Back when I wanted to be a fiction writer, I wanted to be the kind of fiction writer who has a dramatic slide into the abyss. It wasn't long after I stopped writing short stories that it occurred to me that dying old, desperate and alone probably wasn't nearly as inspiring for the people it happened to as it was for twenty-year olds looking for an excuse to smoke too much.
Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald are Exhibits A and B here, as I thought when I read this from Terry Teachout the other day:
I admire Fitzgerald's best work without reservation--I consider The Great Gatsby the great American novel--but I can't think of another major writer who led a less edifying life. The story of Fitzgerald's drunken slide into artistic inertia is so pathetic that it's hard to take, and the more you read, the more depressed you get.
But then, a note from one of Terry's friends suggests, maybe there was something heroic about it after all:
I have read Great Gatsby three times and still can't feel why it slays people. In some funny way I think it is a guy book not a girl book. (I like Tender best.) But Fitz's life--that moves me! He had the guts to face his deterioration and write about it; to the end of his life he remained kind to other writers, and generous even to pricks like Hemingway; his naked admiration for their work and his appreciation for what it took from them to produce it; his never joining an ideological tong to protect his reputation, his never going left; his saying 'life is a cheat and the conditions are those of defeat and the only thing that stands and redeems is work' ; his love for the Murphys, for every excellent character he met; his admission of his failures; his attempt to make it work in hollywood; his note taking on thalberg; his brave open heart. I know he was an ass, but he was a wonderful endearing ass and in the end his life really did have some epic grandeur. I just had to hold high the Stand Up for Scott Fitzgerald banner today.
B-b-but everyone tells me you are a fiction writer!?
I can only imagine that Robert Heinlein's old age felt to him like a lonely and desperate slide into decrepitude as his writing seriously deteriorated... His early books were very good but his later books were largely fantasies about some variation on older men cavorting with young women, all of whom were immortal.
I don't really blame him, though, I don't have a very romantic view of getting old and am not especially looking forward to it.
EI
Many times have I read that The Great Gatsby is TGAN. I've read it twice, and a few fitful starts that never got past the fourth or fifth chapter. It wasn't hte sort of thing to grip me.
The tragedy in the book isn't just that the old rich spurn the new rich until at least the fourth generation, but really it's the every-person attitudes displayed there, be you rich or poor. Kind of a romance, kind of a hopefulness worn on the sleeve, then trampled on by the ingrates after Gatsby's death, as the sleeve is used to sop up the blood. At the end of the book, it did feel tragic because of the realization of its real commonness.
It surely cured me of ever wanting to be that tragic figure that blows his brains out ala Hemingway, or falls into an ever deepening spiral while the alcohol and/or drugs wreaks havoc on the liver or heart.
I'm glad you gave up those destructive thoughts, Megan, and that your lungs are probably pink and tender now, instead of black and cindery. I, for one, greatly enjoy your forays into the literary world...and this blog, too.
Regarding Heinlein, as I grow older (and I'm not yet that old), I too gaze longingly at the young women that surround us and seem to delight in exposing as much of their flawless skin as legally allowed. Their flat stomachs, long legs, and perky breasts mock and tease us men who used to be young and athletic; what we once were was the hot, young, studs to whom these goddesses (or so they seem) are, and should be, attracted.
We know, at least those of us who have any sense, that the only ways that we could ever "score" one of them are un-natural. She would be attracted to us nothing more than our money, or power, or even worse - some strange and unexplainable "wanna screw daddy" kind of thing. For some of us, that is enough, it seems; if those of us are honest enough to admit it. Young women do seem immortal to us because I suppose, in its own way, "youth" is immortal; it is of course those who are young who are not.
So having just a bit of common sense, I continue to dance with the one that brung me. She will be there in my older age, as I will be for her. We will die and that will be that. We have not written TGAN and haven't a clue even where to start. No one will remember us but our children, perhaps our grandchildren, and our friends who will soon follow us into the grave.
So it goes. As it always has. As it always will. Until the sun supernovas.
