gradual descent into alcoholism and its effects. There a couple of films, a stage production and a ballet (yes really!)
There are two versions of the novel. The original has a fractured structure and chronology with an extended flashback in the middle explaining how the Divers met. A later posthumous revision put the novel into chronological order. I read the original version.
Given that Diver has a number of similarities to Fitzgerald (and is certainly based on him), there are a number of indications of feelings about women that I noted:
“Their point of resemblance to each other and their difference from so many American women, lay in the fact that they were all happy to exist in a man’s world – they preserved their individuality through men and not by opposition to them. They would all three have made alternatively good courtesans or good wives not by the accident of birth but through the greater accident of finding their man or not finding him.”
And:
“Like most women she liked to be told how she should feel.”
Nicole is also modelled on Zelda and her comment on Dick’s decline is telling:
“But you used to want to create things—now you seem to want to smash them up.”
Also telling is that Nicole in the novel is seen as needing rescuing and as having mental health problems from the start; she marries her therapist! In real life Fitzgerald also had an affair with a seventeen year old actress.
None of the characters are particularly likeable, but I think Fitzgerald’s portrayal of the female characters is particularly problematic. They have no real depth or agency and are dependent on men. The female role is a supporting role. Here is Dick speaking and Nicole responding:
“I envy you. At present I don’t seem to be interested in anything except my work.”
“Oh, I think that is fine for a man,” she said quickly. “But for a girl I think she ought to have lots of minor accomplishments and pass them on to her children.”
Then of course there is the issue of race. For example:
“a big splendidly dressed oil Indian named George T. Horseprotection”
And:
“He was not quite light enough to travel in a Pullman south of Mason-Dixon; he was of the Kayble-Berber-Sabaean-Hindu strain that belts across north Africa and Asia, more sympathetic to the European than the mongrel faces of the ports”.
Then there is the black male who was murdered and left in Rosemary’s bed. The characters of colour have even less agency than the women.
The concepts of womanhood are not very palatable. Rosemary, the film star is idealised and young with plenty of male attention. Her breakout film was a silent movie and indeed throughout the novel she doesn’t really have a voice. Nicole does but hers is seen as suspect because of her mental health. There is an incident where Nicole takes the wheel of the car and scares Nick, exactly mirroring an incident between Fitzgerald and Zelda.
On the whole the problems outweighed the lush writing.

I was besotted with Scott and Zelda in my youth. Along with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield I read everything about them I could lay my hands on. And I loved this novel because of how much obvious autobiography it contained. And to some extent the measure of enjoyment you glean from Tender will depend on how heavily you are invested emotionally in Scott and Zelda's real-life story. Because, despite all the smokescreens, the ruse that Dick and Nicole are based on Gerald and Sarah Murphy, it's very much a portrait of their life together, or the lengthy period of their life lived in France. Except in his novel Scott makes himself a psychiatrist and saves Zelda. He reverses the pattern of her illness - makes her sick to begin with and then heals her. It's a kind of wish fulfilment fantasy on his part.

Tender is the Night took Fitzgerald thirteen years to write and for a lot of this period he was drunk and it shows, especially in the early part of the novel where his structure seems off and his focus lacks sharpness. There's a sense many passages have been transposed from notebooks, shoehorned in, rather than come about organically. Often the beautiful writing doesn't mesh seamlessly into the narrative. There are lots of sensational sideshows featuring very minor characters, characters only there, in fact, to provide these sideshows - there's a duel, an attempted murder and then a successful murder. - Tender has little of the tight technical artistry of Gatsby where there was barely a superfluous word. Neither, despite its ambition, does it achieve the scope of Gatsby largely because of its structural flaws. (Not surprising as much of his material was in the midst of happening in real life: Zelda, for example, was essentially a healthy young woman when he begun this.) However, it was his personal favourite of his books and you begin to understand why in the second half which dramatically improves when Fitzgerald hones in on his two central characters, makes them more explicitly himself and Zelda and their volatile doomed marriage. Dick, a bit of a self-satisfied bore when he's in command of his life and heralded as an organiser of gaiety, becomes more interesting when he's on the back foot. The writing improves too and there are many truly beautiful passages and insights, especially on the underlying causes of human failure. And by the end Scott has evoked a generous measure of the tragic poignancy of his marriage to Zelda.

