BOOK: TENDER IS THE NIGHT (1934) BY FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940)

BOOK: TENDER IS THE NIGHT (1934) BY FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940)


SYNOPSIS: Psychiatrist Dick Diver's marriage with his former patient Nicole leads him from joy to growing confusion and finally isolation--when he is ultimately sucked into his wife's schizophrenia.
The Divers' leisurely way of life on the elite French Riviera, their infidelities and dangerous friendships, and Dick's excessive drinking finally result in a downward spiraling of their marriage.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?
This book is not the easiest read, which is why I took it to Nepal last week-travelling back and forth from Kathmandu to Pokhra, I could either focus on the bumps or the book! I chose the latter, and after the first few pages, I poured over the rest, come bad roads, poor lighting or tea breaks. Because once you get involved with the characters and their various tragedies, the repressed realisation that life is essentially tragic takes over. After that, call it morbidity or preparedness, but you can't help but shadow the ill-fated psychiatrist, his manic wife and movie-star mistress and the various other characters moving towards their respective hells. Plus, it's always more meaningful, even fun, when fiction is personal, and the book is allegedly based on Fitzgerald's life--his wife Zelda suffered from ballet-o-mania (an abnormal attraction towards her dance teacher) and subsequently schizophrenia.
Neither partner was faithful (in fact Zelda strayed first) and Fitzgerald was battling his own drinking problem and physical deterioration when he wrote the book. Editor Jeffery Meyers claims, `Though Zelda helped destroy Fitzgerald, she also inspired his greatest work'.
That Fitzgerald is considered one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, just adds to the appeal.
There's a lot of namedropping in the narrative as Fitzgerald uses his now famous acquaintances either as themselves or as the basis for other characters like cartoonist Ted Dorgan, psychiatrist Alfred Adler and author James Joyce. In the bargain, you get to add to your Personalities-I-ought-to-have-heard-about-andnow-I-have list.
Do you know that feeling when you've just learnt a new word and suddenly it keeps cropping up in various contexts and you feel mighty smug that you know what it means? This book did that for me in spades. It is peppered with foreign words, many of which you will come across in other English literature texts. So enhance your vocabulary with words like peignoir (dressing gown), garçon (waiter), docent (university lecturer) and so on. (Don't forget to get an edition that comes with explanatory notes.)
Another bonus is that you can construct a satisfying reading list based on the various books referenced as part of the plot.
Next on my list: Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Golden Bowl by Henry James and The Rose and the Ring, a fairytale by William Make peace Thackeray.
TRIVIA TIME The title of the novel comes from Fitzgerald's favourite poem: Ode to a Nightingale (1819) by John Keats. The poem expresses a desire for the poet to escape the suffering of the real world and a longing for languid dissolution, dreams, darkness and death.
Fitzgerald's friends--the elegant American expatriate painter Gerald and his wife, Sara Murphy--were the models for the `positive side' of the Divers, while the author and his wife Zelda were the negative models.
Ernest Hemingway, infamous for his sour grapes attitude, initially criticised the book in a 1934 letter to Fitzgerald: “If you take real people (Gerald and Sara) and write about them, you cannot make them do anything they would not do“. In 1939, Hemingway revised his opinion and wrote to editor Max Perkins, “I always had a very stupid little boy feeling of superiority about Scott--like a tough little boy sneering at a delicate but talented little boy.
But reading that novel much of it was so good it was frightening“.