After a gap of getting on for 50 years I have been re-reading Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. To all intents and purposes, I should really have written "reading" as I can remember virtually nothing of the book. Has anyone ever written better than Fitzgerald? It sometimes seems that the book is carried along by the sheer perfection of the prose, but there is nothing cold or ostentatious about this perfection. It is warm, heart-rending and above all right.
Here is Fitzgerald talking about Rosemary at the beginning of the book:
At the hotel the girl made the reservation in idiomatic but
rather flat French, like something remembered. When they
were installed on the ground floor she walked into the glare
of the French windows and out a few steps onto the stone
veranda that ran the length of the hotel. When she walked
she carried herself like a balletdancer, not slumped down
on her hips but held up in the small of her back. Out there
the hot light clipped close her shadow and she retreated—it
was too bright to see. Fifty yards away the Mediterranean
yielded up its pigments, moment by moment, to the brutal
sunshine; below the balustrade a faded Buick cooked on the
hotel drive.
I could spend my whole life without even getting near the beauty of that paragraph. Or again:
It was a damp April day, with long diagonal clouds over
the Albishorn and water inert in the low places. Zurich is
not unlike an American city. Missing something ever since
his arrival two days before, Dick perceived that it was the
sense he had had in finite French lanes that there was nothing more.
In Zurich there was a lot besides Zurich
- the roofs upled the eyes to tinkling cow pastures, which in turn
modified hilltops further up—so life was a perpendicular
starting off to a postcard heaven. The Alpine lands, home of
the toy and the funicular, the merry-go-round and the thin
chime, were not a being HERE, as in France with French
vines growing over one’s feet on the ground.
In the world of literature there is plenty of room for different styles and sensibilities. Scott Fitzgerald just speaks to me as few others do.
Here is Fitzgerald talking about Rosemary at the beginning of the book:
At the hotel the girl made the reservation in idiomatic but
rather flat French, like something remembered. When they
were installed on the ground floor she walked into the glare
of the French windows and out a few steps onto the stone
veranda that ran the length of the hotel. When she walked
she carried herself like a balletdancer, not slumped down
on her hips but held up in the small of her back. Out there
the hot light clipped close her shadow and she retreated—it
was too bright to see. Fifty yards away the Mediterranean
yielded up its pigments, moment by moment, to the brutal
sunshine; below the balustrade a faded Buick cooked on the
hotel drive.
I could spend my whole life without even getting near the beauty of that paragraph. Or again:
It was a damp April day, with long diagonal clouds over
the Albishorn and water inert in the low places. Zurich is
not unlike an American city. Missing something ever since
his arrival two days before, Dick perceived that it was the
sense he had had in finite French lanes that there was nothing more.
In Zurich there was a lot besides Zurich
- the roofs upled the eyes to tinkling cow pastures, which in turn
modified hilltops further up—so life was a perpendicular
starting off to a postcard heaven. The Alpine lands, home of
the toy and the funicular, the merry-go-round and the thin
chime, were not a being HERE, as in France with French
vines growing over one’s feet on the ground.
In the world of literature there is plenty of room for different styles and sensibilities. Scott Fitzgerald just speaks to me as few others do.
"In Zurich there was a lot besides Zurich."
ReplyDeleteI think that's the nicest thing I've ever heard about Zurich, all other reports saying how very dull and stolid it is.
There certainly are many mansions in the world of literature, and in a way I do half appreciate what you see in Fitzgerald. For me,though, the recognition and the 'speaking to' always comes from Jane Austen - who is loathes by many, so there you go.
I fully agree with you about Jane Austen, another writer who strove for and attained perfection. Hard to believe that she is loathed by many. Have you read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel? A tour de force in my opinion.
DeleteI certainly have. I've read it three times now and each time find more in it.
DeleteStill waiting for the promised sequel, but sadly I suspect it won't come now.
I'm reading it: beautiful indeed; you almost feel the burn of the sun! Reading Fitzgerald is an odd experience: it's slow, lazy, very vaguely boring and yet absolutely perfect and beautiful. Have you started "Beyond Black"? I was disappointed I must say. Splendid writing, though.
ReplyDeleteNot yet. I have to get through the Stephen King first!
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