Švelni naktis

by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kristina Miliūnienė (Translator)

Dikas Daiveris ir jo žmona Nikolė – auksinė amerikiečių porelė, gyvenanti Rivjeroje. Jie jauni, gražūs ir turtingi, juos lydi sėkmė, jais žavisi visi, kuriuos sutinka. Džiazuojančio gyvenimo siautulio, regis, niekas negali sutrukdyti. Tačiau veikėjus kankina tikrų vertybių troškimas, verčiantis nerimti ir mėginti užčiuopti tai, kas turėtų būti taip svarbu. Gal tai ir nulemia aistringos meilės pabaigą... Dikas kaltina Nikolę ir jos šeimą papirkus jį, moraliai sužlugdžius, tačiau iš tiesų jis pats turi nemažai silpnybių. Kai alkoholis nebenumalšina savigraužos, o iš ankstesnių troškimų telieka tik šešėlis, kas suteiks paguodą?..

„Švelni naktis“ – itin biografinis F. S. Fitzgeraldo romanas, paremtas jo ir žmonos Zeldos asmenine gyvenimo patirtimi. Rašytojas pabrėžia žmogaus širdyje glūdinčią romantišką gyvenimo kaitos svajonę, kaip švelni naktis subtilią ir slaptą, priešingą gyvenimo kasdienybei.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature, Romance, American, Novels, 20th Century

416 pages, Hardcover

First published April 12, 1934

About the author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.

Reviews

[Martine · Rating 3 out of 5]

How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because we are aware that he is a thinly veiled version of the author himself, a giant of early-twentieth American literature?

Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe. Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. After about 130 pages during which Rosemary hangs out with the Divers and nearly embarks on an affair with Dick, the narrative stops and goes back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole's marriage, which is considerably more complicated than Rosemary realises. Nicole, it turns out, has a history of mental illness, and Dick is both her husband and the doctor treating her -- a recipe for disaster, obviously.

Being a tale of needy people, broken relationships, loss of purpose and wasted potential, Tender Is the Night is quite a depressing read, and one's appreciation of it largely depends on one's tolerance for that kind of thing. If you like your books bleak and tragic, chances are you'll appreciate Tender Is the Night. If not, you might want to steer clear of it.

I generally love a good tragedy, but I confess I wasn't overly impressed with Tender Is the Night. For a book which has garnered so many rave reviews, I found it remarkably flawed. Fitzgerald himself seems to have somewhat agreed with me. Despite referring to Tender Is the Night as his masterpiece and being shocked by its lack of critical and commercial success, he began reconstructing it a few years before his death, placing the flashback chapters at the beginning and making all the textual alterations required by this change. However, he died before he could finish the project, or perhaps he abandoned the project as not worth completing (no one seems to know for sure). A friend of his, Malcolm Cowley, then completed the revision, and for years this was the standard edition of the book. However, the Cowley version has fallen into scholarly disfavour (or so Penguin informs me), and several publishers, Penguin included, now use the first edition, the one that Fitzgerald thought needed revision. Apparently, there are no fewer than seventeen versions of the novel extant, which says much about how satisfied Fitzgerald was with his own work. My guess? Not very much.

I read a version based on the first edition of the book, and to be honest, I can see why Fitzgerald felt it needed some work. Tender Is the Night felt very disjointed to me. To a certain extent, this was because of the aforementioned non-linear structure, which felt a bit jarring to me. However, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the book's only problem, nor even its biggest one. What most annoyed me was the way in which the perspective keeps shifting. Fitzgerald uses an omniscient narrator in Tender Is the Night, but not consistently so; the story is always written from a certain character's perspective. Sometimes the perspective is Rosemary's, sometimes it's Dick or Nicole's; even the minor characters have stretches of the story told from their perspectives, often on the same page as a main character's perspective. To me, these shifts in point of view often felt haphazard, not to mention a little jarring. I didn't think they were particularly effective, either, as they hardly build on each other and don't provide any information that couldn't be gleaned from a 'regular' omniscient narrator. I may be in a minority here, but I think the book would have benefited from a more consistent approach to perspective.

The story itself is a bit haphazard, as well. It occasionally drags, it has little plot, and there are quite a few scenes and storylines which don't really go anywhere. Among several other seemingly unlikely scenes, the book contains a murder, a shooting and a duel, none of which is fully integrated into the story, and none of which is given proper significance. Scenes are introduced and then left so randomly that you have to wonder why Fitzgerald bothered to include them at all. At the risk of being unkind and judgemental, I guess that's what being an alcoholic will do for an author: it gives you wild ideas, but prevents you from carrying them out properly.

Which brings me to the characterisation. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I felt that Fitzgerald's vaunted characterisation was a bit 'off' in this novel. Many of the minor characters are sketchily drawn, whereas the main characters are described well (sometimes brilliantly so), but never properly explained. While Fitzgerald does a good (and occasionally excellent) job of sharing his protagonists' feelings, he hardly ever bothers to explain their motivations. This particularly bothered me in the parts written from Dick Diver's point of view, as Dick is supposed to be a psychiatrist. By rights, he should be analysing people actions and motivations all the time, and asking lots of questions. However, Dick hardly ever asks questions. He does not even ask himself questions. He never wonders why he is so drawn to young girls, or what it is in him that causes him to need to be their saviour. He just observes other people in a way of which any intelligent person (trained psychologist or not) would be capable, and then describes their behaviour in a few felicitous phrases. For this and other reasons, I didn't buy Dick Diver as a psychiatrist. Fitzgerald may have read up on psychology (and undoubtedly learned a lot from the doctors who treated his own wife), but I never found his alter ego convincing as a psychiatrist, let alone a brilliant psychiatrist. To me, Dick has 'writer' written all over him.

It's a pity I kept finding such flaws, because Tender Is the Night obviously had the potential to be amazing. It has all the right ingredients: interesting (albeit snobbish and bored) characters, powerful themes, evocative (albeit frequently vague) writing, you name it. And the story certainly doesn't lack in pathos. It is quite harrowing to watch Dick Diver, a supposedly brilliant and popular man who never lives up to his potential and is increasingly torn asunder by money, alcoholism and his failed marriage to a mentally ill woman, go to pieces, becoming, in his own words, 'the Black Death' ('I don't seem to bring people happiness any more'). The fact that this was Fitzgerald writing about himself, about his own frustrations and shattered dreams, adds considerable poignancy to the reading experience. Even so, Tender Is the Night ended up leaving me fairly cold, as I simply didn't care for Dick enough to be genuinely moved by his descent into failure. While others may find Dick a swell guy, I myself found his complacency and lack of purpose grating, his alcoholism exasperating, and his brilliance skin-deep. I seem to be alone in this opinion, but I stand by it.

In summary, then, I enjoyed and admired aspects of Tender Is the Night, but I don't think they add up to a great whole. While I appreciate Fitzgerald's brutal honesty and the masterful way in which he evokes mutual dependence, isolation and frustration, I can't shake off the feeling that the book could have been much better than it ended up being. And this pains me, as I hate wasted potential as much as Fitzgerald himself seems to have done. As it is, Tender Is the Night is in my opinion not just a book about wasted potential, but an example of wasted potential. It is fitting, I suppose, but no less disappointing for that.

3.5 stars, rounded down to three because I really didn't like it as much as many of the books I have given four stars lately.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Fitzgerald finished this gem, he was stunned by the poor reviews it received. I honestly think it's a profoundly more true and powerful book than Gatsby ever will be. His effortless and viceral writing tells a story of such complex and accurate human relationships, I often find myself reflecting on Dick Diver as a friend I should check up on, and part of me thinks I spent a year of my youth hanging out on the French Riveria having too much to drink, but somehow pulling it off sophistication. Now that I sound like a lunatic, I must express this is not normal for me. The world and characters really got under my skin. After my first reading I woke myself by weeping...and I was weeping for the characters. That has never before or since happened to me. It is a work of profound beauty and pain about the resilience of the human spirit. If you're feeling the world is too glib, I feel this is a great antidote.

