Another book which I read rather late for a discussion in the Reading the 20th Century group - this was my first experience of reading Fitzgerald, and did not entirely convince me that I want to read more, perhaps because I didn't find any of the characters very likeable (perhaps because so much of the darker material is thinly veiled personal experience), and some of the plotting gets very contrived. For all that it is well written and easy to read, so I don't want to be too negative.

The early chapters are written from the perspective of Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress who gets drawn into the world of the main protagonists Dick and Nicole Diver while travelling in the French Riviera. Dick is a psychiatric doctor, and the middle part of the book goes back to tell the story of how he met Nicole, a rich heiress who was initially his patient.  The final part of the book charts Dick's slow decline into alcoholism and self-destruction.

Rosemary is a young movie scarlet on vacation in the French Rivera, with her mother. It is there that she meets the handsome psychologist Dick Diver and falls madly in love with him. The only problem is Dick is married and his wife, Nicole, a sophisticated socialite is just as lovable. While this magnetic couple draw in admirers and bask in the social spotlight, things are not as perfect as they seem. Tender is the Night is an exploration into a degenerating marriage and the differences between what people project publicly verses what is really happening under the surface.

In 1932 Zelda Fitzgerald was hospitalised for schizophrenia, although there have been huge debates since as to whether she should have been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder (if it was classified back then) instead. While Zelda was being treated at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she had a burst of creativity. Over six weeks she wrote her only novel Save Me the Waltz which was published the same year. The novel was semi-autobiographical and when F. Scott Fitzgerald read it he was furious that she shared so much of their personal life within the book. Even though Scott shares a lot of their lives in his own novels, the anger may have to do with the fact he planned to use the material for his next novel Tender is the Night. It is hard to tell how much of Scott’s novel is based on real life and how much is just written in anger towards his wife, I will have to read Save Me the Waltz to make up my own mind.

While Nicole Diver is heavily based on Zelda Fitzgerald, it is up to the reader to make up their mind about Dick and if F. Scott Fitzgerald based this character on himself. I personally think there is a lot of Scott in this character and he wants to portray himself as the handsome, intelligent husband that is devoted to his wife, looking after her through her mental illness. However this is where it gets a bit passive aggressive; Tender is the Night chronicles the downward spiral of Dick Diver’s life. As the novel progresses you begin to see just how this lifestyle and his marriage effects Dick to the point where he is nothing but a shell of his former self.

There are some interesting themes worth exploring within this novel; for me I was mostly interested in the ideas of appearance and reading about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s thoughts about being married. There is such beauty within the writing, but then there is so much sadness to be found as well. I found this to be a heart-breaking novel and the fact that this is based so much on his own marriage just makes things worse. I’m planning to read Save Me the Waltz very soon, just so I can compare the two novels.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2015/...

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.

La letteratura americana mi piace tanto, che sia contemporanea o un classicone come questo. A mio parere, anche meglio de "Il grande Gatsby".
Una meraviglia proprio.
Ogni parte destruttura quella precedente, dà una nuova prospettiva, nuove sfumature e sfaccettature, più spessore ai personaggi. E la sensazione che resta alla fine è di calda, ineluttabile malinconia.

2.5 stars

Of course, it doesn't matter what the author really meant to say. Reading Richard Godden's introduction though, it was quite comforting to me to remember that it doesn't matter what scholars think the text means, or author meant, either. Or the press. "A tragedy backlit by beauty" is the highlighted quote.

What tragedy? There is a 'tragedy' here, if that word, so empty of agency, so forgiving and concealing, can be used for a rape. But I don't think that's what's meant; they mean poor Dick, emptied of his potency. For Godden he's the old economic order, and his demise has a racialised edge. Nicole, the abuse survivor, gets out, though uncertainly, like a butterfly, into the new economic age. The Great Depression is subtly foreshadowed, gives a mood to the last chapters

But sorry, I don't see tragedy, I don't feel for Dick, though maybe the branded, consumer-driven new order is a scourge and I should join Fitzgerald (in whom Godden sees Marxism and class loyalty warring) in mourning the old way of being wealthy in wasting time gloriously... Oh demon drink! Oh thoughtless, unthinking Woman! Oh heartless, greedy, craven world!

No, I won't have it. I'm with Augustine, the cook, waving the kitchen knife, dismissed for helping herself to Chablis, calling Dick on his alcoholism, fearless of police, demanding her wages, calling up to Nicole 'Au revoir Madame! Bonne chance!' Fitzgerald is ambivalent, but I seize the half-felt words. Bonne chance, Nicole, get out from under. Even if he cannot give her a mind, I am with her.

There is something too, almost, when Dick goes to 'cure' a young man of homosexuality - Fitzgerald appreciates at least, that it can't be done.

