Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (167 page)
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Authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald
At that point, some other people came into the commissary and sat down, and the first thing I knew there was a group of four and the intimacy of the conversation was broken, but I was very much impressed by the shrewdness of what he said — something more than shrewdness — by the largeness of what he thought and how he reached it at the age of twenty — six, which he was then.
So I think that this last episode will be when Stahr goes up and sits with the pilot up in front and rides beside the pilot, and the pilot recognizes in Stahr someone who in his own field must be just as sure, just as determined, just as courageous as he himself is. Very few words are exchanged between Stahr and the pilot — in fact, it is an episode that we may see entirely through the eyes of Cecilia peeping in, of the stewardess reporting to Cecilia what she saw peeping through the cockpit, or Schwartz still trying to get to Stahr before they get to Los Angeles. It is quite possible that we may not be alone with Stahr through this entire episode down to the very end, but at the very end I want to go into that strong feeling that I had in that undeveloped note about the motor shutting off and the plane settling down to earth and the lights of Los Angeles, and for a minute there, I want to give an all — fireworks illumination of the intense passion in Stahr’s soul, his love of life, his love for the great thing that he’s built out here, his, perhaps not exactly, satisfaction, but his feeling certainly of coming home to an empire of his own — an empire he has made.
I want to contrast this sharply with the feeling of those who have merely gypped another person’s empire away from them like the four great railroad kings of the coast… or the feeling that — — would have. He’s not interested in it because he owns it He’s interested in it as an artist because he has made it, and mixed up with his great feeling of triumph and happiness there must inevitably be a feeling of sadness with all acts of courage — a feeling that it is to someextent a finished thing, and doubt as to the next step as to how Ear he can go.
After the plane comes down, it may be best to finish the chapter with that fireworks — repeat my own fear when I landed in Los Angeles with the feeling of new worlds to conquer in 1937 transferred to Stahr, or it may be best to end with a cacophony of a rival.
Chapter II
Page 24. Fitzgerald had written
Only fair
opposite the paragraph which begins,
“Robby’ll take care of everything when he comes,” Stahr assured Father.
This was to have been the first appearance of a character who was to play an important role, and the author wanted presumably, at this casual introduction, to give a sharper impression of him. His notes on Robinson will be found below among the preliminary sketches for the characters.
Chapter III
This chapter had not been cut and organized to the author’s complete satisfaction. It is given here as it stands in the manuscript, with only a few changes to make it self — consistent.
In the manuscript, the passage on page
46
reads as follows:
Probably the attack was planned, for Popolos, the Greek, took up the matter in a sort of double talk that reminded Prince Agge of Mike Van Dyke, except that it tried to be and succeeded in being clear instead of confusing.
The author had written a scene with which he was dissatisfied, in which the Prince had encountered Mike Van Dyke, the old gagman; but the double talk, of Mike Van Dyke was intended to figure in some other place. The passages that deal with it follow:
“Hello, Mike,” said Monroe. He introduced him to the visitor: “Prince Agge, this is Mr. Van Dyke. You’ve laughed at his stuff many times. He’s the best gag — man in pictures.”
“In the world,” said the saucer-eyed man gravely, “ — the funniest man in the world. How are you, Prince?…”
Immediately the Prince found himself engaged in conversation with Mike Van Dyke. He answered politely without quite getting the gist of his words. Something about the commissary, where Mr. Van Dyke thought he had seen the Prince trying to order what sounded like “twisted fish and acat’s handlebar,” though the Prince was certain he misunderstood.
He tried to explain that he had not been to the commissary, but by this time they were so far into the subject that he thought the quickest way was to admit that he had, and merely parry Mr. Van Dyke’s mistaken statements as to what he had done there. Mr. Van Dyke was not so much insistent as convinced, and he seemed to talk very fast….
The Prince was introduced to Mr. Spurgeon and to Mr. and Mrs. Tarleton, but he was now so involved in the conversation with Mr. Van Dyke that he heard himself stammering, “I’m glad to meet me,” because he was explaining to Van Dyke that he had
not
seen Technigarbo in Gretacolor. Again he had misunderstood. Was his name Albert Edward Butch Arthur Agge David, Prince of Denmark? “That’s my cousin,” he almost said, his head reeling.
Stahr’s voice, clear and reassuring, brought him back to reality.
“That’s enough, Mike — That was ‘double — talk,” he explained to Prince Agge. “It’s considered funny here in the lower brackets. Do it slow, Mike.”
Mike demonstrated politely.
“In an income at the gate this morning — “ He pointed at Stahr. “ — or did he?”
Baffled, the Dane bit again.
“What? Did he what?” Then he smiled: “I see. It is like your Gertrude Stein.”
Chapter IV
Fitzgerald has the following note on the episode with the director at the beginning of this chapter:
What is missing in Ridingwood scene is passion and imagination, etc. What an extraordinary thing that it should all have been there for Ridingwood and then not there.
Chapter V
Page
97.
After the words,
And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons,
the author has written for his own guidance:
(Now the idea about young and generous).
Note following the section that ends on page
98:
This may not be terse and clear enough here. Or perhaps I mean strong enough. It may be the place for the doctor’s verdict. I would like to leave him on a stronger note.
The Short Story Collections
The house where Fitzgerald spent most of his early years, Summit Avenue, St Paul
FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
This is Fitzgerald’s first collection of short stories, published in 1920 and containing eight stories.
Fitzgerald, 1912
CONTENTS
The Offshore Pirate
I
This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea — if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France.
She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide.
The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair and clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of the companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval.
If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages, turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned.
“Ardita!” said the gray-haired man sternly.
Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing.
“Ardita!” he repeated. “Ardita!”
Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip out before it reached her tongue.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Ardita!”
“What?”
“Will you listen to me — or will I have to get a servant to hold you while I talk to you?”
The lemon descended very slowly and scornfully.
“Put it in writing.”
“Will you have the decency to close that abominable book and discard that damn lemon for two minutes?”
“Oh, can’t you lemme alone for a second?”
“Ardita, I have just received a telephone message from the shore — — “
“Telephone?” She showed for the first time a faint interest.
“Yes, it was — — “
“Do you mean to say,” she interrupted wonderingly, “‘at they let you run a wire out here?”
“Yes, and just now — — “
“Won’t other boats bump into it?”
“No. It’s run along the bottom. Five min — — “
“Well, I’ll be darned! Gosh! Science is golden or something — isn’t it?”
“Will you let me say what I started to?”
“Shoot!”
“Well it seems — well, I am up here — “ He paused and swallowed several times distractedly. “Oh, yes. Young woman, Colonel Moreland has called up again to ask me to be sure to bring you in to dinner. His son Toby has come all the way from New York to meet you and he’s invited several other young people. For the last time, will you — — “
“No,” said Ardita shortly, “I won’t. I came along on this darn cruise with the one idea of going to Palm Beach, and you knew it, and I absolutely refuse to meet any darn old colonel or any darn young Toby or any darn old young people or to set foot in any other darn old town in this crazy state. So you either take me to Palm Beach or else shut up and go away.”