Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century (28)
It is often said that every writer has, at least, one good book in him.
Sadly most of them only have one. This certainly appears to be the
case for Fitzgerald. The
Great Gatsby, while flawed (see review),
is nonetheless a great novel. Gatsby is a tragic figure motivated
by a self destructive pursuit of his vision of the American dream.
Dr. Dick Diver, the central character of Tender is the Night, on the other
hand, is naught but a dissipated wastrel. As his wife, who he met
while he was working as a psychiatrist & she was interred in an asylum,
gains mental stability & some kind of shaky personal wholeness, he
descends into drink & carnality & ends the novel roaming from town
to town practicing medicine briefly before moving on. Diver is the
kind of insipid navel gazing character who has plagued the Century's fiction.
Tom Wolfe, touring in support of his new novel, has launched himself
on a jeremiad against the Modern novel & novelist. His central
point is that novelists need to stop looking inward and look without.
He's saying, Go out into America & tell the wonderful stories that
you find there. There are wonderful stories, waiting to be told,
but our greatest novelists are cloistered in Universities, Manhattan apartments,
etc., picking at the scabs on their own psyches & the vomiting forth
their internal monologues. Tender is the Night seems to be a victim
of this Modernist disease, too autobiographical & self absorbed to
tell us much of value about the wider world.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (C-)
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
I'd have to agree with you on this oj. My first exposure to literary fiction was The Great Gatsby (which I have now read several times, and I consider a masterpiece). This led me in my mid-teens to consume Fitzgeralds entire cannon several times over. I became a Fitzgeraldan connoisseur, and like other F.Scott experts I proclaimed Tender to be his greatest work.
I grew up though. By the end of college I was fervently arguing with my English professors that Tender isnt even comparable to Gatsby in terms of quality and vision. Several years after that, after twice giving up trying to read through Tender, I finally realized that all of Fitzgeralds novels other than Gatsby are failures in storytelling. In my opinion no one compares to Fitzgeralds use of descriptive language, but thats all he offers in Tender is the Night, Beautiful and the Damned, and this Side of Paradise. That and a running commentary on the emptiness of his own life. You are right in saying that is the malaise of modern literary fiction, the greatest symphony in the world cant make John Cage sound beautiful, and the Fitzgeralds masterful use of the English language cant make me care about his empty characters and their pointless pursuits.
- Shelton
- Sep-01-2006, 11:57
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Have you read any of Fitzgerald's short stories? I only partially enjoyed Gatsby, but I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised by many of his short stories.
- Timothy
- Oct-17-2003, 23:11
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