Book 61: West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan

I stumbled upon this book by chance and saw that it was a novel on F Scott Fitzgerald, then I noticed it has just been released.  So this time I am on the front edge of a book, and it happens to be on a topic I enjoy.

West of Sunset is a fictionalization of the last years of Fitzgerald's life, his final time in Hollywood and also covers Zelda's institutional situation at the time.

I found it to be a fair treatment of the events of the time.  The author takes a more gentle approach to both Scott and Zelda.  He tries to give them both the benefit of the doubt and neither of them comes out the villian of the relationship (which is probably an accurate stance).  It is not an in depth look at any specific event, but that can be found in other novels like:
The Disenchanted
Beautiful Fools
Beloved Infidel

I do wonder if I am too close to the subject matter.  I am very curious to see how people who are not as familiar with the topic find the book.

I wouldn't say the book is a fast paced book and not one I found lost in.

Book 58: The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King by James L West III

This is the second time I have read this book, and I still love it.  I think it is one of the books Zelda lovers need to read as well.  Yes, Zelda influenced his "girls" but so did Ginevra, I argue maybe even a bit more (hush).  But she is the origin of the rich girl poor boy story that he tells over and over again, ant the stories I am most drawn to.  I am always amazed by  the fact he never got his kiss from his first love.  Tragic.

At the end of the book the short stories "Babes in the Woods" and "Winter Dreams" can be found, maybe 2 of his best shorts.  This book is well worth the read.

Book 57: Short Stories by Fitzgerald

After I had finished with reading Fitzgerald's short stories, I had wanted to put together my own reading lists, but since it took me forever to get through the list and my retention is horrendous I have to reread and make some better notes.  I am hoping this will be better as I have already read the stories and know what I am looking for.

Right now I am hoping to follow up on stories that would have been written around the time of This Side of Paradise. I recently finished:

The Ordeal
The Debutante
The Spire and The Gargoyle
Sentiment and the Use of Rouge
The Pierian Spring and the Last Straw
Babes in the woods

These were all written before TSOP and is considered his apprentice fiction.  I want to pull out The Debutante, Sentiment and Rouge, Pierian Spring and Babes in the Woods as stories I want to categorize and collect.

What exactly am I trying to collect?  I want to pull out the stories of new, young love and its journey, I also want to pull out stories I particularly like.  Of the ones I pulled out Sentiment does not really fit in the first category, but I like it because it is very insightful and interesting on the discussion and views of how morals loosened due to the war.

 I also like The Ordeal which deals with Catholicism and Spire and Gargoyle which is a Princeton story, but they do not fit as neatly in what I am looking for.

From here I think I want to reread The Perfect Hour which deals with Ginevra King and how she influenced Scotts writing.

Book 55: This Side of Paradise by F Scott Fitzgerald

This is not my first reading of This Side of Paradise, and I am sure it won't be my last.  However, of the 5 books Fitzgerald wrote (or started to write) this is my least favorite.  My favorite part is Babes In The Woods, but I like it better as a Short story read on its own.  Don't get me wrong, it is not a bad book, but just does not live up to my expectations of his work.

It is the book that made his famous.  It is the book that won the hand of Zelda.  It is a book that is semi-autobiographical.  And for those reasons it is worth reading.

Book 47: The Disenchanted by Budd Schulberg

Not that this blog is being written for anyone besides myself and my records, but sometimes I get back logged on getting my entries in.  The Disenchanted is one of those books causing a lull.  I knew that for me it was going to be a difficult review to write, so I thought I would just push ahead to the next book, but now 5 1/2 books later I figured I need to just write what I can and realize that it may not make any sense or be complete, and that is OK.

I was interested in this book because of the author, Budd Schulberg and the subject matter, a  young screen-writer who works along side his literary hero and is witness to his demise.

In real life, a young Budd Schulberg was hired by the studios to work out a script with F Scott Fitzgerald.  Schulberg had been a fan of FSF in college, but thought the author had died, but was thrilled to have the opportunity to work so closely with such a great writer.  They are asked to work on a script that takes place at a winter carnival on an East Coast campus, and are sent there to "capture the flavor".    During this point in his life Fitzgerald was with Sheila Graham and working on his sobriety, trying to put his life back together and move forward. This trip to Dartmouth would prove to be a disaster.

