Tender is the Night; F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night explores the lives and relationships of its three main characters; Rosemary, Dick and Nicole. It is less a love-triangle than a web of romance - Rosemary is shown to 'love' both Dick and Nicole, a married couple. Dick adores them both, too; Rosemary is a breath of fresh air, but he and Nicole have a long and complicated history, explored in the second part of the novel. 

First published in Scribner's Magazine between January and April of 1934, this was Fitzgerald's final completed novel. The title "Tender is the Night" comes from John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. There are actually two versions of the novel, the first of which is written using flashbacks, and the second - the one I read - is organised chronologically. The novel certainly has some autobiographical elements - Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was schizophrenic just as Nicole is in Tender is the Night. 

The wealthy couple form a sort of pedestal to which Rosemary, the actress, looks up. Dick and Nicole are fascinating to all, and are seemingly faultless in their appearences. It is Rosemary who notes that "when people have so much for outsiders didn't it indicate a lack of inner intensity?" and there proves to be nothing more true. Fitzgerald gives a tongue-in-cheek account of the role of women - Rosemary, who has been brought up by her mother, is bred to work as an actress, not to be married off to a rich man; and Dick points out that "economically you're a boy, not a girl". 

There is a depth of struggle throughout the book - Rosemary struggles and succeeds in gaining the attention of Dick, Nicole struggles with her own schizophrenia, an illness that originates, it is indicated, from her incestuous relations with her father in early age. The greatest struggle is Dick's, though, between Rosemary and Nicole - he adores them almost equally, and it is this that seems to kill him inside - in witnessing Rosemary's sadness, "he wanted to gather her up in his arms, as he so often had Nicole, and cherish even her mistakes, so deeply were they part of her". 

Lastly, it's worth having a look at Dick's amusing derision at other countries, and other countries' people. To him, "England was like a rich man after a disastrous orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them that he is only trying to get back his self-respect in order to usurp his former power". In Italy, he announces: "I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon - down here everybody thinks he's Christ". 

Tender is the Night is rightfully a famous novel - it is a fascinating portrayal of love and foreigness, and a great demonstration of how a writer can create a character that you disagree with at every turn and yet are still in awe of. 

Next I'll be reading Tom Jones by Henry Fielding - good luck!

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.

Martin Eden; Jack London

Family and Self

Jack London's Martin Eden is concerned with the rise to fame of a working class seaman who becomes an intellectual and a writer and eventually, having become what he had craved in the first half of the book, falls into a depression from which he does not escape until the final page of the novel. 

The novel was originally published in serials in the Pacific Monthly magazine between the Septembers of 1908-09, before being published as a book in 1909. It is interesting that the book should have been read by so many in a magazine, and it makes a lot of sense. Martin Eden is concerned with the failures of magazine editors, and so its format as a magazine serial clearly forms an important part of its appeal, and its later publication into book-form offers a nice parallel to the life of Martin Eden in the book.

There are some major themes beyond simply the following of the development of Eden as an intellectual and a writer, as a Kunstlerroman. There is a major attack upon socialism and the individual within the book, the former in direct contrast to the beliefs of the book's writer, Jack London. In fact, it is clear that London pits socialism and individualism against one another, a fight out of which it could be argued that socialism wins, and individualism, in which the sympathies of the lead character, Eden, lie, fails miserably. Martin Eden defends a stalwart self-improvement in which he cares not for the failures of his class, but only for the failures of himself. As he rises intellectually above the Morse family, he becomes lost as he has nowhere left to look up to. His eventual suicide could quite easily be put down to his failure to follow socialism, and his reliance upon his own Self. 

In a large way, Martin Eden mirrors the personality and life of Jack London himself. Both became disillusioned with their literary fame and took off on voyages around the Pacific, and the character of Ruth could be said to reflect the real figure of Mabel Applegarth, London's first love. 

Martin Eden is a fascinating novel, and a very real portrayal of an artist's life and the failures of fame and fortune when they are eventually reached. Reading it now, it often seems very cliched - largely, I think, because of its similarity to so many Hollywood films produced at the moment, which follow the idea of a 'falling out of love', as a result of the lover's failure to appreciate the love had in the first place. 

I'll be reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night next, so get reading.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.