Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (574 page)

The reviews of All the Sad Young Men have been pleasant, mostly, but, after the book and the play, rather tame. Did it go to 12,000 as you suggested? We’ve had some good nibbles for the movie rights of
Gatsby
but they want $45,000, I hear. I get one- third of the gross price.

See my article on Hemingway in The
Bookman
- it’s pretty good.

In
absolute confidence
I’ve received an offer of $3500 per short story from Liberty. I’m considering it.

My book is wonderful. I don’t think it’ll be interrupted again. I expect to reach New York about December 10th with the manuscript under my arm. I’ll ask between $30,000 and $40,000 for the serial rights and I think Liberty will want it. So book publication would be late spring 1927 or early fall.

No news. Do write. Tell me if Torrents of Spring gets a press. I doubt it will sell. Again thank you for the books.

Ever and always friend,

Scott Fitzg —

Why don’t you come over for a month this summer? You and Louise and the two oldest children! Has your depression of last December gone?

Villa S
t
Louis
Juan-les-Pins

France

circa May 10, 1926

Dear Max:

The mistral is raging outside like the end of the world and the idea of writing is anathema to me. We are wonderfully situated in a big house on the shore with a beach and the Casino not 100 yards away and every prospect of a marvelous summer.

I’m sorry about Van Wyck Brooks. You yourself sounded a bit depressed.

Dreiser would be crazy to leave Liveright, the I can understand how Horace would get on his nerves. I heard that the movie rights of An
American Tragedy
brought $90,000 but I don’t believe it. Gatsby, so it now appears, sold for $50,000. An agent on the coast got 10% and Davis, Brady and I split the $45,000. Then I had to pay Reynolds 10% more, so instead of $16,666.66 I received $13,500 - or $3,166.66 went in agents’ commissions. However I shouldn’t kick. Everybody sells movies through an agent and the Reynolds part was necessary since I’m away. I thought the drawings for
The Sad Young Men
ads were fine. By the way I’m sending two negatives for pictures. Do send them out right away to replace the others.

Thanks for the O’Brien anthology information. You have never mentioned a cheap edition of Gatsby. Not that I care, for I’m rather skeptical about it, but I’m curious to know if it was ever put up to the trade. Tell me what you think of
The Sun Also Rises.

I’m not surprised at Galsworthy not being responsive to my stuff. I’ve found that if you don’t respond to another man’s writings the chances are it’s mutual - and except for ‘The Apple Tree’ and, oddly enough, Saint’s
Progress,
he leaves me cold. I suspect he had some unfortunate idyllic love affair in his youth and whenever that crops into his work it comes alive to me. The subject matter of
The Forsyte Saga
seemed stuffy to me. I entirely ‘approve’ of him though and liked him personally.

Have you considered coming over?

Always your friend,

Scott

Villa Paquita Juan-les-Pins Alpes Maritime France
circa
June 10,
1926

Dear Mr Scribner:

For the first time in over four years I am no longer in financial debt to you - or rather I won’t be when the money from my short story book becomes due me. But in another sense I shall always be in your debt - for your unfailing kindness and confidence and obligingness to me in all my exigencies during that time. Never once was I reminded of my obligations, which were sometimes as high as $4000, with no book in sight.

With every assurance of my deep respect and very real gratitude I remain Faithfully yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Villa St
Louis
Juan-les-Pins France
circa
June 25,
1926

Dear Max:

Thanks for both letters. We were in Paris having Zelda’s appendix neatly but firmly removed or I would have answered before.

First as to Ernest’s book.  I liked it but with certain qualifications. The fiesta, the fishing trip, the minor characters were fine. The lady I didn’t like, perhaps because I don’t like the original. In the mutilated man I thought Ernest bit off more than can yet be chewn between the covers of a book, then lost his nerve a little and edited the more vitalizing details out. He has since told me that something like this happened. Do ask him for the absolute minimum of necessary changes, Max - he’s discouraged about the previous reception of his work by publishers and magazine editors (tho he loved your letter). From the latter (magazine editors) he has had a lot of words and, until Bridges’ offer for the short story (from which he had even before cut out a thousand words on my recommendation), scarcely a single dollar. From the
Torrents
I expect you’ll have little response. Do you think the
Bookman
article did him any good?

I roared at the idea of you and the fish in the tree.

O.K. as to Haldeman-Julius.

Will you ask them (your accounting department) to send me an account the ist of August? I’d love to see what a positive statement looks like for the first time in three years.

I am writing Bridges today. I have an offer now for a story at $3500 (rather for six stories). To sell one for $1000 would mean a dead loss of $2500 and as I average only six stories a year I don’t see how I can do it. I hope he’ll understand.

The novel, in abeyance during Zelda’s operation, now goes on apace. This is confidential but
Liberty,
with certain conditions, has offered me $35,000 sight unseen. I hope to have it done in January.

Do send out a picture to everyone that got that terrible one.

Ever your friend,

Scott

Villa St Louis Juan-les-Pins France
circa
June 28,
1926

Dear Mr Bridges:

It isn’t a question of contracts - it’s frankly a question of money. I hate writing short stories, as you know, and only do my six a year to have the leisure to write my novels at leisure. And since my price has risen to $3500 per story it would mean a dead loss to me of $2500. I’m terribly sorry. If it comes about that a story develops, as they sometimes do, into the type that the big circulation magazines can’t print I’ll send it on to you but that’s all I can promise, because it’s become a sort of chore to me to write a short story having had to cook up so many tasteless morsels under the whip of the national advertisers. I do hate to refuse, Mr Bridges. I hope you’ll understand.