[Ilse · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me the title was the best part of the book.

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night.”

If you were to meet Dick and Nicole Diver at a party, a restaurant, or on the beach, you would leave them feeling as if you had been in the presence of greatness. They are both witty, charming, gorgeous, majestic, sexy, and in command of whatever situation they find themselves in. They are the sun and moon merged together, and no one shines brighter in the daylight or in the moonlight. They are what many aspire to be, but few will ever achieve, the suave assurance of the Diver couple.

As Rosemary Hoyt, a burgeoning movie starlet, says after meeting them, ”The Divers made her want to stay near them forever.” She loves them both, but she wants a part of Dick for herself. She might be naive, but even she senses that to break them apart dissipates the magic of the two of them together.

The Divers are at the height of their power when Rosemary meets them. Nicole Warren is obscenely rich, and Dick is a successful, published psychologist. They met when Nicole was suffering a mental breakdown. Dick brought her back from the brink. ”They were more interested in Nicole’s exterior harmony and charm, the other face of her illness. She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned.” The Warren family is used to owning everything in their universe.

She is so beautiful and tragic, and Dick, like most of us, wants to preserve lovely things. He is on the verge of reaching the pinnacle of his profession. He is breaking new ground and getting noticed by the top men (this is 1929) in his field. That drive he has to succeed erodes as he starts to enjoy the life on the Riviera more than the life in a clinic in Zurich. Who wouldn’t? Aren’t we supposed to enjoy being rich?

Dick is well aware that there is only a small window in every smart man’s life to experience success. ”You’ve taught me that work is everything and I believed you. You used to say a man knows things and when he stops knowing things he’s like everyone else, and the thing is to get power before he stops knowing things.”


F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

It is impossible to separate F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre from the characters populating his novels. Their almost mythical love affair and the disastrous unraveling of their lives are mined heavily by Scott for his novels and stories. Zelda was often exasperated to find something gay and spirited she had said at a party or something dark and insightful she may have shared in the privacy of the bedroom show up in Scott’s writing. She was in many ways the subject of all of his writing. She was certainly the muse.

F. Scott drank too much, and Zelda slowly slid into madness. She died at 47 and he at 44. They had lives used up too quickly.

Dick has Rosemary fluttering around him like a lovely, lustrous satellite, but Nicole has her numerous admirers, as well. Foremost of these is Tommy Barban. ”He sat in the only chair, dark, scarred and handsome, his eyebrows arched and upcurling, a fighting Puck, and earnest Satan.” He is virile and alive and lustful. He lacks Dick’s polish and sophistication, but then Dick, as he drinks more and more, isn’t exactly Dick anymore.

“‘We can’t go on like this,’ Nicole suggested. ‘Or can we?--what do you think?’ Startled that for the moment Dick did not deny it, she continued, ‘Some of the time I think it’s my fault--I’ve ruined you.’

‘So I’m ruined, am I?’ he inquired pleasantly.

‘I didn’t mean that. But you used to want to create things--now you seem to want to smash them up.’”

As Dick and Nicole’s dependency on one another becomes more and more uncertain, the influences of others start to drive wedges between them. It is like watching the disintegration of a monument. They can not find the synergy with other people that they had together, but they can’t find it with each other anymore, either. The whole was greater than the sum of their parts.

Fitzgerald is wonderful at dangling this world of infinite possibility that so infused the 1920s era. Living for today, not worrying about tomorrow, and not letting the past be a burden on the present. Even as he shows us this glittering world, he begins to inch back the curtain to reveal the darkness that holds it all up. To be Dick and Nicole, they must be on the top of their game all the time. They are performance artists. They dazzle those fortunate enough to be around them, but like most rock stars, they start to feel the pressure to always entertain. Alcohol or drugs can take the edge off and temporarily make them feel like themselves, but eventually the centers of who they are become buried under the shimmering facades of the people everyone wants them to be.

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[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender Is the Night is a flowery derision of the beautiful people’s world and a bitter tale of ruination.
There are man and wife living in comfort and luxury…
She is enigmatic and beautiful…

She sat in the car, her lovely face set, controlled, her eyes brave and watchful, looking straight ahead toward nothing. Her dress was bright red and her brown legs were bare. She had thick, dark, gold hair like a chow’s.

He is courageous and beautiful…

Save among a few of the tough-minded and perennially suspicious, he had the power of arousing a fascinated and uncritical love. The reaction came when he realized the waste and extravagance involved. He sometimes looked back with awe at the carnivals of affection he had given, as a general might gaze upon a massacre he had ordered to satisfy an impersonal blood lust.

Then a seductress arrives… The girl is adolescently naïve and beautiful…

Her fine forehead sloped gently up to where her hair, bordering it like an armorial shield, burst into lovelocks and waves and curlicues of ash blonde and gold. Her eyes were bright, big, clear, wet, and shining, the color of her cheeks was real, breaking close to the surface from the strong young pump of her heart. Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood – she was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her.

But there is no love triangle really… Everything is entertainment and fun: crazy drinking bouts, curious drunken escapades, extravagant jolly trips, lavish shopping sprees… So many open roads for the asking… But all those roads go to mirages and emptiness…
And emptiness is a mire – first it sucks one in and then it sucks out one’s soul.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

IL CROLLO


Maxwell Parrish. È l’azzurro fatato delle illustrazioni di Maxfield Parrish, azzurro come i registri azzurri, l’olio azzurro, gli occhi azzurri…

O Capitano! Mio capitano!…
Sono tanti anni, troppi, che non rileggevo questo libro.
E ancora lo shock della seconda parte (libro secondo) che molto presto introduce le lettere di Nicole a Dick, la prima delle quali inizia proprio così, Mon Capitaine, ben meno enfatico della poesia di Whitman e di Robin Williams nel film, e per spiegare lo stato di lei quale miglior spiegazione di:
La guerra è finita e a stento sapevo che c’era una guerra…
Siamo a Zurigo, Svizzera, e la guerra in questione è tutt’intorno quella passata alla storia come Grande Guerra.


Gerald e Sarah Murphy sulla spiaggia di La Garoupe ad Antibes nell’estate del 1926: sono i modelli cui Fitzgerald si ispira per Dick e Nicole. Hemingway, sempre critico verso Fitzgerald, gli scrisse: ”Tenera è la notte” mi è piaciuto e non mi è piaciuto. Parte con quella descrizione meravigliosa di Sarah e Gerald. Poi ti metti a giocare con loro, li fai diventare altre persone e questo, Scott, non lo puoi fare. Se prendi delle persone vere, non gli puoi far fare cose che non farebbero.

Lo shock del libro secondo, la meraviglia del primo, lo strazio emotivo del terzo e ultimo (moglie e marito solo di rado trovavano la parola giusta quando sarebbe servita; arrivava sempre un istante troppo tardi, quando l’altro era ormai fuori portata.)
Sono le stesse dell’altra volta, molto tempo fa? Sì e no: il piacere è sempre tanto, la bellezza che leggo e trovo è la stessa, ma ovviamente l’occhio e l’anima sono diversi, quindi mi pare ovvio che questa volta mi concentri su aspetti che l’altra volta invece…


I coniugi Murphy fotografati nel 1923 insieme ad alcuni amici.

Ancora ricchi, e ancora belli nelle pagine di Fitzgerald. Personaggi seducenti, irresistibili. Fisicamente perfetti. Tutti belli e bianchi, preferibilmente con occhi e capelli chiari.
E se il sospetto che la giovinezza (leggi adolescenza) influisca molto sulla bellezza (sia Rosemary che Nicole quando entrano in scena e fanno innamorare Dick sono adolescenti, la prima appena diciottenne, la seconda ancora più giovane), il sospetto è dissolto dallo stesso Dick che si autodefinisce di mezz’età: Rosemary lo contraddice, si scandalizza per questa definizione che trova esagerata, ma in effetti, nel 1925, 34 anni portavano Dick piuttosto vicino a quel gradino della vita.