Megan,
I hope you have figured out by now that life is pretty banile. Dying old and alone and bitter is only interesting when viewed through the lens of fiction. That is what fiction does; skims the interesting parts of life away from the banality to make it more interesting than it actually is. I once was watched a documentary on Judy Garlan and it had some tapes of Judy Garlin raving when she was really old and pilled up. Garlin would be an example of an artist, albeit a singer, living the life you are talking about. The tapes were painful and just awful to listen to. It may be "romantic" to think of the tortured artist dying desperate and alone, but judging by the tapes I wouldn't want to spend five minutes with Garlin at that stage on a thousand dollar dare let alone actually be her. The point I guess is that alienation is way overrated.
The Great Gatsby left me cold. I couldn't care for any of the major characters in it at all, and so wasn't interested in what happened to them.
"...I don't have a very romantic view of getting old..."
It isn't very romantic, but it's certainly better than the other option.
To say that life is banal, is tired. I think even Frances Gumm would agree, in dead retrospection. And to turn creativity into destruction is sad.
There is nothing that is less heroic than a life not properly used. We know coming in that we might have about four score and ten, and the key then is to figure out how to use those years, and to hold on to the joy that we entered this world with, and exit the world with same. Our minds, our spirits, might be all that ultimately travels with us.
I see no romance in being old and alone, or wasted and wrung out. Nothing heroic there.
Decay is the decided way, and things fall apart. What is heroic is to engage in the type of creativity of action, thought, and living that reverses the natural tendency of things. That is the magic. Put nothing in order, and your house (your life) becomes a mess, a dark cage, darkening all who enter.
But to pull beauty out of darkness, or create a trail of memories that you can take with you to the next state of life, now that is heroic.
"(Heinlein's) early books were very good but his later books were largely fantasies about some variation on older men cavorting with young women, all of whom were immortal"
And related, don't forget that often the old immortal geezer was bedding young relatives (or in at least one case, female clones of ... himself).
What Finn said, in Spades.
Post modern deconstruction influence on the arts is an assault on the beauty, grandeur and valor of life that was once expressed in art of all media.
With the 20th Century elimination of much of the drudgery and pain of everyday life in the West, phony angst and whining has dominated art at the behest of "intellectuals" who have instigated a feeding frenzy (or, perhaps a circle-jerk) of narcissism.
This sickness dominates much of left-wing politics is creeping into the sciences starting with psychology and the environment.
Been there, thought about doing that. I got the smoking and drinking parts down pretty well, but they didn't seem to help my writing, and I never did find where the girls who dug the sincere-serious-starving-artist types hung out. Even goth chicks prefer guys who make them laugh.
A couple weeks back I was hanging out with a friend of mine who lives in a condo complex of which half has been set aside for artists*, and we ran into a friend of his who is a moderately successful painter in his late 30s/early 40s. We talked about how he doesn't do shows because he hates gallery openings, and how having a wife and kids has affected the volume and quality of his work.
While he looked the part of the bohemian in his clothes and hairstyle, it was funny to see that aside from what he does for a living, he's not that different from anyone else. There's this notion that becoming a drunk, bitter wretch can make you a better artist. So I always find it interesting to find out about good artists who had something resembling an ordinary life outside their art.
* The reason for this is a mildly amusing bit in itself. Boston has rules that if you build new luxury residential property, a certain portion of the development needs to be set aside for affordable and/or Section 8 housing. Obviously if you're trying to create an upscale residential atmosphere you don't want those sort of people around, so the developers in this case were allowed to fulfill the requirement by setting aside units for (a) cops and firefighters and (b) artists, who were being displaced as all the cheap mill buildings in the area got bought up to be converted into upscale loft condos. Great trick seeing as having the artists there actually increases the cachet of the area, and since the units still aren't exactly cheap, you're only getting ones who have achieved commercial success, usually by making things that work well in lawyers' offices.
Without meaning to offend anyone, I always have to chuckle at those who espouse this notion that self-destructive behavior will make one a better artist. It has always seemed to me a case of getting the cart before the horse.
