The Far Side of Friendship

By R.Z. Sheppard

SCOTT AND ERNEST by Matthew J. Bruccoli; Random House; 168 pages; $8.95

Romanticism is the cash crop of American literature. The making and unmaking of the self has absorbed the labors of our most talented writers. They, in turn, have been processed into romantic legend by journalists and biographers, to a point where literary heroes are more read about than read. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald have been through this mill more than most, and their legends have picked up a number of impurities along the way.

Both authors contributed distinctively to their public images. Decades past his prime, Hemingway could still glisten with the confidence of the writing world's heavyweight champion. Norman Mailer nailed the truth with brutal accuracy and a looping mixed metaphor when he boldly announced his own self-aggrandizing shot at the title in Advertisements for Myself'(1959). Hemingway, he wrote, "knew in advance, with a fine sense of timing, that he would have to campaign for himself, that the best tactic to hide the lockjaw of his shrinking genius was to become the personality of our time." Fitzgerald, on the other hand, was not much of a self-promoter He even seems to have taken a sad pleasure in his role as the unstrung harp of the jazz age. "I talk with the authority of failure--Ernest with the authority of success," he wrote in his Notebook. His difficulties with alcohol and his desperate need to duplicate his youthful successes often drew harsh responses from his old friend Hemingway. In a letter to Maxwell Perkins, their editor at Scribner's, he blamed Scott's troubles on his "cheap Irish love of defeat" and wanted him to stop trying too hard for another masterpiece, adding that "only fairies deliberately write masterpieces."

With friends like Hemingway, Fitzgerald did not need hostile critics. The most famous act of unkindness occurred in 1936, when Scott publicized his torment in "The Crack-Up," an article in Esquire. Later that year, Hemingway published The Snows of Kilimanjaro in the same magazine. The story contained a gratuitous reference to "poor Scott Fitzgerald" and that famous line from The Rich Boy, "The very rich are different from you and me." The reply is often assumed to have been Hemingway's: "Yes they have more money." At Fitzgerald's request, his name was deleted and "Julian" substituted in later editions of the story. But the impression lingered, and still does, that Fitzgerald had an indiscriminating reverence for the wealthy.

In Scott and Ernest, "a documentary reconstruction of their friendship and estrangement," Matthew Bruccoli suggests it was Hemingway who had his nose pressed up against the glass. "I am getting to know the rich." Hemingway told Max Perkins and Critic Mary Colum at lunch. And it was Colum who replied, "The only difference between the rich and the other people is that the rich have more money." Making Fitzgerald the victim of this putdown, says Bruccoli, was one of several instances when Hemingway adjusted embarrassing truths to preserve his image.

In fact, says the author, Hemingway is the only source for some of the most widely repeated anecdotes about Fitzgerald. Many of them are contained in A Moveable Feast (1964). That posthumous volume begins with Hemingway's cryptic statement that though the book could be read as fiction, "there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact." Too many readers have confused light and facts. For example, in Moveable Feast, Hemingway gives the impression that Fitzgerald's literary advice was worthless, although a ten-page memo from Scott to Ernest about changes in The Sun Also Rises indicates that Fitzgerald was an excellent editor whose suggestions were taken.

At the beginning of their friendship, Fitzgerald was already successful and Hemingway an unknown living off his first wife Hadley's trust fund. Scott brought Hemingway's genius to the attention of Perkins, thus beginning a long and profitable association. Even after the friendship cooled, Fitzgerald continued to champion Hemingway's talent and write him concerned letters. Hemingway's correspondence has-yet to be fully published, though most of it was read by Carlos Baker for his fine biography Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. Portions of those letters quoted by Bruccoli indicate that though Hemingway could be sympathetic, he used a lot of ink telling Fitzgerald to shape up or ship out. That Scott's drinking habits made him a difficult friend is a fact well documented. There was, of course. Fitzgerald's wife Zelda, who hated Hemingway. He. in return, contended that she had ruined her husband's talent with her jealousy. Writing to Editor Perkins in 1933. Hemingway was of the callous opinion that Fitzgerald's salvation lay in Zelda's death or a stomach ailment that would prevent his drinking.

Bruccoli takes the plausible view of their relationship: Fitzgerald had not only a genuine regard for Hemingway's genius but also an immature fascination with Hemingway the warrior and sportsman. Ernest, by contrast, had a desire to dominate and turn a cold shoulder on those whose help might appear to challenge his independence. The list of his ex-friends included Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passes and Archibald MacLeish.

Fitzgerald suffered the greatest pain--and possessed the most generous memory. His letter requesting that his name be removed from The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a masterpiece of wounded pride, exhibiting a grace under pressures more trying than Papa's wars or big-game hunts:

"Dear Ernest: Please lay off me in print. If I choose to write de profitndis sometimes it doesn't mean I want friends praying aloud over my corpse. No doubt you meant it kindly but it cost me a night's sleep. And when you incorporate it (the story) in a book would you mind cutting my name? It's a fine story-- one of your best-- even though the 'Poor Scott Fitzgerald etc.' rather spoiled it for me. "

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