Tra gli amici dei Murphy, oltre Scott e Zelda, anche Pablo Picasso, qui insieme a Gerald.

Tender Is the Night rischierebbe di essere uno sdolcinato romanzo rosa eccessivamente romantico se non ci fosse lo sterminato talento di Fitzgerald che riesce a essere più grande del suo Grande Gatsby: quello era un capolavoro, questo è un altro capolavoro, per qualcuno perfino superiore.
…ricordando di non aver mai conosciuto nulla che sapesse di gioventù come le sue labbra, ricordando la pioggia come lacrime piante per lui che si posava sulla dolce luminescenza di quelle guance di porcellana…


Ancora i coniugi Murphy, questa volta in compagnia di Cole Porter e Genevieve Carpenter a Venezia nel 1923.

E Fitzgerald sembra in grado di insegnare cinema anche ai bravi registi: il suo uso di tecniche che appartengono alla settima arte è così accorto e attento da renderlo maestro davanti ai maestri: l’alternanza dei piani temporali - non quella del punto di vista, che è tecnica prettamente letteraria, e Fitzgerald si appropria di tutti, da narratore onnisciente abbraccia prima la prospettiva di Rosemary, per poi alternare quella di Dick a quella di Nicole - di ‘inquadrature’ dal ‘taglio’ diverso, totale, panoramica, campo lungo, primo piano, campo medio…
Colpisce pensare che la settima musa avesse nemmeno quarant’anni quando Fitzgerald pubblicò il romanzo: 1934 il libro, 1895 la nascita convenzionalmente riconosciuta del cinema.
Quando inizia il romanzo, 1925, il cinema è ancora quello muto. E quindi di arte giovane, molto giovane si trattava. Ma Fitzgerald era già in grado di maneggiarne i segreti, di mettere al centro della sua narrazione una giovanissima attrice cinematografica, di metterle intorno registi e colleghi attori, di scrivere che un bacio era più sfocato di quelli dei film.
Eppure non si può dire certo che la sua carriera di sceneggiatore l’abbia reso molto felice o soddisfatto!


La Costa Azzurra negli anni Venti quando il suo mito fu inventato dagli espatriati americani.

È un romanzo meno compatto di Gatsby, sia perché abbraccia un periodo più ampio (1917-1929), sia perché allarga il suo sguardo di qua e di là dell’oceano, Stati Uniti e ancor più l’Europa, sia perché è ricco di spunti e temi - oltre quello probabilmente principale, legato al denaro, alla crescita sociale, alla società classista, al sogno americano (leggi successo) che era già morto (il romanzo si ferma pochi mesi prima del celebre crack di Wall Street nel 1929 che dette inizio alla Grande Depressione), alle palate di autobiografia che spingono alcuni recensori a battezzare Nicole direttamente Zelda - si incontrano tanti altri temi e argomenti: la psicanalisi, la Grande Guerra, gli espatriati americani, la gioventù, l’omosessualità, la violenza sessuale…
Non per niente il cinema ha tentato un solo adattamento, e neppure particolarmente luminoso, nel 1962. Ma pare che siano in corso due versioni televisive, uno inglese l’altro americano: l’ampiezza della serie, o miniserie, sembra indispensabile per poter trasporre tutta la materia di queste pagine.


John Held: illustrazione per la copertina di una raccolta di racconti di Fitzgerald. Pag 420: Somigliava più alle maschiette senza seno di John Held che alla gerarchia di bionde alte e languide che da prima della guerra posavano per i pittori.

Le traduzioni invecchiano più delle opere che le generano. Per questo ho cercato quella che mi sembrava non solo più aggiornata ma anche la migliore. Non so se ci sono riuscito, qui e là qualche perplessità fa capolino – e pur non conoscendo il termine in inglese usato da Fitzgerald, ho problemi ad accettare “compagnia”, termine per palcoscenici, invece di troupe, regolarmente usato in Italia quando riferito al cinema.

Il classico libro che alla fine ti lascia da solo, ti fa sentire la sua assenza. Fitzgerald è solitamente riconosciuto come il grande cantore dell’età del jazz: ma qui, più che il jazz, io sento il blues.

Pensa a quanto mi ami. Non ti chiedo di amarmi sempre così tanto, ma ti chiedo di ricordartelo. Da qualche parte dentro di me ci sarà sempre la persona che sono stasera.


Scott e Zelda.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so pointless, you could read the chapters in random order and probably not feel like you'd missed much. This marks my second and final attempt to read it. I almost made it to the halfway point this time. If you loved The Great Gatsby, don't get your hopes up for this one to be anything close to that good. You'll be disappointed.

[Warwick · Rating 1 out of 5]

I mean…it begins badly, tails off a bit in the middle, and the less said about the ending the better.

Occasionally, there are books that leave you at a loss as to how to dismiss them. Reading this I kept thinking of a line from Stoppard's The Real Thing: ‘There’s something scary about stupidity made coherent. I can deal with idiots, and I can deal with sensible argument, but I don’t know how to deal with you.’ Tender is the Night is not stupid, but it is, if you like, triviality made coherent. The story of a wealthy married couple going through a mid-life crisis, it's such a nothingy narrative couched in formally perfect prose that attacking it feels like swinging at a ghost – the disparity between form and content is dizzying. It's like watching Stephen Hawking spend half an hour punching something into his speech computer, only to hear it reel off a haiku about Joey Essex.

Where to start. Construction-wise, it's a complete mess; Fitzgerald realised this, and was still rearranging chapters until he died, hoping for a rehabilitation which the novel has eventually found (it was panned on release). In its original, and most commonly printed, form, the first hundred and twenty pages introduce a baffling profusion of characters with no discernible story, at which point the narrative drops back a few years to set up the main couple of Dick and Nicole, a charmless pair of socialites based fairly closely on F. Scott and Zelda.

A chronological reordering might, perhaps, solve some of the problems, although personally I would advocate cutting the opening section altogether, dropping the middle bit, and then drastically abridging the end section, so that you're left with a slim pamphlet consisting of a nice speech about the First World War, some good descriptions of Zurich, an extramarital fumble in a French hotel room, and then a speedy conclusion. Job done.

Instead it just goes on and on, retailing anecdotes about peripheral characters who seem to spend the whole book going through a series of boring encounters designed only to highlight the period's casual racism, homophobia and misogyny. It's difficult to overstress how little I cared about anyone in here. The settings – Nice, Rome, Lausanne – should provide colour, but in fact they have few distinguishing features, becoming interchangeable stops on a general American-eye view of Yurp. In Gatsby I had loved Fitzgerald's nocturnal flights of melancholy prose; here, instead, he seems to be in a sort of Hemingway mode, all flat cynicism and brittle dialogue and bitter comments about ‘the opportunistic memory of women’.

Most of all, perhaps, I hated the equation drawn between professional productivity and personal happiness. The long, drawn-out decline and fall which comprises the latter half of the novel tries to show that Dick is a failure as a man because he never completed his book and because he develops a greater affection for his children. Don't get me wrong, Dick is – well – he's a dick, isn't he – but all the same, I thought it seemed a bit unfair to argue that because he chooses not to fight to keep his adulterous wife, and instead ends up practising medicine in a tiny town in New York state, that he's somehow therefore an archetypal symbol of a wasted life.

