Bright Young Things discussion

Welcome to November's group read of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Enjoy!

I really enjoyed rereading this great novel - I had read it years ago, but only remembered the characters of Dick and Nicole Diver, with Rosemary having slipped my mind altogether.

Rereading it again now, I was intrigued by how roundabout our introduction to them is, with the couple originally being seen through Rosemary's eyes in the South of France. It certainly makes them seem more glamorous and seductive - I kept imagining them a little like the Drapers in Mad Men...

There's a nice short article about Tender is the Night on the Independent website:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

I also found these discussion questions - some of them are a bit like A-level ones again, but I think a few of them are quite interesting:

http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guid...

Has anyone seen either the 1962 movie with Jennifer Jones and Jason Robards or the Dennis Potter 1985 mini-series with Mary Steenburgen and Peter Strauss?

I've just watched a trailer for the movie, which looks very 60s, but I really fancy the sound of the BBC series more - the BBC store has it for streaming, but it is quite expensive, so I'll think it over as I do have lots to watch already!

I really enjoyed 'Tender is the Night' when I last read it, about 12 years ago, and think it's almost as good as 'The Great Gatsby'. I can't remember much about why I liked it so much, except that I was caught up in the mood of the book and really enjoyed the account of early tourism on the French Riviera in the late 1920s. I don't feel quite ready to revisit it just yet but, when I do, I will be back to add a comment or two.

Here's to a great discussion.

Judy wrote: "There's a nice short article about Tender is the Night on the Independent website:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent..."

Thanks Judy - that's a lovely little article, and one I wholeheartedly agree with.

I have just started this last night and am about 20 pages in (technically I started Monday, but only read the Introduction, so that doesn't count). I haven't read this before and, other than it's vaguely about the Murphys, who I read about in Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story, don't know what to expect. I enjoy Fitzgerald though, so it should be good.

I'm enjoying it so far. The imagery of the French Riviera is just really well done.

I haven't seen any films of it, but might seek them out after the read.

Bronwyn wrote: "I haven't read this before and, other than it's vaguely about the Murphys, who I read about in Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story, don't know what to expect. I enjoy Fitzgerald though, so it should be good."

I didn't join in on that book about the Murphys, but would like to catch up with it in the future. I'd also heard this was vaguely about them, but was a bit puzzled since the characters seem to be quite strongly based on Scott and Zelda.

However, have now come across what I think is a great (if very long and detailed!) New Yorker article from 1962 which says that Fitzgerald started out by basing the characters on the Murphys but they gradually turned into portraits of himself and Zelda:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/196...

According to this article, which is based around an interview with Gerald Murphy, Fitzgerald wrote to him: "The book was inspired by Sara and you, and the way I feel about you both and the way you live, and the last part of it is Zelda and me because you and Sara are the same people as Zelda and me.”

What an amazing comment!

Nigeyb wrote: "I really enjoyed 'Tender is the Night' when I last read it, about 12 years ago, and think it's almost as good as 'The Great Gatsby'. I can't remember much about why I liked it so much"

Glad to hear you loved it too, Nigeyb. Gatsby is my favourite, but I do really like this one. I read it in a book which also included his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, and that has some flashes of brilliance too - I think it would have been really something if he had lived long enough to complete it.

Judy, thanks for the link to the New Yorker article which I started, and will finish later. The Murphys and their friends were fascinating people. I'll be starting Tender Is the Night in the middle of the month.

Judy wrote: "Bronwyn wrote: "I haven't read this before and, other than it's vaguely about the Murphys, who I read about in Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story, don't kn..."

Hope it's okay just to pop in and say, Tomkins actually turned the article into a book:
Living Well Is the Best Revenge

I picked up a copy when it was re-issued recently and found this interview at the time:
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/20...

I read Living Well when it came out. I think I still have it. So I must have liked it since it has survived multiple moving cullings.

I've just started Tender (although it was a while ago that I started it).So far, hhaving a little trouble getting into it. Maybe it takes a while to pick up.

Many thanks for that, Miss M !

The New Yorker article is very interesting, thank you.

There is also this one from Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/0...
It doesn't have much about the book, but does have perhaps the perfect description of the couple portrayed in it: 'Fitzgerald had cast the Murphys in his and Zelda’s image.'

Great stuff Judy, Miss M and Val - some splendid info and insights


As I mentioned, it has been many a year since I last read Tender Is the Night however one small scene remains etched in my mind and it made me wonder the extent to which it might have struck other people. The scene is the one in the restaurant that references poise and repose. Quite why this sticks so clearly in my mind I am not sure however I googled 'Tender Is the Night' + poise, and to my delight discovered that this same scene has struck others too. Here are three results that came back...

https://www.permanentstyle.com/2012/0...

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/11...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

And the scene, which I still think is supremely memorable and utterly brilliant, I have pasted below...

They were at Voisins waiting for Nicole, six of them, Rosemary, the Norths, Dick Diver and two young French musicians. They were looking over the other patrons of the restaurant to see if they had repose — Dick said no American men had any repose, except himself, and they were seeking an example to confront him with. Things looked black for them — not a man had come into the restaurant for ten minutes without raising his hand to his face.