SPOILERS


n  "He wished she had no background, that she was just a girl lost with no address save the night from which she had come."n


Tender is the Night is a love story. It is also a story about loneliness. But mostly, it is about the need to love and belong. Dick Diver falls in love with mentally ill woman and marries her. But he never truly finds happiness with her. He falls in love with an young actress, but he never gets to be with her, because his connection with and his love for his sick wife are too strong. And he goes through life alone, leading a battle that cannot be won. This is a beautiful and touching book, but it is also adamant in the way it shows what loneliness, what falling in love with the wrong person can do to us. Still, does loving a person you cannot be happy with mean that you have truly chosen (as much as love is choice) the wrong person? There are those of us who love those that cannot be reached, that cannot be saved, even those don’t love us back. For which do we need bigger strength? To quit loving such person or to go on loving them? Is Dick’s growing detachment from Nicole a sign for the diminishing of his love or his loss of hope? Can a distinction be made? Do we love a person only when we believe there is a chance for them to turn into what we need them to be and for us to be happy with them? We dream of finding that perfect person, for the connection that breaks us apart and builds us all over again, but what happens when we meet an already broken person whose pieces are there, waiting for us to pick them up and put the puzzle back together, only to realize that there will always be a piece that will be missing, that won’t fit as we need it to? I believe that when we love, it is forever. Love that dies is no love, unless the object of our love changes severely. But maybe sometimes the person hasn’t become so different as we think, maybe they are the same, and it us who have changed without realizing it and this has lead to a change of heart.


n  “Think how you love me. I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight.”n


If the person we have grown to love stays forever there, under some form, does the part of us that loves this person goes on existing even while we feel that with another part of ourselves we slip away from our loved one’s reach and start needing new horizons, new lands to explore, new hearts to conquer? Is there such thing as loving only with a part of yourself or is love something that sweeps you completely and you love with your whole being? Do humans have the potential, the depth to love absolutely and completely? Or is love fragmented, like we are fragmented? Is it possible for the part that loves and the part that stays indifferent (or even hates) to be two sides of the same coin, two faces of the same feeling? Dick Diver goes on loving his wife, but a part of him grows cold. This terrible contradiction comes not from weakening of his love for her, but from his inability to connect to her. Are love and connection the same thing? I thought so. I am not so sure anymore. He loves her, but feels disconnected from her.


n  "He moved on through the rain, demoniac and frightened, the passions of many men inside him and nothing simple that he could see."n


If we are ready to love without connection does that make our love extraordinarily strong or not strong enough? Can a man who loves a woman whole-heartedly accept only half of her, fragments of her, isn’t the strongest kind of love the one that compels us to either have a full possession of somebody or walk away, because we love them too much to bear to have only fragments of them? Or is the strongest love the one because of which we are ready to make any sacrifices and accept even the smallest particles, when even the smallest piece is better than nothing, when we are ready to sacrifice our life, our pride, our very essence? Dick Diver feels like he has lost an essential part of himself, a part that leaves any real feeling in him incomplete. If we sacrifice too much for the loved one, so much as we no longer feel as ourselves, can love survive? Does true love transcends all? Which is the stronger? The love we bear for the other person or our sense of self? When the sense of self vanishes, do we keep loving? Would Dick have been happier had he left Nicole? Would he have been happy with Rosemary? I think not. When we love somebody, we bear all their baggage, their pain overwhelms us, it becomes a part of us, but the same is valid for their joy, for everything amazing they are and everything amazing they give us. We are overwhelmed, but the mere fact that we love someone so deeply as to let ourselves be overwhelmed gives us a sense of security and belonging and fullness.


n  "He knew that the price of his intactness was incompleteness."n


n   They made no love that day, but when he left her outside the sad door on the Zurichsee and she turned and looked at him he knew her problem was one they had together for good nown


Is his love for her weakness or strength? Or both? When we truly love, how much do we belong to ourselves and how much to the other person?


n  "There were now no more plans than if he had arbitrarily made some indissoluble mixture, with atoms joined and inseparable; you could throw it all out but never again could they fit back into atomic scale. As he held her and tasted her, and as she curved in further and further toward him, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, he was thankful to have an existence at all, if only as a reflection in her wet eyes."n


I believe that no two people are absolutely alike or absolutely different, therefore there is no such thing as an absolute harmony or absolute disconnection. The relationship between Dick and Nicole, however strong or weak, keeps on living and tearing him apart. When the relationship does not bring us happiness, when the pain prevails, is it still love? Does true love mean that no matter the circumstances, we can always find some happiness, some spark there? Or do we love even when the passion no longer exists and desperation and emptiness fill our hearts and minds and hang over us and touch us like a pale, cold sun, so alike and unlike the real one that once kept it all alive, but has now melted and disappeared into space, leaving us merely with the memory?


n  It was not so much infatuation as a romantic memory. She was still his girln


Tender Is the Night left me incredibly satisfied and yearning at the same time. I wish Scott Fitzgerald had developed Nicole’s character more. Or Rosemary’s. But with Dick himself being the main focus and how his love and longing, pain and loneliness affect his life and personality, they were more of a catalyst for him than actual characters in the novel. I think that had Fitzgerald given them more personality, this would have been a five-star book for me. Still, it was a great experience. One I am tempted to go back to one day.


Read count: 1

3-3.5*
Leer a Fitzgerald siempre me lleva su tiempo y esta vez tampoco ha sido una excepción.
Todavía ando dándole vueltas a la historia, sin saber del todo qué pensar de sus personajes.
Me da la impresión de que Fitzgerald quiere que el lector empatice sobretodo con Dick, el personaje masculino principal. En muchas ocasiones parece decir: "Pobre Dick, lo que tiene que aguantar sin merecerlo". Pues Señor Fitzgerald, con quien empatizo yo más es con Nicole. Me pareció el mejor personaje con creces.
"Suave es la noche" es una de esas historias que al principio no parecen muy complejas, en las que "no pasa mucho", pero que se van cociendo a fuego lento y donde la psicología de sus personajes es el motor de la trama. Trata temas como el alcoholismo o las enfermedades mentales.
La prosa de Fitzgerald es siempre exquisita aunque debo decir que hasta el segundo volumen la historia no consiguió captar toda mi atención.
Me gustaría releerlo en unos años, me da la sensación de que es uno de esos libros en los que cada lectura puede causar una impresión o aportar cosas distinas.

Mentre leggevo i commenti scritti da altri su questo libro, mi sono imbattuta in uno che dice che Tenera è la notte è un libro maschilista. Al che mi sono domandata se ci fosse stato qualcosa che mi è sfuggito, perché al contrario di quel lettore quello che ho percepito dalla lettura del romanzo è la crisi del personaggio maschile, la parabola di decadenza che Dick Diver affronta, da uomo di mondo ammirato, esponente di spicco del jet set che si sposta dalla villeggiatura invernale a Saint Moritz a quella estiva a Saint Tropez abituato a vivere tra lussuosi alberghi, eleganti yacht e ville sul mare, tra feste, cocktails, cene e abiti scintillanti, a solitario uomo di mezza età, in profonda crisi personale e professionale in compagnia del suo bicchiere di gin. E’ Dick l’unico personaggio che provoca una tiepida simpatia per l’altruismo e la generosità che sono alla base del suo carattere, e ci riesce, più che con mezzi suoi propri, per quanto è antipatica la figura di sua moglie Nicole Warren, una ereditiera milionaria di Chicago che guarda tutti dall’alto in basso –per non dire della sorella Baby Warren, zitella milionaria che paga gli uomini per seguirla nei suoi giri del mondo, purchè siano purosangue inglesi-, trascorre la vita a spendere in ogni modo possibile i milioni lasciatile dal padre, causa delle sofferenze dell’amata figlia. Senza andare oltre nella trama, per non togliere il piacere della lettura a chi legge il commento, ribadisco che, secondo me, la figura che alla fine, nel crollo totale di un mondo e di un matrimonio che ha basi morbose, ne esce meglio è Nicole, che ha sposato Dick, giovane psichiatra americano venuto a specializzarsi in Europa, proveniente da una famiglia modesta del sud degli Stati Uniti, perché ….. ecco, il senso del romanzo è questo, lo studio di un mondo dorato in superficie che nasconde l’immondizia sociale di una ristretta cerchia di persone chiuse ai cambiamenti, immobili come tante statue di basso valore ricoperte d’oro tra lussi e preziosi, così come il matrimonio tra Nicole e Dick, fondato sulla ricerca spasmodica e ossessiva della felicità attraverso la bella vita, che ricopre con una patina di bellezza, eleganza e savoir faire le macerie di un sentimento privo di fondamenta solide.
Da ultimo voglio spiegare perché 4 stelle al romanzo. Prima di tutto perché la prima parte non mi è piaciuta, mi ha annoiato, in quanto Fitzgerald non è un costruttore di trame di ampio respiro,è più un creatore di atmosfere attraverso la precisione dei particolari, e la storia non è decollata fino a quando non si è concentrata sui due personaggi principali, Nicole e Dick. Inoltre la lussureggiante scrittura di Fitzgerald, fatta di un linguaggio figurato pieno di giri di parole e di (belle e liriche) metafore, scrittura che tanto mi è piaciuta nei racconti che ho letto da poco, ha appesantito la mia lettura, costringendomi a rileggere più volte lo stesso pensiero per andare oltre le figure retoriche.

