Fitzgerald never lived to see The Great Gatsby acknowledged as an American classic. Today is the 90th anniversary of its publication, and I’m a total fangirl, as readers of The Wednesday Sisters will already know. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Fitzgerald for a piece in the Los Angeles Times today about the very rocky path the novel took. So I thought I’d share a few quotes from Fitzgerald that writers who visit here might like. Perhaps readers who aren’t writers as well.
1. On how to write:
“Invent a system … buy a file. On the first page of the file put down an outline of a novel of your times enormous in scale (don’t worry, it will contract by itself) and work on the plan for two months. Take the central point of the file as your big climax and follow your plan backward and forward from that for another three months. Then draw up something as complicated as a continuity from what you have and set yourself a schedule.” – from a 1936 letter to John O’Hara
“Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created–nothing.” – from “The Rich Boy”
“About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move.” – from a 1938 letter to his daughter, Scottie
2. On what to write:
“I find that what I enjoy writing is always my best.” – from a 1919 letter to his editor, Max Perkins
“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” – from “Notebook E,” edited by Edmund Wilson (1945)
3. On who to write for:
“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.” – from Fitzgerald’s “Author’s Apology” for his first novel, This Side of Paradise.
And just for amusement, he goes on to say, “So, gentlemen, consider all the cocktails mentioned in this book drunk by me as a toast to the American Booksellers Association.”
4. On who to tell about it:
“I think it’s a pretty good rule not to tell what a thing is about until it’s finished. If you do you always seem to lose some of it. It never quite belongs to you so much again.” – from a 1940 letter to his daughter, Scottie
5. And my favorite
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” – in an undated letter to his daughter, Scottie
(I first saw that one on a Sewanee Writers’ Conference t-shirt. Great conference! I went three times.)
Happy 90th, Old Sport! – Meg
