Re: fitzgerald vs. hemingway & wolfe

I have to agree, Scottie...Tender is fabulous. I think the first
chapter outdoes most of the rest, though -- it left me in awe.

I've heard his short stories are nothing to sneeze at either, but
haven't gotten to them yet.

I read alcohol as a symptom of the good doctor's problem rather than the
cause, though -- it seemed to me like a response to his emasculation by
the women in his life. There's a scene late in the novel where the
wife's sister (names escape me) goes shopping, and she's described as
setting into motion ships, trade companies, foreign labor, yadda yadda
yadda, all to serve the shopping whimsy of a fairly facile, though
strong, female.

You'll notice that everything set in motion is male energy, and male
energy expended to satisfy the whims of the female. If you want to look
for metaphor, that could be a metaphor for the guy's marriage -- he was
chosen for his wife to begin with because he was a psychiatrist (of some
reputation) and she was desperately in need of help (after being
molested by her father).

You could even extend the metaphor to cover the modernist period -- the
suppressed female of the Victorian period is now the ruling female of
the modernist period, all at the expense of the male -- a male who's
still trying to fit himself into Victorian male roles.

It could be said he's only a victim _because_ of those frustrated
Victorian expectations of the male.

As he gets more distant from his wife emotionally, he drinks more, and
as he drinks more, he gets more distant. The sister, ultimately, has to
get him out of jail, and that only for the sake of the wife.

Pretty pathetic picture when you look at it all.

Jim

Scottie Bowman wrote:

> It's just too many decades since I read Tender is the Night
> I'd forgotten the story. So, after Jim's post, I took the book
> down & had another look.
>
> And it all came back to me - all those words, all those exquisite
> metaphors, all that b r i l l i a n c e. Like the greatest mountain
> of yummy, mouth-watering, cream-packed, chocolate-smothered
> profiterole balls ever assembled by the hand of man.
> Queasyville revisited.
>
> Why couldn't he have just given us Gatsby & left it at that.
> That old sport was all he ever required when applying for
> the eternity passport.
>
> Incidentally, it wasn't the envious wife or the money or the malignant
> chums. It was our unforgiving friend C2H5OH.
>
> Scottie B.
>
>
>
>
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Received on Fri Nov 22 15:59:33 2002