“We ought never to have given up waxed mustaches,” said Abe. “Nevertheless Dick isn’t the ONLY man with repose —”
“Oh, yes, I am.”
“— but he may be the only sober man with repose.”

A well-dressed American had come in with two women who swooped and fluttered unselfconsciously around a table. Suddenly, he perceived that he was being watched — whereupon his hand rose spasmodically and arranged a phantom bulge in his necktie. In another unseated party a man endlessly patted his shaven cheek with his palm, and his companion mechanically raised and lowered the stub of a cold cigar. The luckier ones fingered eyeglasses and facial hair, the unequipped stroked blank mouths, or even pulled desperately at the lobes of their ears.

A well-known general came in, and Abe, counting on the man’s first year at West Point — that year during which no cadet can resign and from which none ever recovers — made a bet with Dick of five dollars.

His hands hanging naturally at his sides, the general waited to be seated. Once his arms swung suddenly backward like a jumper’s and Dick said, “Ah!” supposing he had lost control, but the general recovered and they breathed again — the agony was nearly over, the garçon was pulling out his chair .

With a touch of fury the conqueror shot up his hand and scratched his gray immaculate head.

“You see,” said Dick smugly, “I’m the only one.”

And to round things off, here's the film poster (from one of the links above)...



How good is this film version? I'd have thought it would be a very tricky novel to successfully adapt but then again...

Interesting, Nigeyb - must admit this scene hadn't really struck me! It makes me realise how much there is in the book and how you can always find something more when you reread Fitzgerald.

I find Abe a memorable character - the scene where he is waiting for the boat and getting more and more drunk is another memorable passage. Fitzgerald is always brilliant at writing about being drunk - like the way Thackeray is always great in passages about gambling, which he was addicted to as a young man.

I was interested to learn that there are two different texts of Tender Is the Night. As well as the original 1934 version, in 1951 Malcolm Cowley edited and published a revised version based on suggestions by Fitzgerald, who was disappointed by the novel's commercial failure.

Fitzgerald decided that the flashback structure was to blame and, instead of beginning with Rosemary and the Divers in Nice, it should begin with the young Dick in Switzerland. However, he didn't live long enough to reshape the book. Cowley rearranged the text based on the order Fitzgerald suggested, but I believe this version has now fallen out of favour and publishers have gone back to the 1934 text.

Here's a link to an article by Cowley from 1951:
https://newrepublic.com/article/11955...

Personally I like the flashbacks in the original text - it's interesting to see the Divers initially through Rosemary's eyes, as glamorous strangers, before we find out the truth behind the glamour.

Thanks for sharing the article, Judy. I've just finished Chapter 18 of the first section involving Rosemary. I saw the movie "Midnight in Paris" a few years ago, and there was a scene where Fitzgerald and his friends go in a beautiful car picking up more friends and heading to the nightclubs of Paris. I have the feeling that Woody Allen was inspired by the rich, beautiful people at the beginning of Chapter 18.

"The party that night moved with the speed of a slapstick comedy. They were twelve, they were sixteen, they were quartets in separate motors bound on a quick Odyssey over Paris. Everything had been foreseen. People joined them as if by magic, accompanied them as specialists, almost guides, through a phase of the evening, dropped out and were succeeded by other people, so that it appeared as if the freshness of each one had been husbanded for them all day. Rosemary appreciated how different it was from any party in Hollywood, no matter how splendid in scale."

I enjoyed the book, although I felt the first part of the book moved a bit slowly. Just knowing the history of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald made some parts of the book even more poignant. I wrote a review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I really enjoy F Scotty's works for the prose alone. I didn't hate the book per se, but I did feel the work was at a point in Fitzgerald's life that didn't allow him to focus as much as he ought to have. I've always felt he had a problem with pacing and plot despite his vivid characterization. In Tender Is the Night I felt it was when his problems and perfections really collided and created something odd and (in my personal opinion) a bit un-memorable.

To be honest I can't actually recall much of the story even after finishing it. This wasn't a problem in Paradise, Beautiful & Damned, or Gatsby but with this one I struggle. I probably ought to read this one again as it wasn't as brutal as The Beautiful and the Damned.

I wonder if anyone else felt sort of lost after reading it? Seems like a style of literature Fitzgerald was writing that had long since transformed into something else.

Riley, I have to agree about Fitzgerald often losing his focus. There were some events that seemed to go nowhere, and really did not need to be included. I wondered if it was because these events occurred in real life and were personally important to the author, but not important to the plot. Or maybe the alcoholism was taking its toil.

I enjoyed this all the more for having read about the Murphys (and Fitzgerald's souring towards them). I absolutely loved the opening sections, where the scene is set and Dick, in particular, is at the height of his powers, but once we hit the reveal of Nicole's condition in Paris, things got a bit meander-y. That's not to say that the writing isn't evocative and brilliant, but it felt a little indulgent - like there were so many quirky stories (Mary North as Contessa, the scene at the police station in Rome, the Goldings boat, the arrest of Mary and Caroline) that he used to illustrate Dick's decline when one or two would have sufficed? But all of that to one side, the initial scenes on the beach are some of the most beautifully evocative and golden to be found anywhere.