After ditching his job in New York and returning to his parents’ house in Saint Paul in July 1919, the 23 year-old Scott Fitzgerald was getting down to work on a new version of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, that had a bit more order, and a bit more of a conclusion. On…
Category: Repeating the Past
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. … And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — The Great…
The Washingtons. The role played by the descendents of the family of George Washington in the life and work of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Among the mourners at the funeral of Scott’s grandmother, Cecilia Aston Scott Fitzgerald, in 1924 were the Forrest family, a distinguished Washington family whose ancestral home in Georgetown Cecilia had stayed at during her early years in the capital. The head of the Forrest family was well-known government attorney Randolph Keith Forrest, the nephew of…
Absolution — F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby’s Forgotten Prologue
Many people won’t know that The Great Gatsby once had a prologue. It was ditched by Fitzgerald when he realised that it didn’ fit with the ’general neatness’ of the book’s design. Instead, he offered to H. L. Mencken’s new American Mercury magazine for a $118. It’ s a deeply enigmatic tale, so what is…
A Film about Studio Electrophonique. Ken Patten — Sheffield’s Joe Meek.
I have an entry in my ‘Dairy Diary’ for 1984: Wednesday, July 18, 1984: “Demo Day. Got up at 8.00am and had a drink, then took sarnies and guitar up to Frazer’s. We left for Sheffield about 9.00am. We got there about 9.40 and got properly started about 10.05. We did Freezeframe first, then Friction (1…
J.G. ROBIN — The Incredible Rise and Fall of the Ukrainian Gatsby
The scholar Thomas P. Riggio was among the first to explore the similarities between Theodore Dreiser’s Mr X in Twelve Men and Fitzgerald’s titular hero, Jay Gatsby, but few if any have explored Robin’s life in any real detail. This mini-book takes a look at the life and times of the sky-rocket millionaire from his…
The Usual ‘Unusual’ Suspects. The Lindbergh Kidnapping, Arms Deals and a New York Prohibition Scandal.
“I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans.” The Great Gatsby I’d like to go back to another Max Gerlach conundrum. On Max’s 1942 World War II Draft Registration Card, Gerlach…
“God damn the continent of Europe”. F. Scott Fitzgerald letter to Edmund Wilson, Hotel Cecil, July 1921.
A ‘violent’ xenophobic letter written by author F. Scott Fitzgerald to his friend Edmund Wilson from the Hotel Cecil in London in July 1921 has been a constant source of embarrassment to his biographers. “The negroid streak creeps northward to defile the Nordic Race,” he writes. How much does the letter tells us about Scott…
The Shining Ending, July 4 1921. The Shining, Isolationism and the American Dream
The ending of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has chilled and intrigued movie-goers for years. In the closing scene of the film the camera moves from Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance sitting upright, dead in the snow, to a gallery of pictures in the ballroom of the Overlook Hotel. On one of the pictures is Jack in…
Designs on Gatsby: Max Gerlach, Francis Cugat and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Max von Gerlach, an associate of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, made regular trips to Havana. At one time, Havana was also the home of Francis Cugat, the Spanish-Cuban artist who designed the famous dust-jacket for Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. Here we explore the remarkable life of Cugat and the very faintest possibility that…