This was an unwitting re-read: many years ago I must have taken this out of the library and read it without noticing. I like to think these days I am more awake, no longer lullayed by the susurrous lyres and viols of Fitzgerald's sentences or distracted by the plangent grief for Dick. This time a part of me answers back, sympathising with the wrong people, with Baby Warren's will, her singleness; her ugly power-wielding, despised by Dick, rationalised by the desiccating, sexist gaze of the omnipotent author, changes in my heart. You did not see her! You made her for your sport.

But I read Fitzgerald sympathetically not only for his seeming helplessness and honesty, for sending out a vital voice from the depths of affluenza, but also for the sweetness of that voice. And he does not aestheticise wealth I think, but feeling, for the sake of communication. Do readers envy his suffering rich? I think not. But we feel for them. There is something here, some kind of struggle, a half-lucid dream to interpret.

So 'backlit' by beauty also sounds wrong to me. There is the light of beauty here, but lighting the 'tragedy' is some other illumination, like the unwholesome glow of the movies with their unreal 'faces of girl-children'. The experimental abstraction, the theatrical entry of Dick into the movie studio, reflects the dream-darkness of the mind probed by the rising field of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Dick's field. White-supremacist capitalist patriarchy projected itself into that darkness - do I detect a part of Fitzgerald trying to... at least... let it be dark?

"After lunch they were both overwhelmed by the sudden flatness that comes over American travellers in quiet foreign places. No stimuli worked upon them, no voices called them from without, no fragments of heir own thoughts came suddenly from the minds of others, and missing the clamour of Empire they felt that life was not continuing here."- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Fitzgerald has an absolutely beautiful way with words. He uses very stylized language and writes down some profound thoughts. And that’s what tricked me at first into thinking this would be a profound story. Like in The Great Gatsby, his characters are not likeable and just seem so disconnected from the world. It’s quite interesting reading Fitzgerald writing about American life in France, including black riots, at the same time that I was reading Langston Hughes The Great Big Sea: the contrast between the lives of black and white Americans in France in this period is huge.

This is a story about rich Americans in the French Riviera. The story revolves in part around Dr. Dick Diver, charming man, the ultimate host and object of adoration of teenager Rosemary, an upcoming actress, who Fitzgerald describes thus: “Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood–she was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her.” Attraction between the two is immediate, despite the fact that Dick is married.

I was raving about this book at first. Fitzgerald is an amazing writer and I think that his writing style initially blinded me to the flatness of the plot. The last thing I want to read is a book about privileged shallow and selfish rich people who are not introspective and just do whatever they please, but when Fitzgerald writes passages like the following, it makes it a bit easier to stomach, and fills you with hope that the characters in the book will say things you actually want to hear:

“Following a walk marked by an intangible mist of bloom that followed the white border stones she came to a space overlooking the sea where there were lanterns asleep in the fig trees and a big table and wicker chairs and a great market umbrella from Sienna, all gathered about an enormous pine, the biggest tree in the garden. She paused there a moment, looking absently at a growth of nasturtiums and iris tangled at its foot, as though sprung from a careless handful of seeds, listening to the plaints and accusations of some nursery squabble in the house. When this died away on the summer air, she walked on, between kaleidoscopic peonies massed in pink clouds, black and brown tulips and fragile mauve-stemmed roses, transparent like sugar flowers in a confectioner’s window — until, as if the scherzo of color could reach no further intensity, it broke off suddenly in mid-air, and moist steps went down to a level five feet below.”

But they didn’t. And after part 1 of the book, which I quite liked, which at least promised more, parts 2 and 3 fell extremely flat; I was completely let down.

Part 1 of the book was basically rich people in Paris and the French Riviera, having parties and going shopping. Everything seems perfect but on the surface you are aware that some things are waiting to reveal themselves.

In part 2 we find out what’s wrong and there is discussion of mental illness which I thought was quite candid and progressive for that time. Diver is a psychiatrist who is an admirer of Freud, so there is an interesting dialogue about psychology in this book. When we learn about how Diver met his wife, I was slightly disturbing, to be honest. Diver’s character was the most complex and I’m still not sure how I feel about him. He has a predilection towards young women and patients and although I felt this book was quite progressive seeing as it discussed mental health in the 1920s, I just couldn’t, in the end, get past the superficial and superfluous characters.

Summers by the sea, sailboats in Capri,
These memories shall be our very own.
Even though our dreams may vanish
With the morning light,
We loved once in splendor
How tender, how tender, the night.