Knowing that the book was rooted in reality, I was fascinated as I read, and always looking for Fitzgerald in the character Halliday.  It was not to hard to find him, and the events of that infamous weekend.  I found much of it familiar and kept thinking there was a short storywritten on the event, but I was unable to find it.  I think most of the info I gathered  were from Bruccoli and Graham herself.

I do wonder if I would have found the book as good if the Fitzgerald connection was not there?  I found the pacing a tad slow.  But that could be because I knew where it was going.  If I did not, I think the pacing could have been OK and actually works for the story as it is a slow decline of a man and by taking such a methodical approach would make sense.  This story of the dissapation of a hero is a Fitzgerald theme and is another reason it interest me.

Would I recommend it as a read?  Yes, but it would not be a book I recommend to everyone, only people who have an interest in Fitzgerald or the Old Hollywood movie scene.  It is a shame, because it really is a moving story, but I am afraid many people are not satisfied with such a depressing ending to a book.

Short story 110: Last of the Belles by F Scott Fitzgerald

Yay! with this story I have completed my quest to read all I can by my favorite author.  As with all my Fitzgerald reading you can get more at the blog- Fitzgerald Musings.  Over there you will see what I thought of Last of the Belles.

Short Stories 33-37: The 1920-1922 cluster stories

33. The Smilers
34. Myra Meets his Family
35. Two for a Cent
36. The Cruise of the Rolling Junk
37. The Popular Girl

I am liking this idea of clustering the remaining Fitzgerald stories.  The groupings are manageable, and I am able to figure out where he is in life.  This cluster let me finish up 1920-1922, however, I was unable to get my hands on The IOU or Recklessness.

Again, I have more in depth posts over at Fitzgerald Musings, but out of this cluster my favorite was The Popular Girl, followed by The Cruise of the Rolling Junk.

Next cluster will be 1930-1931 including:
Two Wrongs
The Bridal Party
One Trip Abroad
Babylon Revisted
The Hotel Child
A New Leaf
Indecision
A Change of Class
Between Three and Four

Short Stories 24 & 25: "Death of My Father and "My Generation" by FS Fitzgerald

I have written an much more detailed post on these short stories over on the Fitzgerald Musing Blog.  You can check it out here.

I really enjoyed "My Generation".  It is this kind of essay that I enjoy from him.  He has an insight and a way of getting to the heart of a topic.  It makes me sad that he died so young and that we were not able to see how he would have seen the world as he aged.  It think it would have been interesting on how he would have dealt with aging and how society treats you.  Also how he saw the younger generations. What would he have thought of the hippies and free love?  Oh well.

"The Death of my Father" was good, but ultimately an unfinished piece.  I find it interesting more in the context of the lack of talk from him regarding his family.  He seems to keep that part out of his fiction, where everything else seems to be free game for his stories.  I wish there was more.  I am sure the death of his sisters (even if he never knew them) had to play a role in his young life.  I mean his mother had to be a wreck and I am sure that effected how he was raised.


So, shifting gears...  My plan is to finish all the works of Fitzgerald.  I am so slow on getting through these, and I don't want to kid myself that I can race right through them, although if I had a month or two of isolation I am sure it would be done.  I have created some clusters of stories that I will be tackling.  I broke them down by year published and then on cluster of Scott and Zelda works (which I will read last).  Right now I am finishing the post 1940 published work.  I think this will be the most difficult as they were not published during his life for various reasons, like being unfinished or not very good.  They can range from a any period in his life, so there is not a lot of continuity to them.  The ones I have left are:

After 1940
The Woman From Twenty One
The Kingdom in the Dark
On an Ocean Wave
Discard
Last Kiss
Dearly Beloved
Lo, the Poor Peacock
On Your Own

I have about 100 left- Wow that seems high, but that' s what the numbers say.

