thenewinquiry:

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s On Booze, from the New Directions Pearl Series

by Jessica Ferri

Unless one has the time and money to turn writing into a glamorous and leisurely profession, being a writer can be a thankless pursuit. The profession can drive one to drink copious amounts of alcohol, regardless of his or her talents. “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A collection of Fitzgerald’s writings about drinking — released by New Directions under the title On Booze — might have been more appropriately titled On Writing. The book contains selections from the author’s notebooks and letters, as well as “The Crack-Up,” “Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number—,” “Sleeping and Waking,” and “My Lost City.”  It seems inconceivable to us today that the author of what may be the greatest American novel ever published, The Great Gatsby, was the same man who penned the soused essays in On Booze. But Fitzgerald wasn’t just completely disillusioned with his writing; he had come to consider himself a flat-out failure.

He had his reasons. Though his first novel, This Side of Paradise, was a huge success, his subsequent novels (including Gatsby) did not sell well during his lifetime. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda spent a great deal of the 1920s traveling Europe, drinking and eating, and blowing through a lot of cash. Fitzgerald’s favorite alcohol was gin cocktails. Stories of the Fitzgeralds’ exploits included jumping into the fountain at the Plaza hotel, boiling friends’ wristwatches in tomato soup, and arriving in pajamas (Scott) and naked (Zelda) at a “come as you are” party. After placing Zelda in a mental institution, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to pursue what he hoped would be a financially successful screenwriting career. Instead, he dropped dead of a heart attack at his girlfriend Sheila Graham’s apartment, a few months shy of his 45th birthday. Eight years later, Zelda would perish when her asylum burned to the ground. In excerpts from his notebooks Fitzgerald writes, “Drunk at 20, wrecked at 30, dead at 40.”

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(Source: thenewinquiry)