jankp's Full Review: F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender Is the Night
Author’s Note—I resented reading this 315-page book at first, dying to read another classic, but it grew on me more when I checked out the plot synopsis on the back cover and the perspective changed to the main character in Book 2. It floundered until then, but the writing improved. It’s my entry into Stephen_Murray’s Minnesotan write-off as Fitzgerald was born there in 1896.
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With my rash, early departure from Miss Cunengonde’s house, I find myself with some time on my hands and decide to drop by my office for some notes on sessions for tomorrow. I obviously have no life of my own and live vicariously through my clients. As I unlock my door, I notice a shadow moving towards me and feel alarm.
“Dr. Freudine? It’s about time you showed up. I must speak with you,” he sneers. My heart bottoms out. Now I can see it’s the paid visitor with no name come back again. “May I come in? Please, Doctor?” he adds more gently. I nod, sensing destiny.
He dwarfs the office when the lights are turned on and remains standing and hatted in command of himself. All at once I realize he carries a hardback book and now opens it to a bookmarked page. “Is it not true that Irish was your client? Isn’t it true that you allowed him to stop therapy to become your lover? Isn’t it also true that you believe sex therapy can help cure his problems?”
“Now see here...!”
He grunts. “I need to warn you that your association with that Irishman, possibly Jan, could ruin your life. Ruin your career as a respected psychiatrist as well, you little fool. Listen to this from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1933 novel, Tender Is The Night, page 245 in Book 3.
“...for Dick, charm always had an independent existence...(He) tried to dissect it into pieces small enough to store away—realizing that the totality of a life may be different in quality from its segments, and also that life during the forties seemed capable of being observed only in segments. His love for Nicole and Rosemary, his friendship with Abe North, with Tommy Barban in the broken universe of the war’s ending—in such contacts the personalities had seemed to press up so close to him that he became the personality itself—there seemed some necessity of taking all or nothing. It was as if for the remainder of his life he was condemned to carry with him the egos of certain people, early met and early loved, and to be only as complete as they were complete themselves...”
I try to smile, not sure whether to be flattered for being seen as charming or nervous about his brooding intensity. “This Dick is quite a thinker...”
“He’s a great psychiatrist when he meets Nicole as his schizophrenic patient and though he tries to send her away cured, he can’t. He believes in their love, that it’ll be enough to keep them together, but then she becomes wealthy and stronger mentally as she feels more able to control and possess him. He starts to drink more, realizing this...”
I cut in. “It’s hardly likely that Irish will suddenly become wealthy in this day and age. He doesn’t even need or want...”
“My dear, Fitzgerald may have written this seventy years ago, but he knew people.” His nostrils flare as he warms to his subject. “His characters are so intimately described that you would swear they live and breathe. You see Dick in the beginning so charming to women and admired by men and colleagues, then how living the wealthy life with a sometimes crazy woman drains him and makes him feel helpless. I don’t want that to happen to you, Dr. Freudine.”
“We can control mania better today, sir. May I, um, ask your name?”
That seems to be the last comment he needed to hear and my question is ignored. Waving the book in the air, he stomps around my office much like a petulant child and I try a different approach. “Okay, so people are still being ruined by money and drink and not knowing how to love each other. Should make for a fascinating story.”
He stops to glare at me. “It’s not that shallow of a book! Did that passage I read sound simple and insensitive? Why do you imagine it's called Tender is the Night?”
“Well, okay. Is Dick modeled after Fitzgerald and Nicole after Fitzgerald’s crazy wife?”
“So you aren’t as stupid as I was beginning to think!”
I hold my tongue with effort and busy myself looking on the desk for my notes. “He did that in most of his Jazz-Age novels, I’ve read. Dick is comparable to Jay Gatsby and Nicole, I’m assuming, to Daisy.”
“Not just Nicole, but Rosemary, too. We see how they differ from each other, how childish they both start out being and needing protection, but the years change them, change Dick. It should really interest you as a fellow psychiatrist to read how living more for your patient’s well-being instead of yourself could consume you.”
I hesitate, then grab my notes. “It sounds depressing.” Then I guiltily catch his stare. “Not that that would keep me from reading it. It could be gay set in the 1920s.”
“It’s in rich, colorful France and Switzerland mostly, a bit in New York, on a steamer, in Rome where he gets into trouble with the police. Nicole has an older sister who never gets married, but helps keep Dick under their thumb. There’s little humor in it and it’s a time-shifting challenge for even Freudians.”
I nod. “Well, you’ve intrigued me like a bitter soap opera would...or a pill. I’ll take the book and read it then. I loved The Great Gatsby, a tragedy, after all.” I hold out my hand.
“You poor fool!” he hurls at me and clutches the book to himself as he strides past and out the still open door. I’m struck dumb for a few moments, then resort to staccato-y laughing to relieve my nagging doubts about my deepening trust and love (tenderness?) for Irish. Maybe it’s still and always will be transference like it was between Dick and Nicole.
In Tender Is The Night, Fitzgerald deliberately set out to write the most ambitious and far-reaching novel of his career, experimenting radically with...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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