Tender is the night, peaceful is the Rivera setting and fascinating is a novel that is scathing in its messaging as it mediates in heavy themes of infidelity, materialism, alcoholism, child abuse, mental illness, and vanity but most of all moral suppression in pursuit of pleasure.

A novel that makes no apologies for shining a light on the moral shortcomings of society, the burden of class, wealth and expectation, and the power of love and lust that turns people blind, as the characters are forced to live with the consequence of decisions taken when none of their lives remain unchanged.

The Plot

Dick Diver and his wife Nicole are a rich couple who take a holiday in the French Riviera with other America expatriates, Dick a successful psychiatrist, Nicole a wealthy heiress, and with no shortage of wealth they live the dazzling champagne lifestyle to the fullest. And into that world of decadence steps seventeen-year-old Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress who unashamedly believes “It is not necessarily poverty of spirit that makes a woman surround herself with life—it can be a superabundance of interest...”

And her interest is both Dick and Nicole. Rosemary wants Dick as a lover and wants to be like Nicole his wife. A self-absorbed girl who begins to recklessly court the couple, as cracks begin to show in their marriage. Meanwhile, Nicole remains a mental ward of her husband after suffering abuse at the hands of her father, leaving her with a vulnerable mental state that she does well to hide from many, as Dick, the eternal white Knight, fails to see the all-important delineation of husband and doctor. However, more importantly he fails to deal appropriately with the advances of Rosemary, who he professes to love.

Review and Comments

Tender is the night is a theme driven novel, complex but poignant, expressive in its portrayal of a high society and people that are flawed, and powerful in its messaging of the consequences. A novel that does not shy away from painting a sad and heart rendering story as though the author has his own moral obligation to highlight such fables as teachings of consequence whilst he laments in the failure of a society where idealism is only a dream and aspiration.

I felt the story lost its way a few times in the middle, as though it was trying to pad out the story length. However, this is one of the best theme driven books I have read. The characterisation is superb but all of the characters are unlikeable, in some way, which is in itself a bold move as the reader is forced to observe a society through the authors lens and in it, he exposes the failings and weaknesses in human behaviour.

Fitzgerald has a beautiful writing style where the power of his work sits with the messaging and themes that he effortlessly introduces without overburdening the reader. Excellent.

Tender is Night or so they say. I say tender is a woman's psyche, and the man's ego that tries to make it strong. Too bad both of them suffer from a severe case of asshatitis.

"Tender is the Night" is the story of Dick Diver and his Wife Nicole. You don't actually find this out until a fourth of the way into the book. At first we meet the happy couple through the eyes of Rosemary, a young actress from America with a Norman Bates styled affinity for "Mother." She quickly latches onto Mr. Diver, his charms no match for her ignorance and youth. They all hang out together, doing rich people things like eating, and hanging out at the beach, and hating minorities (It is the 20's after all), and all other sorts of things that make you want to slash the tires on their Rolls.

Book two abandons Rosemary and we focus on Dick Diver, Psychiatrist at Large. He doesn't actually do much psycho analyzing, but spends most of his time wondering why he married Nicole in the first place and developing a drinking problem. Turns out Nicole is cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and Dick married her with some God complex of trying to save her. But all he ends up doing is ruining himself.

Book three continues the downfall, kind of told through Nicole's eyes. Dick falls further and further down the rabbit hole while Nicole seems to see daylight in the fog of her crazy. She ends up pulling a Dick (Diver. Head out of the gutter people) but with the opposite reaction of what it did to him. I think.

This book isn't necessarily long, though it feels like it. Long passages of time pass in one paragraph, making it confusing and a rather dull read. None of the characters are likable, and I think you end up just wishing all of them went the way of Abe North. Speaking of, what the heck DID happen to Abe North. That story line was never really resolved.

