
Martin Chuzzlewit
'This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination'. Charles
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Feb
24
Mar
10
‘I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there’ll always be the person I am tonight’.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life was as exotic, dramatic and
eventually as tragic as those experienced by some of his characters in his
novels, which are set in the that wild decade of the 1920s. ‘It was an age of miracles,’ Fitzgerald
wrote, ‘it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of
satire’.
Francis
Scott Key Fitzgerald was born of Irish-American stock in 1896 in St Paul,
Minnesota. In 1918 he moved to New
York City hoping to launch a career in advertising that would be lucrative enough
to persuade Zelda Sayle, with whom he had fallen madly in love, to marry him. However,
he was unable to convince her that he would be able to support her.
However,
Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of
Paradise (1920), a
semi-autobiographical account of his undergraduate years at Princeton, was
an overnight success and with the influx of money that the novel brought, Zelda
agreed to marry him. They
became a golden couple of the Jazz Age, living a reckless and careless high
life. Much of their stormy relationship is portrayed in his stories and novels,
which included The Beautiful and Damned (1922), his second novel concerning the
troubled marriage of Anthony and Gloria Patch. This book helped to cement his status as one of
the great chroniclers and satirists of the culture of wealth, extravagance and
ambition that emerged during the affluent 1920s.
The
Great Gatsby (1925) was his third and perhaps his most
famous novel. As the Twenties drew to a close, life became more difficult for
Fitzgerald, struggling with enormous financial problems and Zelda’s severe
mental illness. His wife’s condition and his lack of literary success took its
toll on the author. After a few barren years, during which there was an overindulgence
in alcohol, he published his fourth novel Tender
is the Night in 1934. It was his first book in nine years and the last that
he would complete.
The
title was taken from Keats’ poem, Ode to a Nightingale:
Already with thee! Tender is the night
…But there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with breezes
blown
Through the verdurous glooms and winding
mossy ways.
The
story is one of the squandering of creative talent and charts the rise and fall
of the fortunes of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist and his wife,
Nicole, who has mental problems and is one of his patients. Their relationship
clearly reflects that of his own troubled marriage to Zelda, who was a victim
of schizophrenia. Similarly, Diver’s descent into alcoholism mirrors Fitzgerald’s
own relationship with drink. As a result, the novel has a bleakness and a sense
of negativity. Once again, we are in the
world of the wealthy and privileged, one that Fitzgerald was part of until his
career began to fail. At the time of writing, that world was closed to him. His
fortune had dwindled and he was reduced to borrowing money from his agent and
his publisher.
In Tender
is the Night, we are presented with a cast of beautiful people living their
golden but empty lives and bringing tragedy and conflict upon themselves, all
set against the backdrop of the French Riviera and Rome. There are twisted destructive
romances: Dick becomes infatuated with Rosemary Hoyt, an American actress much
younger than himself, while Nicole falls in love with Tommy Barban, a French
mercenary. Fitzgerald cleverly and painfully reveals that beneath the apparent
smooth surface of these golden lives on the Riviera, there is pain, corruption
and despair. It is quite clear that
Fitzgerald dug deep into his own psyche and damaged history to bring his
narrative to elegant life. The novel is a profound study of a self-imposed
doomed existence which is lyrical and hauntingly evocative. Apart for the array
of richly realised characters, the author manages to recreate with a vivid
reality the period and locale in which the story is set.
Initially
Tender is the Night was not a success despite the fact that it has an
engaging poignancy, and the prose was beautifully crafted. Fitzgerald, who
considered the book to be his masterwork, was stunned by the poor reviews and
he sank into a deep depression. He was never to complete another novel. Struggling financially, the author moved to
Hollywood and embarked on an unsuccessful career as a screen writer. After his
long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety but died of a heart attack
in 1940 at the age of 44.
However, Tender is the Night has grown in acclaim and stature over the years and is now, quite rightly, widely regarded as one of his best works. Critic Anne Daniel observed that readers who loved The Great Gatsby would come to love Tender is the Night even more.
There
have been a couple of screen versions of the novel. A Hollywood movie in 1962
featured Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones as the Divers. Variety noted
at the time that, ‘Robards, whose non-matinee-idol looks makes him an ideal choice
for the role of the ill-fated doctor-husband, Dick Diver, plays with
intelligence and conviction.’ The title song of the film won the Academy Award
that year.
A TV miniseries appeared in 1985 with a script by Denis Potter and starring Peter Strauss and Mary Steenburgen as the doomed couple. It was a reasonably faithful adaptation but failed to register greatly with the viewers.
It
would seem that the time is ripe for a new and lovingly crafted screen
adaptation. The novel has all the ingredients for such a project. In the
meantime, we still have Fitzgerald’s own printed words that have such power and
veracity that, however good a dramatized version may be, it will never quite
capture the essence of this brilliant novel.
Image: Jason Robards and Jill St.John in the 1961 film version of Tender is the Night
Credit: United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo