You’ve probably heard of him: F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, a deluge of delightful short stories, screenplays and multitudes more. His talent, imagination and innovation knew no bounds. His green light pulled us in, again and again, like boats against the current of the contemporary prose that favors other, duller colors. (There are so many shades of gray these days, no?) Alas, he was a mere mortal man and could not beat the current of time.
Today’s his birthday, and I just know that somewhere beyond the grave he’s celebrating with an outrageous party worthy of his most famous character and dancing to some legitimate big-band jazz. But just in case, in his older, wiser state, he’s more the stay-at-home type and would rather curl up and relax with a good book, I have some ideas. The scene’s changed quite a bit since his death in 1940, and I offer my services as his literary guide. These books have all been published post-Fitzgerald, so were he to return and feel somewhat lost, such a list might help him adjust. Let’s go in chronological sequence to further reduce confusion, because time travel and resurrection anxiety are enough to deal with on his birthday.
Yes, happy birthday, Old Sport.
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
Most associate F. Scott Fitzgerald with the notorious Jazz Age, replete with flappers, prohibition and more money than this young country knew what to do with. Our celebrant, however, wasn’t always high-flying and carefree but frequently tortured and acroamatic. Struggles with his own understanding of, and eventual departure from, religion might prompt a perusal of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Lewis and Fitzgerald overlapped — Lewis lived a relatively longer life — but this book was published in 1945, just a few years after Fitzgerald’s passing. Though the philosophical novel contemplates Christianity, Fitzgerald, coming from a Catholic upbringing, wrestled with his faith in both his personal life and through the eyes of his characters. The insightful literary approach to provocative life-altering questions would be too poignant for him to resist. Maybe a friendship with Lewis would have done Fitzgerald good. Can we bring them both back, please?
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Another book published in 1945 would absolutely appeal to Fitzgerald in a decidedly different way: Evelyn Waugh’s mesmeric Brideshead Revisited. Waugh’s writing is almost impossibly witty and Fitzgerald would love the irreverent humor. The clincher, though, is that the narrator in Brideshead Revisited resembles the narrator in The Great Gatsby in one key way. Both Charles Ryder and Nick Carraway become besotted with, and dangerously entangled in, the larger-than-life existence of a volatile comrade: Sebastian Flyte and Jay Gatsby, respectively. Both are tragic, sensitive and tortured souls. Fitzgerald would be hooked when he saw different sides of himself in Sebastian (the sparkling charm and, unfortunately, the recurrent alcoholism.) The novel also features a complicated romance and a meditation on religion, both hot-button topics for our guest of honor. Last but not least, it’s just a great read.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is a no-brainer. Here’s the story, but in no way the whole story: Fitzgerald was the original Hemingway fanboy. He desperately sought praise and affirmation from his intellectual idol, but in all honesty, Hemingway didn’t buy into Fitzgerald’s style all that much. He did recognize the (in his mind, mostly untapped) potential. The fact that Fitzgerald so looked up to Hemingway is especially intriguing since, when they met, Fitzgerald was already a successful author while Hemingway, the younger of the two, was not. Had Fitzgerald lived past 44, he would have earnestly sped through every single one of Hemingway’s latest offerings and probably sent a letter of gushing endorsement afterward. The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952, and, though it’s become the scapegoat for teenagers complaining about their school curriculum, it’s an indelible classic.
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Fitzgerald’s characters undergo internal restlessness and external drift. Consider Gatsby’s avid and desperate accumulation of wealth and reputation all for the image he polishes of, and for, the elusive Daisy. Consider the narrator who lets himself get swept up in the drama and has no true self-knowledge. On another note, Fitzgerald’s writings dissected the American Dream and its potential to crash and burn through the social-climbing Gatsby and languorous, luxury-enticed Daisy. How about that dream deterred a few decades down the road? Or should I say On The Road? Who better than the Beat himself, Jack Kerouac, to introduce him to the angst and equally concerning restlessness of American youth post-WWII? Fitzgerald would dive right into this exploration of ruined, but always beckoning, Americana by those disaffected and “mad” individuals searching for the meaning of life.
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron. This recommendation is a little different: I’m not imagining approaching Fitzgerald at a modern-day get-together and casually referencing it. I see the exchange happening in a quieter setting, because it’s not for entertainment value. There is absolutely no question that Fitzgerald was a highly sensitive soul. While he enjoyed success and social stardom, he also battled with, like I mentioned above, alcoholism as well as depression, intense guilt surrounding the unfolding of Zelda’s mental health crises and suicidal thoughts. If he were alive today I’d gently guide him to seek some help. Obviously, a self-help book doesn’t take the place of professional help, and this book isn’t the strictest guide out there, but that’s the point. Realizing that he’s not alone would be a good start.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Fitzgerald was a sucker for a Golden Girl, as infamously evidenced by his tumultuous marriage to Zelda. Bewilderingly enchanted women, wreathed in a haze of incongruence, by turns flit and flounder through his works. No matter what you think of Daisy Buchanan, or many of the leading ladies in his highly underread short stories, you can’t deny that Fitzgerald mastered writing a certain type. I think he’d pick up his wife’s copy of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid when she’s not looking. Then he’d adamantly deny reading a “woman’s book” when she inevitably caught him in the act (because this is one of those books you just can’t put down.) A romantic man probably struggled when the phrase “toxic masculinity” had yet to be coined. Additionally, Reid’s book is about an aging actress who’s looking for a writer to help her finally tell her life’s story, and doomed attempts to grasp onto intangible youth laid heavy on Fitzgerald’s mind and heavily saturate his works.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Finally, some of Fitzgerald’s most prevalent themes were lost generations and young-adult detachment. Funny enough, those themes haven’t gone anywhere, even in this brave new century. Sally Rooney, maybe a female version of Fitzgerald for this day and age in terms of literary buzz, takes those same themes and runs with them in her novels, especially her recent and resoundingly successful Beautiful World, Where Are You. If Fitzgerald’s devastatingly glittering prose perfectly captured the cigarette-hazed atmosphere of his day, Rooney does the same for our current generation. Obviously, comparing the two is apples to oranges, but their timeliness is eerily similar. Have the young adults living through COVID become a new “lost generation”? I’m open to opening up that discussion.