[Violet wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was besotted with Scott and Zelda in my youth. Along with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield I read everything about them I could lay my hands on. And I loved this novel because of how much obvious autobiography it contained. And to some extent the measure of enjoyment you glean from Tender will depend on how heavily you are invested emotionally in Scott and Zelda's real-life story. Because, despite all the smokescreens, the ruse that Dick and Nicole are based on Gerald and Sarah Murphy, it's very much a portrait of their life together, or the lengthy period of their life lived in France. Except in his novel Scott makes himself a psychiatrist and saves Zelda. He reverses the pattern of her illness - makes her sick to begin with and then heals her. It's a kind of wish fulfilment fantasy on his part.

Tender is the Night took Fitzgerald thirteen years to write and for a lot of this period he was drunk and it shows, especially in the early part of the novel where his structure seems off and his focus lacks sharpness. There's a sense many passages have been transposed from notebooks, shoehorned in, rather than come about organically. Often the beautiful writing doesn't mesh seamlessly into the narrative. There are lots of sensational sideshows featuring very minor characters, characters only there, in fact, to provide these sideshows - there's a duel, an attempted murder and then a successful murder. - Tender has little of the tight technical artistry of Gatsby where there was barely a superfluous word. Neither, despite its ambition, does it achieve the scope of Gatsby largely because of its structural flaws. (Not surprising as much of his material was in the midst of happening in real life: Zelda, for example, was essentially a healthy young woman when he begun this.) However, it was his personal favourite of his books and you begin to understand why in the second half which dramatically improves when Fitzgerald hones in on his two central characters, makes them more explicitly himself and Zelda and their volatile doomed marriage. Dick, a bit of a self-satisfied bore when he's in command of his life and heralded as an organiser of gaiety, becomes more interesting when he's on the back foot. The writing improves too and there are many truly beautiful passages and insights, especially on the underlying causes of human failure. And by the end Scott has evoked a generous measure of the tragic poignancy of his marriage to Zelda.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

We first meet Dick and Nicole Diver on the beach in the south of France. They are a golden couple, beautiful and rich. All those around them are slightly in awe, especially Rosemary Hoyt, a very young actress who immediately convinces herself she’s fallen in love with Dick.
The Divers epitomise cool, they are self assured, well travelled and fashionable - they belong to a set of well off Americans who drift around Europe, sometimes with purpose, some times indolently.
Rosemary is accepted into the Diver’s set and is one of several important characters that float in and out of the narrative - a narrative that meanders lazily in the sun, occasionally punctuated by short bursts of violence or high drama.
Tender is the Night plays out in the post WWI world of the Jazz Age ‘..... the broken universe of wars ending ....’ as Americans flood into Europe, rich, confident, sometimes flashy and Europeans emerge jaded and blinking from the shadows of conflict.
This is a tale of inappropriate relationships and marriage breakdown, of facades crumbling and dreams fading.
Aspects of the author’s own life are inevitably woven into the storyline ...... failed love, infidelity, alcoholism, the spectre of mental illness and a constant preoccupation with money.
Knowing a little about Fitzgerald, much of the story felt raw and desperate. There’s a sadness that grows throughout the book and lingers after turning the the last page (or reaching 99%!)
Some of the text is a bit wordy and whole dissertations could be written (and have been!) about the questionable attitudes of characters concerning race, gender, politics etc ........ but I love Fitzgerald’s writing, the lyricism, the soul bearing melancholy, and the sense of time and place.
This is my second reading of this novel after many years and I enjoyed it a lot.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Fitzgerald book. I read it back to back with This Side of Paradise last year, which was an interesting experiment. I had the young, beautiful, self-confident Fitzgerald and the Fitzgerald of post-Zelda's craziness, dark dark alcoholic Fitzgerald. Besides showing obviously how much his skills had improved, it showed the sheer range he was capable of as well. This is a dark, depressing novel. Loss, loneliness, isolation, desolation. It does not end well. But the sheer power of the prose, and just how completely lost everything is here can't fail to get to you. The story is so tight, well put together, flows along without a hitch. It sinks you slowly lower and lower and lower until you're hardly aware of just how dark of a place the novel has gone. And then all of a sudden things evaporate, and there you are. Just like Fitzgerald. Wandering off the last page.

Really. I recommend it to everyone. Do give it a try.

[Colin Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

After enjoying ‘The Great Gatsby’ I was really keen to read something else by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I’m not disappointed because he sure can write, particularly about people and places that make you sense what his characters are sensing, and often with sharp wit:

‘Nearby, some Americans were saying good-bye in voices that mimicked the cadence of water running into a large old bathtub.’

It didn’t reach the heights that I got from Gatsby, but still a good read.

[Vessey · Rating 4 out of 5]

SPOILERS


"He wished she had no background, that she was just a girl lost with no address save the night from which she had come."


Tender is the Night is a love story. It is also a story about loneliness. But mostly, it is about the need to love and belong. Dick Diver falls in love with mentally ill woman and marries her. But he never truly finds happiness with her. He falls in love with an young actress, but he never gets to be with her, because his connection with and his love for his sick wife are too strong. And he goes through life alone, leading a battle that cannot be won. This is a beautiful and touching book, but it is also adamant in the way it shows what loneliness, what falling in love with the wrong person can do to us. Still, does loving a person you cannot be happy with mean that you have truly chosen (as much as love is choice) the wrong person? There are those of us who love those that cannot be reached, that cannot be saved, even those don’t love us back. For which do we need bigger strength? To quit loving such person or to go on loving them? Is Dick’s growing detachment from Nicole a sign for the diminishing of his love or his loss of hope? Can a distinction be made? Do we love a person only when we believe there is a chance for them to turn into what we need them to be and for us to be happy with them? We dream of finding that perfect person, for the connection that breaks us apart and builds us all over again, but what happens when we meet an already broken person whose pieces are there, waiting for us to pick them up and put the puzzle back together, only to realize that there will always be a piece that will be missing, that won’t fit as we need it to? I believe that when we love, it is forever. Love that dies is no love, unless the object of our love changes severely. But maybe sometimes the person hasn’t become so different as we think, maybe they are the same, and it us who have changed without realizing it and this has lead to a change of heart.


“Think how you love me. I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight.”


If the person we have grown to love stays forever there, under some form, does the part of us that loves this person goes on existing even while we feel that with another part of ourselves we slip away from our loved one’s reach and start needing new horizons, new lands to explore, new hearts to conquer? Is there such thing as loving only with a part of yourself or is love something that sweeps you completely and you love with your whole being? Do humans have the potential, the depth to love absolutely and completely? Or is love fragmented, like we are fragmented? Is it possible for the part that loves and the part that stays indifferent (or even hates) to be two sides of the same coin, two faces of the same feeling? Dick Diver goes on loving his wife, but a part of him grows cold. This terrible contradiction comes not from weakening of his love for her, but from his inability to connect to her. Are love and connection the same thing? I thought so. I am not so sure anymore. He loves her, but feels disconnected from her.


"He moved on through the rain, demoniac and frightened, the passions of many men inside him and nothing simple that he could see."


If we are ready to love without connection does that make our love extraordinarily strong or not strong enough? Can a man who loves a woman whole-heartedly accept only half of her, fragments of her, isn’t the strongest kind of love the one that compels us to either have a full possession of somebody or walk away, because we love them too much to bear to have only fragments of them? Or is the strongest love the one because of which we are ready to make any sacrifices and accept even the smallest particles, when even the smallest piece is better than nothing, when we are ready to sacrifice our life, our pride, our very essence? Dick Diver feels like he has lost an essential part of himself, a part that leaves any real feeling in him incomplete. If we sacrifice too much for the loved one, so much as we no longer feel as ourselves, can love survive? Does true love transcends all? Which is the stronger? The love we bear for the other person or our sense of self? When the sense of self vanishes, do we keep loving? Would Dick have been happier had he left Nicole? Would he have been happy with Rosemary? I think not. When we love somebody, we bear all their baggage, their pain overwhelms us, it becomes a part of us, but the same is valid for their joy, for everything amazing they are and everything amazing they give us. We are overwhelmed, but the mere fact that we love someone so deeply as to let ourselves be overwhelmed gives us a sense of security and belonging and fullness.