Perhaps when people burn too brightly, they burn out too soon. One thinks of such things, when reading Fitzgerald, as once glamorous movie stars who turn into haggard parodies of themselves. Dick Divers is such a one. He is brilliant, enthralling; a meteor streaking across the stage of life. His marriage to Nicole Warren, an heiress who suffers from mental illness brought on by a sordid event early in her life, is a disaster. He attempts to operate as both her husband and her doctor, and succeeds in being swept into her strained world, which does more to ruin him than to help her.

The dualism in his views of her--that of the husband, that of the psychiatrist--was increasingly paralyzing his faculties. In these six years she had several times carried him over the line with her, disarming by exciting emotional pity or by a flow of wit, fantastic and disassociated, so that only after the episode did he realize with the consciousness of his own relaxation from tension, that she had succeeded in getting a point against his better judgment.

Theirs is a shallow world, made up of trysts, parties, bar fights, and beach lounging. They have too much money to necessitate work or encourage meaningful endeavor. They are bright and shiny and alive, with no place to go except down into dullness, dissipation and ennui.

So much of Fitzgerald’s own struggles with Zelda have found their way into this book, that it is easy to believe everything that the main character, Dick Diver, experiences and thinks. While many authors manage to write books completely divorced from their own experiences, Fitzgerald borders on autobiography in his. Perhaps part of the fascination is looking for glimpses of the man behind the characters he invents.

The novel is divided into three books, the first of which lays a foundation for things to come. I felt almost sickened by the casual flirting and purposelessness of the characters in this section. I was not truly interested in any of them. But, book two advances the story beyond the surface and delves into the heart of these people, and I was happy to have stayed for the finish of the ride. By the end, I felt a great deal of emotion for both Dick and Nicole and the kind of sadness one might feel for real people who seem to be handed the world and waste the opportunity.

i didn't enjoy this book as much as i've liked fitzgerald in the past. unfortunately racism, sexism, etc. is something one often has to deal with as an occupational hazard of reading american books from the twentieth century...but in this case that seems more true than usual. i am also almost repulsed by all the characters; rather than write so that the reader believes the characters are inherently good, fitzgerald simply reiterates it. dick especially is awful and rosemary's only defining feature is her childishness, which, with this plot-line, is disgusting. one scene was almost an exploration of what would have happened in the great gatsby if tom had unfeelingly gone into the hotel room, no longer caring about his hold on daisy. the whole thing was unpleasant and i'm glad to be done with it. i do love fitzgerald's style of writing, though, and for that reason i don't think i could ever give him one star.

This was a bit of a disappointment for me. I adored Gatsby and I expected to love this. When I first started it I thought it was going to be better than Gatsby but somewhere about halfway through it lost its way or I lost mine or something. I found the second half to be too wandering and, well, boring. It does pick up towards the end and I'm glad I read it. The characters were well developed and Dick Diver in particular was fascinating. I am definitely going to pursue more works by Fitzgerald. At the top of my list are The Beautiful and the Damned and This Side of Paradise.

Ok, well, this is a hard thing to do, to give F. Scott Fitzgerald two stars. Who am I to criticize one of the (supposedly) greatest authors and literary geniuses ever? But the truth is that although I do aprecciate his excellent writing technique and many wonderful passages in this book (hence the extra star), I failed to connect with this book in any way whatsoever. I didn't care for any of the characters and their joys and sorrows left me completely unmoved. I just could not care less what happened to them and that to me is one of the greatest 'crimes' a writer can commit. I know it may very well just be me and my inability to aprecciate the great art of Fitzgerald, but reading this book added nothing to my life or to my understanding of life.(I did find many reviews online though that ecchoed exactly what I felt and thought while reading this book.) It would take too long to go into more details about why this book just didn't do it for me, so I will just leave it at that.

I have to add, however, that I will still read 'The Great Gatsby' because many of those readers who felt the way I did about 'Tender Is The Night', also said that Fitzgerald had one great book in him and Gatsby was it. I really hope so because technically and stylistically he is a great writer and could have a lot to give.

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.

Hemingway dijo que 'Suave es la noche' mejora y mejora según pasa el tiempo.
Y me da la impresión de que eso es lo que pasa con todas las obras de Fitzgerald, o al menos eso me pasó ya con Gatsby. Esta novela en principio no me ha impactado tanto como aquella, pero la encuentro muy similar en muchos puntos como esa atmósfera, la decadencia y complejidad de los personajes....
Me enganchó desde la segunda parte, y me enamoré de Nicole. Dick es despreciable en muchos momentos pero no por ello deja de resultarme un personaje interesante.
Es una novela muy interesante por muchísimas cosas y está endemoniadamente bien escrita, pero entiendo que no es para nada apta para todos los paladares. Aún así, lo que es a mi, me ha gustado mucho, y creo que estaré una temporada dándole vuelta a esta pareja y sus turbulentas vidas.