THE STORIES OF F.
SCOTT FITZGERALD
A Selection of Twenty-Eight Stories with an Introduction by
Malcolm Cowley.
By F.
Scott Fitzgerald.
Between
Classics
By ALICE B. TOKLAS - March 4, 1951
It must have been in 1921 that we first read
"This Side of Paradise" and very shortly after reread it and every
few years read it anew. The book was impressive not only because it was the
accomplished first effort of a very young man but because he had given us the
complete picture of his generation, a surprisingly new and different generation
and to many of us it remains the definitive portrait and continues to surprise
us. Is not this surprise one of the proofs of its being a work of art? Then for
us there was a considerable silence from the young author. We saw none of the
short stories in the magazines until one day "The Great Gatsby"
flashed upon us. The promise of the first novel of the so greatly gifted young
writer was fulfilled.
Now there is the volume of collected short
stories with an appreciative, therefore sympathetic and perceptive introduction
by Malcolm Cowley. To read these stories now is indeed a melancholy pleasure,
for Fitzgerald has become a legend and the epoch he created is history. The
young writer, still unknown today, who will succeed him will follow as
Fitzgerald did in the tradition of American literature, however surprising the
direction and means taken to express the vision of the new troubled generation.
Wars do speed up time and tempo, and these
short stories would seem to be convincing evidence of this, both in the writing
and in the subject matter. If the young people, and Fitzgerald liked them
young, were troubled, and he liked them to be so, they were not made unhappy by
too many different reasons. It is a slight reproach one can make against these
stories, but one must gratefully acknowledge the variety of examples chosen
from the limited range offered by normal middle-class youth.
Fitzgerald himself could not easily accept
the passing of his own youth. He has asked if he could come to see us on a
certain afternoon in 1926. He was my favorite among the young American writers
whom we knew. His intelligence, sensibility, distinction, wit and charm made
his contemporaries appear commonplace and lifeless. He sat with his medallic
head in profile talking quietly. Suddenly he said with passionate energy,
"Today is my birthday, I am 30 years old today. Thirty years old. Youth is
over. What am I to do? What can I do? What does one do when one is 30 years old
and when one's youth is over?" he asked Gertrude Stein.
"One goes on working," she said.
"Go home and write a novel, the novel that is in you to write. That is
what you will do now that you are 30 years old." Later when "Tender
Is the night" was written and published and Fitzgerald sent her a copy she
was touched to find that he had written on the flyleaf "Is this the novel
you asked for?" And she said it was abundantly.
The last time we saw him was in Baltimore
in 1934. We spent a long afternoon with him in his home where he and his young
daughter were living then. It was the afternoon of Dec. 24 and Fitzgerald told
us that they were expecting Mrs. Fitzgerald later in the afternoon. She was to
come from the nursing home to spend Christmas with them. The doctors hoped that
this visit might aid the cure.
Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein talked about
his work and we told him about our visit to the United States. He was restless,
ordered tea early and had Scottie, his young daughter, sent for. "Have a
canape," he said, "they were especially made for you, like those we
used to have in Paris, made especially for you both, and 'Tender Is the Night'
for Zelda." Always now I remember him as he was at that moment, poignant,
disturbing and ineffably beautiful.
We stayed on to see Mrs. Fitzgerald. It
was late when she came suddenly, noiselessly and rapidly into the room. She was
no longer the vigorous, smart young woman we had known in Paris. Now she was
thin, eerie and fey. Fitzgerald unfolded the drawings and paintings she had
been encouraged to make, now that she was no longer allowed or able to dance.
They were both pleased when Gertrude Stein said that she thought her work
interesting and quite well worth while continuing.
This encouragement brought forth from
Zelda a hesitant but not shy, "Would you choose the one you prefer? I
would like you to have it. Then you will not forget us." That was the last
time we were to meet either of them.
Miss Toklas met Fitzgerald and other
writers of his generation in her capacity as companion-secretary to Gertrude
Stein in Paris. Her association with Miss Stein is commemorated in "The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas."
"In One Jump
or Three"
He [Fitzgerald] devoted less care to his
stories than to his novels, since he regarded himself as a novelist primarily.
"Stories are best written in either one jump or three, according to the
length," he told his daughter. "The three-jump story should be
written on three successive days, than a day or so for revise and off she
goes."...Writing stories pain him better than any other literary work. In
1929, for example, he earned $27,000 by his stories... They are like the
sketches of a gifted artist, sharp and immediate in their perceptions, so that
they bring us face to face with the artist's world.
-- From Malcolm
Cowley's Introduction to "The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald."