"He knew that the price of his intactness was incompleteness."


They made no love that day, but when he left her outside the sad door on the Zurichsee and she turned and looked at him he knew her problem was one they had together for good now


Is his love for her weakness or strength? Or both? When we truly love, how much do we belong to ourselves and how much to the other person?


"There were now no more plans than if he had arbitrarily made some indissoluble mixture, with atoms joined and inseparable; you could throw it all out but never again could they fit back into atomic scale. As he held her and tasted her, and as she curved in further and further toward him, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, he was thankful to have an existence at all, if only as a reflection in her wet eyes."


I believe that no two people are absolutely alike or absolutely different, therefore there is no such thing as an absolute harmony or absolute disconnection. The relationship between Dick and Nicole, however strong or weak, keeps on living and tearing him apart. When the relationship does not bring us happiness, when the pain prevails, is it still love? Does true love mean that no matter the circumstances, we can always find some happiness, some spark there? Or do we love even when the passion no longer exists and desperation and emptiness fill our hearts and minds and hang over us and touch us like a pale, cold sun, so alike and unlike the real one that once kept it all alive, but has now melted and disappeared into space, leaving us merely with the memory?


It was not so much infatuation as a romantic memory. She was still his girl


Tender Is the Night left me incredibly satisfied and yearning at the same time. I wish Scott Fitzgerald had developed Nicole’s character more. Or Rosemary’s. But with Dick himself being the main focus and how his love and longing, pain and loneliness affect his life and personality, they were more of a catalyst for him than actual characters in the novel. I think that had Fitzgerald given them more personality, this would have been a five-star book for me. Still, it was a great experience. One I am tempted to go back to one day.


Read count: 1

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had to rate Fitzgerald’s novels (1 being the most loved):
1. The Great Gatsby
2. The Last Tycoon
3. The Beautiful and Damned
4. This Side of Paradise
5. Tender Is the Night

Fitzgerald admitted that he was experimenting with a couple of narrative techniques in Tender Is the Night. And he didn’t pull off either one.

The first experimental technique utilized is the flashback—Fitzgerald is telling the story out of order. But – good grief—this flashback is the entire Book One, a third of the novel! In addition, most readers are at least slightly biased toward the character that they are first introduced.

The second experimental technique is the fade-out ending, which is another term for a boring, lackluster, unmemorable ending.

These techniques didn’t come together, and the pacing is incredibly uneven. There is no suspense; the book is boring, and then the ending is breathtakingly abrupt.

Now, Fitzgerald’s problem is that he forgot his own writing philosophy. He wanted to focus on how the reader felt. “I believe that the important thing about a work of fiction is that the essential reaction shall be profound and enduring.” The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. 362

Although Rebecca by du Maurier was published in 1938, after Tender Is the Night, that is the tone I believe Fitzgerald was trying to achieve but he failed epically.

None of the characters are likeable and this book was boring until the end, which seemed to come out of nowhere and landed like an unexpected punch (and not in a good way).

Bits of stardust can be found sprinkled throughout, but it wasn’t enough to redeem this novel (Sorry, Fitzgerald—you know I still love you….muah!)

And with that, I will remind those who read the book of this Bible passage, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.”

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $60.18 for a First Edition Library copy on Mercari
Audiobook – Audible – 1 credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or rough $9.56 per credit)

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[Margaret M - (having a challenging time and on GR as much as I can) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tender is the night, peaceful is the Rivera setting and fascinating is a novel that is scathing in its messaging as it mediates in heavy themes of infidelity, materialism, alcoholism, child abuse, mental illness, and vanity but most of all moral suppression in pursuit of pleasure.

A novel that makes no apologies for shining a light on the moral shortcomings of society, the burden of class, wealth and expectation, and the power of love and lust that turns people blind, as the characters are forced to live with the consequence of decisions taken when none of their lives remain unchanged.

The Plot

Dick Diver and his wife Nicole are a rich couple who take a holiday in the French Riviera with other America expatriates, Dick a successful psychiatrist, Nicole a wealthy heiress, and with no shortage of wealth they live the dazzling champagne lifestyle to the fullest. And into that world of decadence steps seventeen-year-old Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress who unashamedly believes “It is not necessarily poverty of spirit that makes a woman surround herself with life—it can be a superabundance of interest...”

And her interest is both Dick and Nicole. Rosemary wants Dick as a lover and wants to be like Nicole his wife. A self-absorbed girl who begins to recklessly court the couple, as cracks begin to show in their marriage. Meanwhile, Nicole remains a mental ward of her husband after suffering abuse at the hands of her father, leaving her with a vulnerable mental state that she does well to hide from many, as Dick, the eternal white Knight, fails to see the all-important delineation of husband and doctor. However, more importantly he fails to deal appropriately with the advances of Rosemary, who he professes to love.

Review and Comments

Tender is the night is a theme driven novel, complex but poignant, expressive in its portrayal of a high society and people that are flawed, and powerful in its messaging of the consequences. A novel that does not shy away from painting a sad and heart rendering story as though the author has his own moral obligation to highlight such fables as teachings of consequence whilst he laments in the failure of a society where idealism is only a dream and aspiration.

I felt the story lost its way a few times in the middle, as though it was trying to pad out the story length. However, this is one of the best theme driven books I have read. The characterisation is superb but all of the characters are unlikeable, in some way, which is in itself a bold move as the reader is forced to observe a society through the authors lens and in it, he exposes the failings and weaknesses in human behaviour.

Fitzgerald has a beautiful writing style where the power of his work sits with the messaging and themes that he effortlessly introduces without overburdening the reader. Excellent.

[Jonathan B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tender is Night or so they say. I say tender is a woman's psyche, and the man's ego that tries to make it strong. Too bad both of them suffer from a severe case of asshatitis.

"Tender is the Night" is the story of Dick Diver and his Wife Nicole. You don't actually find this out until a fourth of the way into the book. At first we meet the happy couple through the eyes of Rosemary, a young actress from America with a Norman Bates styled affinity for "Mother." She quickly latches onto Mr. Diver, his charms no match for her ignorance and youth. They all hang out together, doing rich people things like eating, and hanging out at the beach, and hating minorities (It is the 20's after all), and all other sorts of things that make you want to slash the tires on their Rolls.

Book two abandons Rosemary and we focus on Dick Diver, Psychiatrist at Large. He doesn't actually do much psycho analyzing, but spends most of his time wondering why he married Nicole in the first place and developing a drinking problem. Turns out Nicole is cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and Dick married her with some God complex of trying to save her. But all he ends up doing is ruining himself.

Book three continues the downfall, kind of told through Nicole's eyes. Dick falls further and further down the rabbit hole while Nicole seems to see daylight in the fog of her crazy. She ends up pulling a Dick (Diver. Head out of the gutter people) but with the opposite reaction of what it did to him. I think.

This book isn't necessarily long, though it feels like it. Long passages of time pass in one paragraph, making it confusing and a rather dull read. None of the characters are likable, and I think you end up just wishing all of them went the way of Abe North. Speaking of, what the heck DID happen to Abe North. That story line was never really resolved.

They say it took him forever to write this and it kind of feels like it. It doesn't connect very well and you wonder how much is Fitz's desperate cry for help from his own life full of money and ruin. Can anyone tell me why I am supposed to love Fitzgerald so much?

[ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

i knew a dick once. his name was sam, and he was a star. people gravitated toward him everywhere he went. i did, too. he radiated light and fun and when he talked to you, he made you feel like the most important person in the room. he partied hard, and he was the type of person you wanted to party with, because it was always a good time. he was the son of a diplomat, knew five languages, and always knew exactly what to say or do to get the situation how he wanted it. when i was about sixteen, we spent an amazing weekend together, that took us from manhattan to new jersey to connecticut, all for good reason, and it was one of the most memorable weekends of my life.

we talked very infrequently for the next few years, and then we hit it back up again, online, and he was such a blast to talk to. so we made plans to meet up. but i was older and wiser then. and as much as i wanted to be with him, to breathe in his intensity, his vitality, i was more guarded. id been burned by then. by friends who were fun and energetic but weren't, when it came down to it, there in any meaningful way. there was one in particular who taught me that lesson... and when sam inevitably disappointed me, i stood my ground. i didnt want to be friends with someone like that. i said that i wanted to believe he wasnt like that, that he was all the positive things i knew to be true but also reliable--that he was reliable--but that now i knew he wasnt.

i wanted him to fight for me. to show me i was wrong. if he had insisted, i'm sure i would have continued to be friends with him. and it wasnt like a hard line was drawn in the sand or anything. but he just wasnt interested in continuing a friendship with someone who maybe wasnt as dazzled by him anymore, i think. but as things worked out, that was the last time i spoke to him. he died four years ago. that they held memorial services in literally ten different countries. so, see, i'm not exaggerating the effect he had on people.

i'm not sure what my point is, except that dick reminded me of sam. and like sam... dick was a remarkable character. i was so disappointed in his decisions, wanted to be disgusted by his actions... but somehow, what i really felt, was empathy. love. pity. there's so much pain in this book, so much longing, so much sorrow. i dont know. i guess maybe life is just hard for everyone, and when faced head on with that, it's hard to begrudge him his choices.

[Ilenia Zodiaco · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sono stati fatti bei tuffi dai trampolini più fragili"

I romanzi di Fitzgerald sono spirali di distruzione. Quando un personaggio cade a pezzi si addensa una nube di macerie finissime che ricopre il paesaggio circostante. Prendete in mano qualsiasi dei suoi libri, la polvere è la vera protagonista. E così nel dolorosissimo "Tenera è la notte". Il rapporto di Dick e Nicole non si spezza. Si dissolve. E nell'aria rimane quella polvere di sogno. Questo è quello che ti spezza il cuore: la cenere, costante memorandum di ciò che è stato, di ciò che è finito ma di cui non puoi liberarti. Come granelli di sabbia, Nicole si era inserita nelle più inacessibili pieghe del suo animo. Impossibile liberarsene. La lotta ferina ingaggiata dai due a suon di recriminazioni, sorrisi sarcastici, risate isteriche, sguardi vacui, li ha ridotti a brandelli. Il contrasto penoso tra sanità e follia, una doppia serpe che avviluppa la loro relazione, fino a soffocarli. Si riaffaccia prepotentemente la questione meschina del denaro. Nicole, bella e sfacciatamente ricca. Un doppio incantesimo, difficile da spezzare per Dick, sempre distante (come medico) e subordinato (di estrazione sociale irrimediabilmente inferiore). Nonostante tutto, percepisci il loro amore spettrale. Una catena che li tiene legati. Lui l'ha salvata. Lei gli ha regalato sprazzi di "felicità incoerente". Tenera è la notte. L'oscurità che li avvolge è dolce. "Davanti a noi, chilometri di notte".
Il romanzo a cui Fitzgerald ha lavorato nove anni, il suo lavoro più ambizioso, più maturo. Ricco di riferimenti autobiografici, situazioni topiche della sua letteratura (incidenti in macchina, narratori esterni ingenui, confronti tra gli amanti, uno romantico, l'altro rozzo), riferimenti autoreferenziali che richiameranno più di un deja-vu alla mente del lettore affezionato. Proprio per questo gli ho preferito Gatsby. Struttura più coesa, meno limacciosa. In più punti, l'angoscia e l'estrema dilatazione temporale dell'agonia dei personaggi ti procura quel pruriginoso fastidio che ti spinge ad allontanarti dal romanzo. Tuttavia sono stati solo dei momenti trascurabili: la maturazione artistica dello scrittore è evidente, lo stile impareggiabile. Il solito magnifico Fitzgerald.
"Come un'indifferenza costantemente alimentata o lasciata a se stessa si trasforma in un vuoto, così lui aveva imparato a essere vuoto di Nicole, comportandosi con lei con negazione e distacco sentimentale. Si parla di cicatrici guarite, una vaga similitudine tratta dalla patologia della pelle, ma nella realtà non esiste una cosa simile. Esistono ferite aperte, a volte piccole come una puntura di spillo, ma sono pur sempre ferite. I segni della sofferenza possono essere paragonati al massimo alla perdita di un dito o di un occhio; potremmo non perderli mai, nemmeno per un minuto all'anno, ma se capitasse non ci sarebbe più nulla da fare"

[lisa (fc hollywood's version) · Rating 2 out of 5]

god forbid a woman is rich and mentally ill

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Κάνω σκοτεινές σκέψεις' και για πολύ καιρό
ήμουν κατά το ήμισυ ερωτευμένος με το μακάριο θάνατο.
Πολλές φορές τον αποκάλεσα εμπνευσμένη ρίμα
να πάρει με τον άνεμο την ήρεμη ανάσα μου,
Τώρα περισσότερο από ποτέ είναι ευκαιρία να φύγω
να πάψω τα μεσάνυχτα δίχως πόνο
ενώ εσύ θα αφήνεις την ψυχή σου να ταξιδεύει
μέσα σε τέτοια έκσταση!
Ακόμα θα μπορούσες να τραγουδάς, και εγώ έχω αυτιά επί ματαίω
Στην τρανότερη ελεγεία σου γίνε η κατάρα».

Το «Τρυφερή είναι η νύχτα» πήρε τον τίτλο του απο την «Ωδή στο αηδόνι», του Κήτς, το κύκνειο και πιο ωραίο άσμα του.

Σαν ταινία παλιά ξεδιπλώνεται και εξελίσσεται η ιστορία μιας ολόκληρης γενιάς. Η γενιά του μεσοπολέμου, ένας παλιός κόσμος που χάνεται μέσα στον κόσμο του υλικού δυναμισμού, της εκλεπτυσμένης βαρβαρότητας, της ανενδοίαστης επιδίωξης υλικών σκοπών και της χυδαίας επίδειξης πλαστών προσωπικοτήτων.

Στην ουσία ο συγγραφέας δημιουργεί ενα αυτοβιογραφικό μυθιστόρημα μεταμφιεσμένο και απολογητικό. Έργο δημιουργικής ωριμότητας που γίνεται σταδιακά ένας προσωπικός ξεπεσμός στολισμένος με πικραμένη περιφρόνηση.

Το 1919 ένας φιλόδοξος νεαρός Αμερικανός ο Ντικ Ντίβερ φθάνει στη Ζυρίχη ονειροπαρμένος και αποστρατευμένος. Έχοντας πάρει το δίπλωμα του ως ψυχίατρος έχει μεγάλη αξία και πολλά αξιοποιήσιμα προσόντα μπερδεμένα με χαμένες ρομαντικές ψευδαισθήσεις.

Ο ψυχίατρος, Δρ Ντίβερ ερωτεύεται παράφορα μια νεαρή τρόφιμο ψυχιατρικής κλινικής, τη Νικόλ Ουώρεν.

Η ιστορία μας αρχίζει με την ευεργετική επίδραση του γιατρού πάνω στην άρρωστη και τελειώνει με το κλείσιμο του φακέλου της ασθενούς Νικόλ Ουώρεν.

Ο Ντικ και η Νικόλ μετά απο δέκα χρόνια συζυγικού βίου έχουν δυο παιδιά, ανήκουν στην μεταπολεμική αριστοκρατία μιας ανέμελης, άπιστης και ευδαιμονικης γενιάς που παραπαίει, ενώ περιστοιχίζονται απο φίλους και γνωστούς κάθε ανθρώπινου είδους.

