We all have literary idols who we feel we have a connection to and who speak to very specific aspects of ourselves. As I'm sure I've mentioned on here before, one of my literary idols is Sylvia Plath. When I spend a couple hours reading her poetry, I am creatively ready to go in a way that nothing else could spark. Her poetry makes sense to me- the tone, the themes, the structure- and my understanding of her work gives me a confidence to write myself. Her writing is a friend to me that I sometimes feel I would be completely lost without, and like a good friend, I am immensely thankful for her.
Reading Milan Kundera has a similar effect on me. His very French aimless narratives that verge on babbling almost cause me believe I can make something of my disjointed abortions of short stories and commentaries that currently sit disconnected from their potential fate in a file folder on my desktop. He reminds me that art cannot always be categorized.
But neither Plath or Kundera necessarily bring out the best in me. Plath, though creatively inspirational, certainly does not encourage my best mind set. In fact, I tend to get downright depressed and just a touch hopeless when I read her too much. And Kundera causes me to jump ship on my attempts at structure, fancifully following his lead down a rabbit hold that sometimes leads to unproductive writing.
And then there's F. Scott Fitzgerald.
A few days ago I started reading Fitzgerald's autobiography, and, so far, it has been an interesting experience. It had been quite awhile since I'd read anything new to me by Fitzgerald. If you know me at all, you know that he is a favorite of mine and that I reread The Great Gatsby often, consulting familiar passages like a devote Protestant would a bible. And, in some ways, this ultimate devotion to that novel has obscured Fitzgerald in my mind; he has become only a name attached to one very meaningful book. Such has been only more so the case as I have not picked up another of his novels or short fiction in the last couple years.
Reading his autobiography now is reminding me of something to me that has been easy to forget in my frenzied love for Jay Gatsby. In fact, it could be said that Scott popped my literary cherry at the age of fifteen when I first read The Great Gatsby for an English class. But, it wasn't Gatsby that mattered- there was not and still is not anything particularly life changing about the story of a tragic young man who cannot accept that not all dreams are attainable. It's Fitzgerald's absolutely outstanding prose that I fell in love with all those years ago. He had me at "In my younger and more vulnerable years…" His was the first literary voice I fell in love with on my own accord, long before the Plaths and Kunderas that would come along later.
I'm somewhat shocked to find now that Fitzgerald's voice still speaks to me in a way that no one else does. His dry humor, his level yet uncertain perspective on life, his delicate annoyance at neediness, his assurance that he is an old man at the age of 25, his disillusionment at attaining everything he wanted, and most of all his candor and seeming lack of shame. This is probably the aspect of his writing that I with the most- he gives the impression that he'll tell you anything you'd want to know about him- his life is not a secret to be guarded and presented in a certain way. This impression is most strongly felt as a result of his romantic vulnerability, more Jay Gatsby than one might initially suspect. His famous declaration to be the greatest writer who ever lived and his contention that "every great poet had written great poetry before he was twenty-one" so he better get on it, he explains, at the age of twenty. Some people, such as Hemingway, have read this as a sign of weakness or desire for approval. I've never seen it as that. He just doesn't give a shit because he knows none of it- society, money, people's expectations- means anything. This critique and that hint at the absurdity of it all are imminently present in The Great Gatsby. And it is this very mixture of hopeful naiveté and utter lack of sentimentality that is endlessly fascinating and oddly comforting about Fitzgerald's writing.
Before I leave you to continue reading that masterful prose I've so gushed over, let me give you the point of it all: our literary icons are not abstract to us, even if we have spent much time away from them; they are old friends. And the effect they have on us often does not fade with time. So, if it's been awhile since you've read your "favorite," make sometime to do so soon and let me know what the visit's like.
Until next time,
Leena
F. Scott Fitzgerald. A Short Autobiography. Scribner.
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