“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, December 27, 1922, Scribner’s, 153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

Max Perkins, 38, has been here at Scribner’s for 12 years now. He’s mostly worked on his authors’ novels, short story collections and non-fiction works as well. This is the first time he’s been asked to edit a play.

Scribner’s

Scribner’s star novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, has had his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, followed by his second story collection, Flappers and Philosophers, published this year. Both are doing well.

Scott is working on a third novel, but is currently sidetracked by writing this play, originally titled Gabriel’s Trombone. He has now decided on a new title, The Vegetable:  From President to Postman.

Perkins agreed to read it and give Scott some feedback, which he sent to him yesterday:

I’ve read your play three times and I think more highly of its possibilities on the third reading than ever before;—but I am also more strongly convinced that these possibilities are far from being realized on account of the handling of the story in the second act [in which the main character has drunken fantasies of becoming president]…You seem to lose sense of your true motive…Satirize as much as you can…but keep one eye always on your chief motive. Throughout the entire wild second act there would still be a kind of ‘wild logic.’…

“My only excuse for all this verbiage is, that so good in conception is your motive, so true your characters, so splendidly imaginative your invention, and so altogether above the mere literate the whole scheme, that no one could help but greatly desire to see it all equal in execution. If it were a comparative trifle, like many a short story, it wouldn’t much matter…To save space, I’ve omitted most of the ‘I thinks,’ ‘It seems to mes,’ and ‘I may be wrong buts’:  They would be, however, understood.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 3, 1922, Biltmore Hotel, 271 West 47th Street, New York City, New York

Happy second wedding anniversary to popular novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 25, and his lovely bride, Zelda, 22.

They are celebrating with yet another party, this time at the Biltmore where they spent their honeymoon.

Biltmore Hotel

In New York for the past few weeks for publication of Scott’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, the Fitzgeralds are now preparing to go back to his hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota, and their five-month old daughter, Scottie, who has been staying with his family.

There has been a lot to celebrate. Scott is trying his hand at playwriting, spending the last few months writing The Vegetable:  From Postman to President, which he is convinced will make him rich for life.

Fitzgerald has sold the movie rights to The Beautiful and Damned to Warner Brothers for $2,500. Although he thinks that’s an awfully small price.

Sales of the novel are going well. There have been some negative reviews, but the most positive one appeared in the New York Tribune yesterday—by Zelda.

In “Friend Husband’s Latest,” she pronounced the book “absolutely perfect”; the character based on her, “most amusing”; and urged readers to buy the book because she will get a platinum ring and the “cutest” $300 gold-cloth gown. The only thing that bothers Zelda is that her old diary has disappeared and some passages in the novel sound awfully familiar. She figures “friend husband” believes that “plagiarism begins at home.”

Ha ha. Except that Zelda isn’t kidding. And she isn’t pregnant anymore.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and also in print and e-book formats on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

In June I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris just before and after the Great War at Carnegie-Mellon University’s Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.