Άτομα που συναγωνίζονται στην επίδειξη πλούτου και εκκεντρικότητας. Αργόσχολοι και άστατοι, χαμένοι πνευματικά και ιδεολογικά, παλεύουν μέσα απο την παθητική σπατάλη των πάντων να ευτυχήσουν. Μέσα απο «άγρια γλέντια» και περιφρόνηση κάθε ηθικής ή πνευματικής αξίας προσαρμόζονται σε κάθε αλλαγή και προσκυνούν νέους θεούς με σκοπό την αποφυγή της καταδίκης σε αφανισμό.

Δυστυχία και μοναξιά στολίζονται με λαμέ μίνι φορέματα και μακιγιάζ, φωτίζονται απο αστραφτερά ηλεκτρικά φώτα, χορεύουν σε τζαζ ρυθμούς και ζαλίζονται απο τον ίλιγγο του αυτοκινήτου και του αεροπλάνου.

Ο Δρ Ντίβερ σταδιακά αλλάζει, υποφέρει, απογοητεύεται. Καταλαβαίνει πως όλα είναι μια απλή σύμπτωση. Προσπαθεί να ενταχθεί στο πλαίσιο που τον θέλει προσαρμοσμένο να υποδύεται. Να κάνει ευτυχισμένους τους άλλους με κάθε τίμημα, ώστε να μη γίνεται δυσάρεστος, απομένοντας έρημος και στερημένος απο πόρους ζωής.

Βιώνει με περιφρόνηση και πίκρα την εμπειρία της επιδίωξης έξω απο συμπτώσεις.
Όταν κατανοεί πλήρως πως ζει αντλώντας πόρους ζωής απο το γύρω κόσμο, πως υπάρχει, όσο μπορεί να αφομοιώνει σωματικά την τροφή που βρίσκει γύρω του για τα ψυχικά και πνευματικά του όργανα αποφασίζει να αποτραβηχτεί.

Επιλέγει να «πεθάνει» αρνούμενος να απορροφήσει, μέσα απο τη ζωή που τον προσπερνάει αδιάφορη και ανελέητη, ουσίες που θα μπορούσαν να γίνουν πηγές ενέργειας και συνέχισης.

Όμως αυτός ο κόσμος που περιφρονεί είναι ο μόνος που θα μπορούσε να ζήσει, διότι τον δημιούργησε ο ίδιος στα χρόνια της πρώτης ανδρικής του νιότης.
Οικειοθελώς αποσπάται απο τα δημιουργήματα του και χάνει τον ίδιο του τον εαυτό.

💜🎄🎁🎅
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[Helene Jeppesen · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5/5 stars.
This book was a hot mess and such a disappointment compared to "The Great Gatsby" which is a favourite of mine. Right from the beginning, I had no idea where this dishevelled story was going, and having now finished it I'm still not sure what the overall point of it was.
Sure, "Tender Is the Night" comes with some beautiful passages and observations on life and people, but it also comes with a bunch of contradicting themes and destinies that all go in different directions. I get that the overall storyline is about Nicole's and Dick's marriage but I didn't really care about them. The same goes for pretty much all of the characters except for Rosemary whom I found blossoming and therefore interesting. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear much about her.
I didn't hate this book (I did finish it, after all), but I didn't like it much either. It's going to be interesting to see how my last book by Fitzgerald, "This Side of Paradise", is going to go down with me.

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hemingway dijo que 'Suave es la noche' mejora y mejora según pasa el tiempo.
Y me da la impresión de que eso es lo que pasa con todas las obras de Fitzgerald, o al menos eso me pasó ya con Gatsby. Esta novela en principio no me ha impactado tanto como aquella, pero la encuentro muy similar en muchos puntos como esa atmósfera, la decadencia y complejidad de los personajes....
Me enganchó desde la segunda parte, y me enamoré de Nicole. Dick es despreciable en muchos momentos pero no por ello deja de resultarme un personaje interesante.
Es una novela muy interesante por muchísimas cosas y está endemoniadamente bien escrita, pero entiendo que no es para nada apta para todos los paladares. Aún así, lo que es a mi, me ha gustado mucho, y creo que estaré una temporada dándole vuelta a esta pareja y sus turbulentas vidas.

[Julie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

World War I sucked. I know this, because all wars have sucked.

The Spanish flu sucked. I know this, because all flus have sucked.

When the times suck, people tend to suck, too.

When people suck, they often do foolish things. They drink too much alcohol, have extramarital affairs, speak unkindly of others, treat people they perceive as inferior to them as objects, or garbage.

The people who populate this novel are perfect examples of what happens when people suck. Worse still, when they suck and they are at the top tier of humanity (whether they got there through birth, hard work or luck), they live fast lives, tell fast stories and tell faster lies. Their exteriors take priority over their interiors and they become, simply, casings.

This all could be a rich, juicy minefield for storytelling, but, sadly, it wasn't in this novel. Or, it wasn't for me, despite the great love I have always had for F. Scott's work.

Mr. Fitzgerald wrote, of this novel, in May 1926: “My book is wonderful. I don't expect to be interrupted again. I expect to reach New York about December 10th with the manuscript under my arm. . .”

It's interesting, to me, that he was so pleased with it. It is pleasing, in ways, with fabulous sentences like this one: The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one.

But, this novel felt to me a lot like his characters. . . like a casing. Everyone fell flat here, they were one-dimensional. It's not even a case of my liking them or disliking them. What's important is that they're not formed or developed. Yes, they're vacuous and annoying, but if they felt real to me, I would have enjoyed them.

The plot's a hot mess, too. I frequently had no idea what was going on, but instead of rereading the confusing paragraphs, I'd just plod on, hoping they'd all disappear and I'd finally see the end of the book.

And: Sigh. Don't get me started on the deep, intrinsic feel to yet another novel published by a man in the 1930s. Women are useless in this novel, unless they're gorgeous and willing to have sex; people of color are as insubstantial as discarded corsages, after the party.

In case it's unclear, I'm not writing this review with any pleasure this morning. This website, Goodreads, is currently treating its users, the readers and writers that have made this site WHAT IT IS, as discarded corsages, as well, and another literary hero of mine, F. Scott Fitzgerald, has made my stomach turn with his visceral racism and misogyny.

We need a hero, and quick, people. You won't find any in this novel.

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the longest time I lived an F. Scott Fitzgerald free existence. The name was familiar enough although I mostly associated it with those bulky Penguin Classics which are prone to making me break out in a cold-sweat. Weighty tomes burdened by commentary on class difference, forbidden or tormented or doomed romance, some of which are drier than a mouthful of Jacob's Crackers.

I am F. Scott Fitzgerald-free no longer! And how glad does this make me? Very. I read The Great Gatsby a couple of months ago and decided to go for a second hit with Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald's almost autobiographical tale of gilt edged glitz which conceals the slow ripening of mental decay on the French Riviera.

But first I need to get the childishness out of the way. I approached this book with all literary seriousness - arched eyebrow, wire rimmed glasses and a suitable severe chignon and after a medium sized smirk at introduction to the principle character with the manly moniker, Dick Diver, I was prepared to be serious again. Then it hit me.

Page 4. There it was.
"Lucky Dick, you big stiff" he whispered to himself.

And then I rolled off the sofa, laughing. And so begins my encounter with Tender is the Night, which is otherwise quite serious but in places, far from tender.

Published in 1934, at a time of economic austerity, Fitzgerald's emotionally disturbed tale of rich people being a bit sad, but still being rich, was not well received and was soundly panned in a number of reviews. Presumably the people of America waved their empty plates, wiped the dust from their eyes and shouted "Yes life is not great but try an empty belly, Dust Pneumonia and burying your own children".

