F. Scott Fitzgerald in Malibu

It should come as nor surprise that even F. Scott has a Malibu story. Known more for his academic life at Princeton, his hedonistic life in New York City, and his expatriate life in Paris in the 1920’s, Fitzgerald still managed to find his way to the Malibu shores where he had a home in The Colony in 1938. He found the damp air to be aggravating to his health so his stay in Malibu was short and he retreated to his home in Encino. There he stayed until the chronic vagabond made his final stay in Hollywood, where he died at the home of his one time lover, gossip columnist Sheila Graham, in 1940. Fitzgerald was barely 44 years old.

No detailed documentation of Fitzgerald’s time in Malibu has been found (at least by me), but we do know that he was working on Hollywood movie scripts at the time he was living here. One of the scripts was “Gone with the Wind” which Fitzgerald was doing some revision work on for a time, reportedly getting in arguments over plot lines, etc.. Yes, imagining that Fitzgerald might have penned a word or two for that David O. Selznick classic while looking out over the Pacific Ocean, or the Adamson House, adds luster to an already magical time and place.

Of course, Fitzgerald was not known for his work on movie scripts. He did that out of necessity. As brilliant as Fitzgerald was, he only had one novel, his first, that made enough money to pay for his lavish and lurid lifestyle. His most celebrated novel, “The Great Gatsby” wasn’t a success until after his death. “The Great Gatsby” is ubiquitous, required reading in most high school curriculums.

Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson‘s The Lost Weekend, says to himself, referring to The Great Gatsby, “There’s no such thing ... as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it.” Richard Yates, a writer often compared to Fitzgerald, called The Great Gatsby “the most nourishing novel [he] read ... a miracle of talent ... a triumph of technique”. I think it is safe to say that Fitzgerald may be the most brilliant “man of letters” this country has ever produced. He was amazingly articulate, elegant, and he could paint a picture with words that was breathtaking.

Sample this paragraph from the last page of “The Great Gatsby”

“Most of the big short places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except for the shadowy moving glow of a ferry boat against the Sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. “

Hemingway was different…way different. No less a novelist but as a writer he was a minimalist, not prone to leaning to heavily on adjectives. He preferred nouns, and verbs. Fitzgerald was flowery, Victorian in his descriptions. Hemingway was raw, very little adornment; a true modernist, the Le Corbussier of the literary world. His sentences were short and lean.

From the chapter “A Big Two Hearted River” from the Nick Adams stories:

“Nick ate a big flapjack and a smaller one, covered with apple butter. He put apple butter on the third cake, folded it over twice, wrapped it in oiled paper and put it in his shirt pocket. He put the apple butter jar back in the pack and cut bread for two sandwiches. In the pack he found a big onion. He sliced it in two and peeled the silky outer skin. Then he cut one half into slices and made onion sandwiches. He wrapped them in oiled paper and buttoned them in the other pocket of his khaki shirt. He turned the skillet upside down on the grill, drank the coffee, sweetened and yellow brown with the condensed milk in it, and tidied up the camp. It was a good camp.”

Fitzgerald in Malibu…you can rest assured that there was a lot of drinking that went on when Fitzgerald was in Malibu…just like when he was in any other place. He couldn’t stay sober and it killed him., though the official cause of death is “heart attack”. Not many attended his funeral as he had, by then, alienated many of his contemporaries and work associates.

His famously tormented wife, Zelda, said this after his passing.

“I feel that Scott’s greatest contribution was the dramatization of a heart-broken and despairing era, giving it a new raison-d’être in the sense of tragic courage with which he endowed it.

Hemingway was equally fond of a drunken stupor.

Their excesses were storied and a matter of public record. Hemingway died of a self inflicted gun shot in 1961…depression was very common in his family tree, widely reported liver cancer might have played a role as well. We will never know fully of the “elixir” that would provoke him to take his life. He was 61.