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Friday 5 December 2008

The Lost Decade, Short Stories from Esquire, 1936-1941

Last tales from the West

Sam Leith reviews a collection of Scott Fitgerald short stories

BEEN SICK IN BED FOUR MONTHS AND WRITTEN AMONG OTHER THINGS TWO GOOD SHORT STORIES ONE 2300 WORDS AND 1800 BOTH TYPED AND READY FOR AIR MAIL STOP WOULD LIKE TO GIVE YOU FIRST LOOK AND AT SAME TIME TOUCH YOU FOR 100 WIRED TO BANK OF AMERICA CULVER CITY CALIFORNIA STOP EVEN IF ONLY ONE SUITED YOU I WOULD STILL BE FINANCIALLY ADVANCED IN YOUR BOOKS PLEASE WIRE IMMEDIATELY 5521 AMESTOY AVENUE ENCINO CALIFORNIA AS AM RETURNING STUDIO MONDAY MORNING

THAT GHOST SCOTT FITZGERALD

Scott Fitzgerald sent this cable to Arnold Gingrich on 17th July 1939. He was re-establishing contact. Gingrich was the founding editor of Esquire, the men’s magazine which had published several of Fitzgerald’s essays and short stories over the preceding few years.

Work for Esquire more or less kept him afloat - which is to say, it kept him from sinking absolutely. Fitzgerald’s way of working was to incur and then service a debt. Gingrich recalled:
“The $250 we charged off against every accepted manuscript simply reduced by that amount his outstanding account with us which, while seldom much over a thousand dollars, never stayed much below that amount for very long either.” Fitzgerald would wire for advances “sometimes at night and sometimes on holidays”. “His correspondence,” James West writes in his Introduction, “suggests that he needed the guilt produced by debt to bring him to the work table.”

His wife was in an east-coast asylum. He was a terminal alcoholic. He had been struggling in Hollywood - MGM terminated their relationship in 1938 -- and “whoring” short stories where he could. When he wrote the telegram above he had around a year and a half to live. “That ghost.” One of the greatest of all American writers was deep into his second act.

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