F. Scott Fitzgerald

F.Scott Fitzgerald 7-2-07

"When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better."

—Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Crack Up." New Directions: New York, 1956. p. 180.

F. Scott Fitzgerald has been my favorite author for a long time. There are periods of time, years, when I don't read him and once I go back, I fall in love all over again. I have no good explanation for this since my first experience reading him was no better than most Americans: I was assigned to read The Great Gatsby in high school English.

The teenage years are not particularly subtle years and I think a lot of assigned literature is read quickly without any thoughts beyond the essay to follow. Although I felt like I didn't fully understand Gatsby when I first read it (in particular that shirt scene), I knew I loved the tone and style of the language. It was also his ability to describe social interaction that stood out. Certainly his stories are set in a particular time in the U.S., but the characters continue to live beyond that time. More than once I have wanted to comment on a look based on a description in one of Fitzgerald's Basil short stories, only to realize that this wasn't a shared experience I could easily reference to anyone, although it felt like it should be. Maybe I should develop a required reading list for my friends, but then I am pretty sure I wouldn't have very many friends.

Recently, I again picked up Fitzgerald and read The Crack Up. Part of this collection is a notebook, admittedly edited by the publisher, with various notes, sketches and poems Fitzgerald had assembled. The quote at the top is one of these notes. My own thoughts ran with this one:

• Is this how cliches are made? Is it the overuse by unimaginative hacks that burn a very good turn of phrase into the ashes of familiarity so that we no longer see or appreciate what brilliance this was the first time someone used it?
  
  
• In junior high, we were required to write stories. I remember the teacher reading my story and saying to me, "Young writers always have things happen 'suddenly.'" At the age of 13, I just didn't want to be like everyone else, but now I see the problem with these dramatic words. Relying on them to create tension is a bit cheap. A masterful storyteller never needs them, or maybe needs them, but not as the sole source for mood and excitement.
  
  
• Like most literate people, I think I have a command of language and if only I focused, I could write the next great novel (or short story, depending on how much time I have). Long ago I was told that I tell facts and not stories, so there is already one strike against my brilliant writing career. Secondly, this quote reminds me that it is hard to write well and be original: it takes much more than the ability to spell to go beyond literate and become a first-rate author.

And so, here I am, writing. A long term (and now perhaps with some motivation it will be short term) goal has been to translate some stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann. I've stalled out twice, overcome with the difficulty of the attempt to capture the feel that makes something good, no actually, first-rate literature and put it into another language. So, I've put forward a task for myself to find some quotes from books I've read and write based on them. I hope this will help me to understand and translate better. To the best of my ability, I will keep to "plain heroines and ordinary mornings" as much as possible, since this is a beginning. Maybe someday I'll grow into something more interesting and superlative, but then again, a series of facts isn't all that bad - is it?