Читать книгу Breaking Down Fitzgerald - Helen M. Turner - Страница 8

Before his arrival at Fort Sheridan, Fitzgerald had already begun work on the novel that would eventually become This Side of Paradise and an early draft was completed by February 1918. It was submitted to Charles Scribner's Sons publishing house in New York for consideration under the title The Romantic Egotist, but it was rejected in both August and October of that year.

In July, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre at a country club dance in Montgomery. She was beautiful, vivacious, and popular; Fitzgerald was besotted. The path to marriage, however, was not without interruption as Zelda was unable to fully commit to Fitzgerald until she was certain that he could provide for her properly. A handsome soldier and would‐be writer may have had romantic appeal but Zelda, like all women of her class at this time (as well as Fitzgerald's female characters), needed to be practical too. With no means of generating an income for themselves because of the limited opportunities open to them, women needed to take the decision to marry with both the head and the heart. Her lack of faith at this point in the relationship cast a shadow over their marriage that Fitzgerald could never quite escape.

In 1919, having never seen action overseas, Fitzgerald was dismissed from the army. Intent on marrying Zelda, he headed to New York and a role in advertising. He continued to write and submitted a number of short stories to magazines for publication but was unsuccessful. In June, Zelda—unconvinced that Fitzgerald would make a success of his chosen career and conscious that he had no independent wealth—broke their engagement. Fitzgerald was heartbroken but it triggered a series of events that would set him on the path to fame and fortune. He quit his job in advertising, packed his belongings, and once again returned to St. Paul where in the attic of his parents’ home he redrafted his novel in a flurry of activity over the summer months.

In September, Fitzgerald's career as a commercial writer began when The Smart Set magazine accepted “Babes in the Woods” for publication. More good news would follow that month when Scribner's editor Maxwell Perkins accepted the newly renamed This Side of Paradise for publication. The title came from a poem titled “Tiare Tahiti” (1915) by English poet Rupert Brooke, who had perished during the war. The relationship between Perkins and Fitzgerald would be a mainstay of the author's life. Perkins was not only an extraordinary editor; he was also a loyal and remarkable friend who supported Fitzgerald through some of the darkest periods of his life.

Two months later, another professional contact would enter his life and remain a source of emotional, creative, and financial support. Harold Ober was a literary agent who was working for the Paul Revere Reynolds Agency, which specialized in placing short stories in magazines.¹ Throughout his lifetime, commercial short stories would be the most reliable income stream for Fitzgerald. Almost as soon as the author signed with the agency, Ober sold his story “Head and Shoulders” to The Saturday Evening Post, which was one of the most widely read periodicals in the country. It was the beginning of a productive relationship between author and publication that was closely guarded by Ober himself. Over the following months into 1920, a series of Fitzgerald stories was sold to a number of magazines.

On a personal level, things were also on the up. The engagement between Zelda and Fitzgerald resumed in January 1920, as the author's career began to take shape. Within a few months Fitzgerald found himself a published author when This Side of Paradise was published on March 26. The first print run of 3,000 copies priced at $1.75 sold out in an astonishing three days and it went on to sell close to 50,000 copies. Just over a week after publication, on April 3, Fitzgerald and Zelda married in a low‐key ceremony in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Fitzgerald found himself newly married, newly rich, and newly famous. The couple embraced their new life and the freedom that money brought. Parties and excessive drinking were routine. Toward the middle of the year, they rented a house in Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald hoped he would be more productive; it was here that he started his next novel The Beautiful and Damned (1922) that drew heavily on the early days of the Fitzgeralds’ marriage.

Over the next few years, the couple moved regularly with periods spent in St. Paul, New York, and finally Great Neck on Long Island. Despite their somewhat chaotic lives, Fitzgerald published a number of his most significant short stories during this time, such as “May Day” (1920) and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1920), as well as “The Diamond as Big as The Ritz” and “Winter Dreams,” both published in 1922. A collection of stories appeared in 1920 titled Flappers and Philosophers followed by Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). A third collection of stories would appear more than a decade later, titled Taps at Reveille (1935). However, The Beautiful and Damned's publication in 1922 did not have the same impact either commercially or critically as its predecessor. In the midst of the writing and the partying, the couple's only child—a girl—was born on October 26, 1921, and named for her father: Frances Scott Fitzgerald. She went by Scottie throughout her life. During this period Fitzgerald returned to his previous love of the theatre by writing a play, The Vegetable (1923); however, it failed to impress during a pre‐Broadway run in Atlantic City and, although published, it has garnered little attention from scholars.

This period of early success is also marked by the beginning of a problem that would haunt Fitzgerald throughout the remainder of his life and contribute considerably to his death, namely his alcoholism. His heavy drinking probably became a physical and psychological addiction by his mid‐twenties at the latest. It interfered with Fitzgerald's work patterns as did Zelda's need for amusement. An intelligent and curious woman, her need for interests outside of her marriage saw her eventually turning toward artistic pursuits of her own. Alongside writing herself she would—at different times in her life—also explore ballet and painting.

By 1924, Fitzgerald was desperate to break the cycle of having to write short stories to sell them in order to fund a lifestyle that was indulgent and financially reckless. In an attempt to save money, the couple decided to take advantage of the dollar‐franc exchange rate and spend time in Europe. The goal was that Fitzgerald could work uninterrupted on his next novel. Therefore, in the middle of April 1924, the Fitzgeralds were ready to set sail to France and new adventures.