Mental health and sexual abuse, are by no means, trifling issues and they are key issues in Tender is the Night, however set against a back drop of yachts, lavish parties and luxury mansions at a time of national economic catastrophe, well presumably they just seemed a bit less important.

Add to this to the fact that frankly, none of the characters are particularly likeable, well you can see why people looked askance at the time. Dick Diver falls into a number of unfortunate but obvious traps. Marries way out of his league, marries a mentally unstable patient with whom he was originally professionally involved and then to cap it all, has an affair. Way to go Dick. I'm pretty sure that the Hippocratic oath probably says "don't do this" against all of these possible actions.

Because this book is based on Fitzgerald's own experiences with his wife Zelda it is better than Gatsby. Not happier, not brighter, not more exhilarating to read but it has a clarity that makes the characters more real. After all, nobody said you had to like them or their actions.

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

✨✨ I didn’t want to read it after the actress shows up because of course I knew there was going to be an affair. Everyone knows at least that much about the novel. I liked it the way it was before Rosemary arrived in France - Dick and a perfectly lovely Nicole having a great relationship and getting along just fine. It was upbeat and beautiful. And then Dick fell for Rosemary and everything fell apart. Nicole will marry again after the smoke and ashes but Dick won’t and it left me feeling sad and flat. I’m told this was based on Scott Fitzgerald’s own smashed relationship which made it all even sadder.

✨ Scott’s writing is exquisite, it really is a feast to sit down at his writing table and get pulled into his stories.

[Steven Godin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Time is our most valuable commodity. Had enough of this!, Dick is precisely one of those, Rosemary is leaving me with clammy hands of bored annoyance, and Nicole appears to be living on another planet.

Two reasons why the two stars,
Beautiful sounding title
The French Riviera

Two reasons that stopped me trowing this out the window in frustration,
It's a borrowed book (from a rather charming lady)
Wouldn't want to knock somebody out on the sidewalk, I am on the fourth floor!

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

September 2021 reread

He had lost himself - he could not tell the hour when, or the day or the week, the month or the year... Yet he had been swallowed up like a gigolo, and somehow permitted his arsenal to be locked up in the Warren safety-deposit vaults.

This is such a rich, dense and diffuse book that it's hard to do a quick 'what it's about' statement without simplifying and reducing and, in the process, erasing what makes it so marvellous. It is about idealism, especially in relation to love and the consequent disillusion, as so many of FSF's books are. But it's also about what happens to a good, potentially brilliant, man who makes a wrong choice because of his own vulnerability to beauty and because he wants to be loved - but who ends up selling his soul to an icon of capitalist wealth.

The toxic marriage of the Divers is reflected in that of the comically awful McKiscos, and Dick's gradual slide from bonhomie into full-blown alcoholism is forecast by the fate of his friend, Abe North. Power shifts within these marriages and it is usually the women who survive - perhaps a marker of FSF's own bitterness?

But there are also interesting political narratives: Dick identifies WW1 as a key moment for the death of two empires and the potential emergence of the US as a world power - only the book seems to show the terrible debasement of American cultural potential (and is Dick himself a kind of personification of America's destiny?) from the 'glamour' of Hollywood which is built on a 12-year old girl being pushed into an acting career by her ambitious mother, to the spectacle of the shooting of 'The Grandeur that was Rome' using a fake set despite actually being in the authentic Rome.

There are pointed comments on American letters ('McKisco was having a vogue. His novels were pastiches of the work of the best people of his time, a feat not to be disparaged, and in addition he possessed a gift for softening and debasing what he borrowed, so that many readers were charmed by the ease with which they could follow him' - ouch!), and on American money ('the Americans would play their trump card, the announcement of colossal gifts and endowments, of great new plants and training schools, and in the presence of the figures the Europeans would blanch and walk timidly'). And Dick himself is essentially bought by the Warrens who see him as an asset to be managed for their maximum benefit ('...whatever Dick's previous record was, they now possessed a moral superiority over him for as long as he proved of any use'), just as Rosemary's loving mother invests in putting her on stage as a child in order to get the returns later.

But because this is FSF, it's never quite this reductive: Nicole, especially, is a shifting character who moves from youthful vulnerability as a response to traumatic abuse, to something much harder and slicker and shows herself adept at wielding the power that is her legacy from her stupendously wealthy Chicago family. In fact, it's the women in the book - Nicole, Rosemary, Mary North - who are shown to be the survivors, who step up and forward, who abandon their American husbands and lovers for 'foreign' men: French Tommy Barban, the Valentino-alike Italian actor, and the 'Kabyle-Berber-Sabaean-Hindu' Conte di Minghetti who 'was not quite light enough to travel in a Pullman south of Mason-Dixon' but who displaces Abe North and gives Mary a social cachet and money to rival the Divers.

There is a tremendous focus on acting and performance ('Oh, we're such actors - you and I'; 'She ought to be in the cinema... that's where all American women would be happy') and a disturbing dynamic of older men with younger, even child-like, women from the title of Rosemary's film, 'Daddy's Girl', to Nicole's past which seems to set a pattern for her first marriage.

Amidst all this, is a harrowing portrait of a toxic love that still leaves behind an aching melancholy and regret: 'It was lonely and sad to be so empty-hearted toward each other'.

------------------------------------------
Greater than Gatsby

Gatsby may be Fitzgerald's great popular success, but I've always preferred this book. Opening on the just-emerging French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver are the perfect couple: beautiful, charming, wealthy and in love. But the flawless surface hides its secrets well - and beneath the glamour lies something tainted and corrupt...

This is less tight as a novel than Gatsby, but is more tragic and harrowing. Fitzgerald clearly struggled with the book, attempting to re-order the chronology before he died. In places brutal and savage, this is also desperately sad with a wistful and poignant fragility that is made all the clearer through the parallels with the Fitzgeralds' own lives.

Subtle and elusive, this remains for me Fitzgerald's best work.

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a hard but necessary book to read. It should be the type of plot we're attracted to, because it's a dissolution story, not unlike LOST WEEKEND or LEAVING LAS VEGAS, to name but two examples of the genre. And yet many friends I share this with just can't get into it. Part of the blame lies with the style: it's just so damned intricate and thick, it tends to scare away those who don't want to be ravished by style. As someone who does, I can get lost in this book any day of the week. I reread this for work probably once a year, and I'm always amazed at how fresh it seems to me---mainly because I'm always discovering a line or phrase that I'd passed over.

Other reasons to like TITN: It's Fitzgerald's most experimental, with just about every modernist trick in the book. It has two fantastic heroines that come to life when they emerge from Dick Diver's point of view: Nicole and Rosemary. There are glamorous excursions from Nice to Paris and Rome. It has that overwhelming sense of abstraction---it feels like you're reading history, a socialist critique of excess capitalism (check out the chapter on Nicole's shopping spree), a look into the prurience and spectatorship of early filmmaking, a dressing down of romanticism, and a love story about the impossibility of love.

Oh, and its so achingly, gloriously sad---I think that's the main reason I consider it a classic.

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Losing is a part of being a human, and sometimes the more you lose, the more vulnerable and tender you are
a kind of social and psychological story follows the life of Dick Diver and the nature of his marital relationship over years
his life gradually was torn apart, he was lost between a trivial life, the psychological problems of his wife, faded career and an affair with a young actress
finding himself adrift in a world that is entirely purposeless
bitter but beautiful written novel, Fitzgerald writes cleverly about the glamorous entertaining life of rich people at the french riviera

apparently the novel reflects Fitzgerald's own experiences and struggles with alcoholism and being with a partner suffering from mental illness

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why am I drawn to dark and destructive stories of breakage and damage in beautiful settings?

Please don't answer this question. It is better danced away in a glorious Antibes summer night!

Tender is the literature that touches on the invisible abyss underneath the perfect reflection in the surface.