Sincerely,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Villa St
Louis
Juan-les-Pins France
circa August 10, 1926

Dear Max:

As to your questions:

(1) — Unless the Americans are first driven out of France (as at present seems hot unlikely) - I’ll be home with the finished manuscript of my book about mid-December. We’ll be a week in New York, then south to Washington and Montgomery to see our respective parents and spend Xmas - and back in New York in mid- January to spend the rest of the winter. Whether the spring will see us back on Long Island or returning to Europe depends on politics, finances and our personal desires.

(2) — The only censorable thing I found in Ernest’s book was the ‘balls’ conversation. I didn’t find the James thing objectionable but then he seems to me to have been dead fifty years.

(3) — I’m sorry
Torrents
hasn’t done better and delighted about
The Sad
young
Men.
Have you sounded out Curtis Brown about an anthology of my stories in England? Still, that better wait till my novel. Don’t forget the August statement.

(4) — God, how much I’ve learned in these two and a half years in Europe. It seems like a decade and I feel pretty old but I wouldn’t have missed it, even its most unpleasant and painful aspects.

(5) — About the Scribners’ story I wrote Bridges. If another ‘Absolution’ turns up he shall have first look.

I do want to see you, Max.

Always your friend,

Scott

Ellerslie Edgemoor, Delaware
circa May 12, 1927

Dear Max:

The cane was marvelous. The nicest one I ever saw and infinitely superior to the one mislaid. Need I say I value the inscription? This is the cane I shall never lose.

It seems a shame to put business into a letter thanking you for such a gift but a line about Ernest. It is all bull that he left Liveright about that story. One line at
least
is pornographic, though
please
don’t bring my name into the discussion. The thing is - what is a seduction story with the seduction left out? Yet if that is softened it is quite printable. However I trust your judgment, as he should.

I’m sorry about O’Hara.  I imagined that this book wasn’t as good as his first - however he doesn’t seem to me now to be an indisputably good risk - he’s mature and developed and ought to be doing first rate things, if ever.

(Explain to Hemingway, why don’t you, that while such an incident might be lost in a book, a story centering around it points it. In other words the material
raison d’etre
as opposed to the artistic
raison d’être
of the story is, in part, to show the physiological details of a seduction. If that were possible in America, 20 publishers would be scrambling for James Joyce tomorrow.)

Thanks many times for looking for the old cane. It doesn’t matter. I want to put off the pamphlet for a month until I make up some misunderstandings with the men who wrote the articles.

Many, many sincere thanks, Max. I was touched when I found it at the station.

Scott

Ellerslie Edgemoor, Delaware

Before January
3, 1928

Dear
Max:

Patience yet a little while, I beseech thee, and thanks eternally for the deposits. I feel awfully about owing you that money - all I can say is that if book is serialized I’ll pay it back immediately. I work at it all the time but that period of sickness set me back - made a break both in the book and financially so that I had to do those Post stories - which made a further break. Please regard it as a safe investment and not as a risk.

I have no news. I liked Some
People
by Nicolson and
The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
Also I loved John’s book and I saw your letter agreeing that it’s his best thing, and the most likely to go. It’s really thought out - oddly enough its least effective moments are the traces of his old manner, the on the whole it’s steadily and cumulatively effective throughout. From the first draft, which was the one I saw, I thought he could have cut 2000 or 3000 words that was mere Conradian stalling around. Whether he did or not I don’t know.

No news from Emest. In the latest
Transition
(Volume 9) there is some good stuff by Murray Goodwin (unprintable here) and a fine German play.

Always your afft. friend,

Scott

Except for a three day break last week (Xmas) I have been on the absolute wagon since the middle of October. Feel simply grand. Smoke only Sanos. God help us all.

c/o Guaranty Trust Co.

Paris,
France

circa
July 1,
1928

Dear Max:

We are settled and not a soul in the world knows where we are; on the absolute wagon and working on the novel, the whole novel and nothing but the novel. I’m coming back in August with it or on it. Thank you so much for the money - by this time Reynolds will have sold my last story and that, at French prices, will carry us through.

Please advise me as to the enclosure. Why not let’s do it - you acting as my agent directly with him and keeping 10% thus saving Curtis Brown’s
10%
? Anyhow please advise me - I’d like to be published by him as he’s done better than anyone in England with Americans.

I strongly advise your obtaining immediately the translation rights to Les Hommes
de la
Route by André Chamson (Published by Bernard Grasset)

He’s young, not salacious, and apparently is destined by all the solid literary men here to be the great novelist of France - no flash in the pan like Crevel, Radiguet, Aragon, etc. He has a simply astonishing reputation in its enthusiasm and solidity.

Yours as ever devotedly,

Scott

Thanks for the books at the boat - many thanks!

58 rue Vaugirard

Paris,
France

circa July 15, 1928

Dear Max:

I read John Bishop’s novel. Of course it’s impossible. All the people who were impressed with Norman Douglas’ South Wind and Beerbohm’s Zuletlta Dobson tried to follow them in their wretched organization of material - without having either the brilliant intelligence of Douglas or the wit of Beerbohm. Vide the total collapse of Aldous Huxley. Conrad has been, after all, the healthy influence on the technique of the novel.

Anyhow at the same time Bishop gave me a novelette to read - and to my great astonishment, as a document of the Civil War, it’s right up to Bierce and Stephen Crane - beautifully written.

thrilling, and water tight as to construction and interest. He’s been so discouraged over the hash he made of the novel that he’s been half afraid to send it anywhere, and I told him that now that tales of violence are so popular I thought Scribner’s
Magazine
would love to have a look at it.

So I’m sending it - no one has seen it but me. His address is Chateau de Tressancourt, Orgeval, Seine et Oise. I’m working hard as hell.

As ever your friend,

Scott

58 rue
Vaugirard