April 8, 1978

A Farewell to F. Scott

By ANATOLE BROYARD

SCOTT AND ERNEST



The Fitzgerald-Hemingway Friendship By Mathew J. Bruccoli.



thought I had learned all I wanted to know about Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald until Matthew J. Bruccoli changed my mind with "Scott and Ernest." As he points out at the very beginning of his book, some of the most widely repeated anecdotes about Fitzgerald emanated solely from Hemingway and were often contradicted by more disinterested witnesses and by the established evidence of dates and places. There is no doubt that Hemingway maligned Fitzgerald, while Fitzgerald, with an almost Christ-like patience, continued to try to promote Hemingway's career. The public image of Fitzgerald is further obscured by his own maligning of himself when he was drunk and depressed.

One feels, in reading "Scott and Ernest," that here, at last, is the true story of their peculiar friendship. The indefatigable Mr. Bruccoli seems to have traced most of Hemingway's remarks and anecdotes about Fitzgerald back to the occasions themselves and then assembled all the other written versions - most of the people around them appear to have written about Hemingway and Fitzgerald - or interviewed those people concerned who were still alive. Almost invariably, Hemingway emerges as ungenerous toward Fitzgerald and over-generous toward himself.

The Boxing Bout

The famous story of the boxing bout between Morley Callaghan and Hemingway is presented in several different versions by Hemingway himself; in what sounds like a dispassionate and true version by Callaghan; in several newspaper columns, and in a surprisingly improbable account by the literary critic Allen Tate.

For those who have not heard the story, Hemingway represented himself as an experienced boxer who had worked as a sparring partner with professional fighters and as a bouncer in a touch bar room. He proved his prowess in Paris by boxing with the likes of Ezra Pound. Callaghan, however was an experienced boxer, though smaller than Hemingway. They had worked out often in a friendly enough fashion, but Fitzgerald's presence on this occasion appears to have made Hemingway almost desperate, and when he got careless, Callaghan read Hemingway's pronunciamentos about boxing - "always crown a puncher" - can make his own assessment .

Besides the satisfaction of having the true versions of the ups and downs of the famous friendship, Mr. Bruccoli also offers an instructive entertainment in his analyses of the inaccurate accounts. It is an ironical comment on the writer as reporter or observer, and on literary memoirs in general.

Sometimes in "Scott and Ernest," Fitzgerald seems to feel that the tragedy of his life overshadows the other tragedies that he was to write. And in fact his life is a better tragedy than any that he wrote, with the possible exception of "The Great Gatsby." It is shocking to realize that, between 1920 and 1926, Fitzgerald earned only $37,000 from "This Side of Paradise," "The Beautiful and Damned" and "The Great Gatsby," which last brought in only $6,790.

Some of the most interesting pages in "Scott and Ernest" are those reproducing Fitzgerald's long letters to Hemingway in which he offered critical advice for revising and cutting both "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms." Despite the looseness of some of his own novels, Fitzgerald shows himself to be a remarkably good critic of Hemingway's work. He knows that Hemingway will resent the criticism but he knows too that the books will be better for it, and they are. On Fitzgerald's advice, Hemingway cut a windy beginning from his first novel from the second. He also eliminated some of his "elephantine facetiousness" at his friend's suggestion. Yet, he later insisted that Fitzgerald's opinions were worthless and that he had rejected them.

While Hemingway on Fitzgerald is not quite as good, he did make some penetrating remarks. Describing "Tender Is the Night" as "fake," he wrote to Malcolm Cowley; "How could he [Fitzgerald] ever know people except on the surface when he never [slept with] anybody, nobody told him anything except as an answer to a question and he was always too drunk late at night to remember what anybody really said." Hemingway's comment goes a long way toward explaining the ultimately unconvincing theatricality of many of Fitzgerald's characters. They were theatrical because they were based on his romanticism rather than on a case observation of people. If he romanticized them half as much as he did Hemingway, they would inevitably be "fake." When Hemingway said that Fitzgerald had pitched "The Last Tycoon" on too epic a level to be able to sustain it, he was probably right.

Sometimes Grotesque

Sometimes "Scott and Ernest" is grotesque. In a mood of anxious despondency, Fitzgerald revealed to Hemingway that his wife, Zelda, had complained that his penis was too small. Hemingway, who hardly qualified as an expert in such matters, retired with Fitzgerald to the toilet of the café where the conversation occurred, and, after inspecting him, assured Fitzgerald that he was "normal." After this uncharacteristic solicitude, Hemingway confided Fitzgerald's confidence to just about everyone who would listen.