Sure, there are many examples of great artists who were self-destructive, but there are many more examples of self-destruction that leads no where. In fact, considering how many examples of self-destructive behavior there are in the world, and how few examples of great artists there are, to assume some sort of causal relation is silly.
Rather, as the old saw goes, there is a fine line between genius and insanity. It is not that the self-destructive behavior of those artists is what made them great - it is rather that that intangible spark of genius that made them great also gave them a predilection for self-destruction.
Michaelangelo was a great artist who lived to be 90. His last works were not so good. He did some very good work starting in his teenage years and going on for another 60 or 70 years or so.
Rodin was great even in his old age. Bernini was astounding, and a hell-raiser.
Some great sculptors, such as Carpeaux died much too young of serious disease. The world is poorer for his early passing.
In the modern era, Calder lived a long life and was productive the whole time - he produced, on average, one work a day for 50 years.
Ok, these are all sculptors, not writers, but self destruction does not great art make. Living and working will increase your odds of producing something memorable.
And remember this about Papa Hemingway - he was in 3 serious plane crashes and suffered a head injury in at least one of them. For all that has been writen about his last years, I am not certain that the impact of that crash has been taken into account in how he declined in his late 50s.
Heinlein - haven't read any of his stuff in 35 years - life is too short...
That artists must be self-destructive is a myth.. Life itself offers enough insights and tragedies even without wine and smoke... that artists must feel oppressed to reach their peak hold true only when there is another major flay in the overall system and society?
but it is really interesting that the last time a society looked at the best artist as also the "happy healthy" one has long passed? Ancient Greece where the best tragedies where written after the age of 70 (Shakespeare - the 2nd best already had the worldview of a Hollywood child compared)? Leonardo who was well knows for his handsome looks, great singing voice and humorous temper (no wonder we called his movement Renaissance)?
well - Ancient Greece was a psychology and society in balance with material and spiritual issues - much more than we are today.
today - the raw talent must die young in order to achieve... pfui!!! (Jesus compared to Socrates, Mozart and Elvis compared to Aeschylus
No - keep Haydn (77), Mozart (35), Beethoven (57), Schubert (31), Mendelssohn (38), Coleridge (62), Keats (26), Shelly (30) with their linear simple outlooks and driven psychologies..
Give me Aeschylus (71), Sophocles (91), Euripides (78), Aristophanes (60+), etc...
We need more Clint Eastwoods - although his worldview is ("good individual vs bad individual" and not the Greek "good vs bad in every individual").. what to do?
I find myself offended by the link to the "friend of a friend" who referenced "pricks like Hemingway." I am uncertain whether this is a generic (and puzzling) judgment of Hemingway or a specific (and even more puzzling) judgment of Hemingway in the context of his relationship with Scott Fitzgerald.
I admit to some ignorance about Fitzgerald, as well as wanting now to re-read GATSBY as well as Tender is the Night. But at least within Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," you will see his almost startling affection for Fitzgerald and his admiration of The Great Gatsby. His anecdotes about Scott Fitzgerald paint perhaps the most remarkable relationship described in the book (aside from, of course, that of Hemingway's relationship with Hadley), and he does so with great care. It could be his ironic last sentence in the Scott Fitzgerald "chapters" that offended this "one of Terry's friends" person, which could possibly have been construed (mistakenly so, in my opinion) as the misogyny Hemingway was so often accused of. There are a number of topics addressed in both blogs, and I missed the central focus of either.
As for weighing artists' lives against the art they created ... for me, the only aspect of either is that which may push you over the tipping point into actually living life to its fullest, which truly must mean living and creating art on your own terms -- rather than pontificating on those who did so. (As they say, you're most irritated by the distasteful traits you recognize in yourself, and I mention my distaste on that basis only.)
www.uppityfemale.com
Hemingway was very competative and saw Fitzgerald as a threat to produce work that would outlast his own. So he played mental games with his rival, even disparaging Fitzgerald's tackle when the two peed in adjoining urinals. Anything to get an edge. Fitzgerald was the nicer, more honorable man. This counts for nothing in weighing literary reputations. But had not drink impaired his faculties, I think he would have produced more and better work than Hem, who became a comic parody of himself in his last books.