They say it took him forever to write this and it kind of feels like it. It doesn't connect very well and you wonder how much is Fitz's desperate cry for help from his own life full of money and ruin. Can anyone tell me why I am supposed to love Fitzgerald so much?

"Tender is the Night" is an interesting dinner guest that arrives half-drunk seems amusing but shallow, but then, as the night wears on, reveals itself as something deep, thoughtful, and yes, even tender.

It's the story of one couple -- Dick and Nicole Diver; a charismatic American family living in France. They are charming, they are exceptional, they are fun, and of course, they are also flawed...and their tale is tragic. In short, this book is a classic and a joy to read.

I'm always cautious about commenting on male writers writing female characters, especially those with mental disorders. But Nicole seems sympathetically and miraculously well-developed. Even though she is a kind of plague to the charismatic Dick Diver (I wonder what Freud would say about this character name), she also is a charming delight -- which makes Dick's situation all the more plausible and relatable. As the novel moves into its mature parts, we see that Dick himself is a kind of blight on Nicole. As Nicole gets better mentally and emotionally, Dick goes through a kind of dissipation.

The very period-ness of the book, post-WWI Europe, the Jazz age, the backdrop of a rising and confident America, also makes the book interesting. In the edition I read, there are numbered references you can look up in the back that explain all the period details. The book is very much a work of its time, and thus, it's also a fascinating window into that part of history. One of the things that stands out the most is spectacular wealth that the Divers enjoy in their pre-Great Depression era lives. This is a subject I think that should resonate with modern America readers!

The book was serialized (either in a newspaper or magazine, I forget), so the chapters are short, punchy, and something interesting happens in all of them. Since I read much of this on the bus to work, this structure of the book really worked for me.

At first, as I read the book, I took it as just another well-written period piece. But the more involved I became with the Dick and Nicole, the more I began to see this book not just as a good work of fiction, but as a great one. It's the tale of a complicated time and place where good things can easily go sour.

I would recommend this book to all lovers of great fiction! And, for this reason, I'm placing it on my all-time greats bookshelf.

To me the title was the best part of the book.

“… Io volerò a te… sulle ali invisibili della poesia… Tenera è la notte / e felicemente la Luna Regina è sul suo trono… ma qui non c’è luce…”
(Ode all’usignolo” di John Keats)

All'inizio non ti raccapezzi. Tutto appare piatto, algido, distante nel suo splendore patinato. Ti ritrovi in Costa Azzurra, un albergo con la facciata rosa e una frivola Rosemary. Tanti personaggi futili, qualche divagazione di troppo, ma questa è vita, la senti vibrare e ne sei travolto. Un climax incredibile e poi la scena si ribalta, la lettura diventa introspettiva e certe figure si rivelano; la struttura si compie nella sua complessa perfezione, viaggiando avanti ed indietro nel tempo. Nella seconda parte del romanzo capisci l'amore, la passione, la fine di un sogno che credevi eterno.

"Era una limpida notte buia appesa come in un canestro ad un unica stella smorta".

Lo definirei quasi un "romanzo-testamento", sia per la parabola artistica che per quella umana dell'autore, ormai in preda all'alcolismo, sia per il senso tragico della fine di un'epoca, gli Anni Ruggenti. Le azioni e i pensieri dei personaggi sembrano essere la trasposizione dei desideri e delle paure inconfessabili dell’autore che rivela, in una prosa complessa e più volte rivisitata (ha impiegato 9 anni per completare il romanzo), un forte senso di oppressione ed inadeguatezza di fronte alla malattia e alla vita stessa. Un'opera solo apparentemente leggera, in realtà cupa e disperata.

"Come un'indifferenza costantemente alimentata o lasciata a se stessa si trasforma in un vuoto, così lui aveva imparato a essere vuoto di Nicole, comportandosi con lei con negazione e distacco sentimentale. Si parla di cicatrici guarite, una vaga similitudine tratta dalla patologia della pelle, ma nella realtà non esiste una cosa simile. Esistono ferite aperte, a volte piccole come una puntura di spillo, ma sono pur sempre ferite. I segni della sofferenza possono essere paragonati al massimo alla perdita di un dito o di un occhio; potremmo non perderli mai, nemmeno per un minuto all'anno, ma se capitasse non ci sarebbe più nulla da fare"