Short Stories 20-23: A Full Life, The World's Fair, Three Hours Between Planes, News of Paris-Fifteen Years Ago

My plan is to read all of Fitzgeralds short stories and essays.  It seems to come and go in spurts, which is fine.  Currently I have divided the remaining stories into the years published and trying to read through them that way.  Currently I am reading the stories published after his death in 1940.

A Full Life was published in 1988
The World's Fair was published in 1948
Three Hours Between Planes was published in 1941
News of Paris- Fifteen Years ago was published in 1947

A Full Life:
A strange little story of a daring woman who appears in papers for crazy acts and then disappears, but there is one man who follows her escapades and wonders what she is all about.  I didn't feel like this was a complete story, but more like FSF was working out his feelings of helplessness and futility.  So I don't feel like this is a strong piece, but it does feel like he is searching for something, some meaning, and then just when it is within reach it withers away and is never recoverable.

The World's Fair:
Although published after his death, it fits chronologically between Gatsby and Tender, which is good to know while reading it, as it feels like it is just a partial story within a large context.  This story belongs to Tender is the Night, when it was in the Matricide story line, which was completely abandoned before taking a different tack to the story.  There are some wonderful descriptions in this little piece.  I wrote more about it here.

Three Hours Between Planes:
I believe this is one of the stories he had been working on at the end of his life while he was getting his confidence back and writing well once again.  It is a great little story about a man who has a layover and looks up his long lost crush of his youth.  The meet and have a little tryst.  It is soon discovered that Nancy who thought this Donald was the Donald of her memories, was wrong, and discovers too late that he is someone who she barley remembers.  I love this one.

Oh and it looks like someone made a short film about it... Three Hours Between Planes

News of Paris-Fifteen Years Ago: (Collected in Afternoon of an Author)
This is another story he was working on in the last years of his life.  It was found in his among his papers, but was unfinished, and it reads as such.  But it does have promise, although I thought the story line was a tad confusing and had to read it twice.

Book 7- Beloved Infidel by Sheilah Graham

I have been waiting to read this one, and I very much enjoyed it, so much so I was able to read it in only 3 sittings, which for me is quick.

Beloved Infidel is a memoir of Sheilah Graham, through her early life through her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Sometimes memoirs can be dry and I feel like I slog through them to get to the parts I find interesting, however, this one was fun to read.  Her early life almost seems like fiction.  In describing it to D he thought it reminded him of Gatsby.

I wrote much more on this over at Fitzgerald Musings.  Lately I have been wanting to know more of FSF later life, the time he was in Hollywood and started writing Love of the Last Tycoon.  Personally, I think he was fighting his demons, putting his failures behind him and starting on the rebound.  I am so said that the world has missed out on how FSF saw the world, and we have been cheated on how he was going to grow as an author.

So I saw there was a movie based on Sheilah's memoir and decided to check it out.  It came out in 1959, a year after the book, starring Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr.  And as much as I think the book would make a good movie, this is not the movie I wanted to see.  You would think that having well known and respected actors would assure a good movie, but nope not here.  The acting was bad, very affected and wooden.  Yes, I know that is how acting was done back in the day, but it does not translate for today's viewers who are wanting a feeling for the relationship.

Currently Reading: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games trilogy)

Books 1-4 On Booze, Invented Lives, Love of the Last Tycoon, Call Me Zelda

I want to start my reading log from this summer (June 2013). 

Books
1. On Booze- Collection of Short Stories and Essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Invented Lives - James R Mellow
3. Love of the Last Tycoon- F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Call Me Zelda- Erika Robuck

Short Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1. Thank You For The Light 
2. The Ants at Princeton
3. Send Me In Coach
4. Fate in Her Hands
5. Image on The Heart
6. Three Acts of Music
7. Too Cute For Words
8. Afternoon of an Author
9. I Didn't Get Over
10. The Long Way Out 
11. Financing Finnegan
12. The Lost Decade
13. An Alcoholic Case
14. Strange Sanctuary
15. The Honor of the Goon
16. An Author's Mother
17. Inside the House
18. Trouble
19. Design in Plaster

I have links to specific posts I have written on these stories over at Fitzgerald Musings