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Dancing in the Water of Life (The Journals of Thomas Merton)

by Thomas Merton

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Oct 29, 2026 05:54PM

Edward is currently reading

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in February 2013

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Edward said: " In this novel Dick Diver is another version of Fitzgerald’s earlier Jay Gatsby, the innocent who tried to recreate the past by incarnating his early love for the “careless” Daisy, and of course, tragically fails to succeed.

Diver is a more sophistic In this novel Dick Diver is another version of Fitzgerald’s earlier Jay Gatsby, the innocent who tried to recreate the past by incarnating his early love for the “careless” Daisy, and of course, tragically fails to succeed.

Diver is a more sophisticated Gatsby, an American living abroad during the roaring twenties of the last century. The title of the book comes from Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”, the pertinent line being, “But there is no light.” Diver is a man blinded by juggling too many destructive forces that eventually destroy his career, his marriage, and his life.

The novel opens on the Riviera with an l8 year old American actress, Rosemary, enchanted by a young American couple, Dick and Nicole Diver, who seem to have it all – intelligence, charm, good looks, money, two smart and attractive children, and they generously share their good fortune by throwing extravant parties. They take her in and she travels with them to Paris, the first third of the book. At this point, she begins to discover that there are demons lurking in the “perfecr” Diver household.

The second of the book’s three parts is the background story of how Dick and Nicole reached their pinnacle before their fall. Several times Dick is identified with Ulysses Grant, a man laboring in obscurity until the events of war called him to an “intricate destiny.” Dick was a medical student in the states before World War I broke out and brought him to Europe. He begins to study psychiatry in Switzerland in a clinic, and it’s here that he meets Nicole, a seriously damaged young woman, sexually abused by her father. She’s inelligent, though, and very attractive, and he is instrumental in helping her to get over her trauma. They fall in love, despite staff disapproval of such a patient-doctor relationship. It doesn’t hurt (although Dick tries to convince himself that it’s not important) that she is rich. With her funds, he is able to set up his own psychiatric clinic.

Cracks in this relationship begin to appear but are papered over until the 3rd part. Dick, like Gatsby, has a certain innocence about him. Paradoxically, that desire for a younger, purer life, leads to an affair with Rosemary. In addition, Dick drinks too much, at one point picking a senseless fights in an apparent burst of self-anger transferred to someone else. He resents being dependent upon Nicole and her money. He identifies with a bandaged patient who dies, as if he were bandaged and wounded as well.

That’s what he is in a sense – a wounded individual, brought down by too much money, too much booze, unfaithfulness, contradictory feelings of responsibility and resentment toward Nichole’s fragile mental state. Nichole asserts herself, finally, by divorcing him. As if to emphasize the reasons for Dick’s collapse, Fitzgerald makes Dick come from humble origins – he rose too far too fast and was unable to handle all of these forces. His final fate is to return to his origins – he becomes an obscure physician who practices in small upstate New York towns. Jay Gatsby was killed physically; Dick Diver is killed spiritually.

It’s a relatively long novel and at times it feels like Fitzgerald is trying to cram in too many details about why Dick fails. Dick is described as a brilliant psychiatrist, and while psychiatrists may have as many problems as anyone, there’s something lacking in Dick’s insights into his own self-destructive behavior. I felt as a reader I saw Dick entirely from the outside and I think a serious, even fatal, flaw in the novel is this lack of introspection on Dick’s part.

With THE GREAT GATSBY, Jay is similarly uncomprehending about his behavior, but an ironical perspective is provided by Nick Carraway, the narrator. In this novel, you would assume Dick's profession as a psychiatrist would take the narrative place of Carraway which gives an necessary dimension to GATSBY. Nothing is done with this potential aspect of the novel, and it's my chief criticism. ...more "

Mar 30, 2026 12:43PM · see review