F. Scott Fitzgerald - What A Bitch !
“He greeted Marion with his voice pitched carefully to avoid either feigned enthusiasm or dislike...”
(In which Tim feigns false modesty as an interesting new way to flex. Reads anew F. Scott Fitzgerald and genuflects before a superior writing talent. There’s gonna be some pretension. There’s gonna be some bullshit. Pub conversation at 11pm profundity!)
I used to think - fleetingly - that my words would stand out in the crowded square of imposters and rivals. That my too personal stories, barely disguised from real life, replete with humorous bon mots were of a durable and sagacious vintage that would elevate my prospects in both the literary and material world.
And, do you know, occasionally - very occasionally - like transient icebergs poking through a storm tossed sea, I felt they did. But each emerging peak, each success, just allowed me a new vantage point upon yet greater heights. Ascending upward, I realised I’d scaled only the foothills, unflattered by the comparisons far above. (1)
On a trip to The Hague recently I took a small, pocket sized copy of F. Scott Fitzgerard’s Babylon Revisted. Reading through, I became aware that I’m (once again) a poor man’s Salieri to Mozart. I’m a good enough writer to recognise I’m a hack writer by comparison. But how? What are those authorial ‘tells’, those embedded hallmarks that shine through flashing greatness?
I would suggest that there are three signs of obvious literary talent. (There’s probably many more, and if I wasn’t in a bar in Delft sampling beers strong and stronger, I’d enumerate them all. But a narrow focus - a well formed list of three - is the consequential benefit one derives from a slow descent into drunkenness, don’t you think?)
Firstly, concerning the nuts and bolts of writing itself: Is the prose any damn good? In Fitzgerald’s case, yes, very much so. When reading, certain phrases and constructions sing out to elevate the experience above the quotidian, the commonplace, the hackery. All good writers employ stylistic devices, those elegant phrases and tricks that artfully chime like a beautiful bell to the soul. But not all ‘greats’ are the same. To me, slip sliding away into fuzzy numbness here in The Netherlands, there are three types of prose that elevate:
Beautiful or lyrical prose (F.Scott. Balzac. Martin Amis, sometimes.)
Stripped back writing (Hemingway being an obvious exemplar)
Experimental - for example Clockwork Orange, On the Road Again or Last Exit to Brooklyn
Of the three, I value the first most of all. I can almost feel it when a well turned phrase hits home. It almost hurts. Why didn’t I coin this, think of this, work harder on my own flabby prose? Was it lack of work or lack of creativity? Each chiming phrase is a rebuke. I envy. But I recognise the brilliance.
“But the stillness in the Ritz bar was strange and portentous. It was not an American bar anymore - he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it. It had gone back to France.”
Secondly, characterisation. Are the characters well drawn? Are their motivations believable? Is their place in the story apposite, their character sketched sufficiently deeply to avoid becoming cut outs or cyphers, mere third spear carriers from the left wheeled embarrassingly onto the page to mumble a line or two before shuffling off forgotten like a drunken burger after midnight?
As a writer, I find characterisation one of the hardest things to get right. There are some authors who write just for men with the result that their female characters are pale facsimiles of real life women. Similarly, some female writers struggle with male characters and so resort to a stereotypic landscape populated by bastards or wimps. Speaking personally, I don’t have an issue with the sex of my characters. My problem is more fundamental than that. Essentially, any character that isn’t me suffers from that very fact; they are not me meaning they are ill-drawn and one dimensional - pathetic straight men made to suffer my character’s one liners, inner monologue, whilst facilitating tendencious plot development.
But read someone who does it well - an Austin or Dickens, for example - and you roll yourself in a fleshy world of believability. You can imagine the characters in real life, understand why they do what they do, how they drive the plot forward naturally. I’ve always been intrigued how this is done. Do the authors sit down and plan their characters (as suggested by numerous colour-by-numbers writing schools) or do they just carry them in their head and understand each line, each interaction, each movement as they write?
Don’t know. Not a great writer. Ask them.
Thirdly (and lastly) - plot. Writing is telling stories. Is the plot engaging, does it draw you in, want to turn the page, speed read to get to the next chapter akin to binge watching a gripping series on Netflix? Mmmm. There’s many a writer who plots like a mathematician, algorthymically making sure each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, pacing the reader so that the denouement is both satisfactory and surprising. This is where I have my biggest reservation. Although I love a good ending, the symmetry of a three act play or movie or book, part of me loves the realism of unsatisfactory endings. For example, I loved Brett Easton Ellis’ Rules of Attraction that both started and ended in mid sentence, breaking in and then checking out of the narrative. (2) Like life. Unresolved. Messy. Not cute.
Of course, certain genres demand neat plots, crime and thrillers for example, romantic books. And so whilst I respect good plots - no I really do - to me they’re not a deal breaker. But let me interpret plot somewhat more loosley. Let me replace ‘plot’ with ‘narrative’. Does the narrative hold together, does it make you want to stay the course and follow the authorial voice, the characters, the worldview described? Yes? Then you has you a decent narrative.
I don’t necessarily need to know that it was the butler who did it with a candlestick in the library. But I may want to know about the characters’ actions leading up to, and after, during. Not all murders end up with Colonel Mustard buggering Professional Plum in the Hallway. Er, neither does Cluedo Tim.
Yeah. Losing it. Affligem Dubbel kicking in. Bar somewhere in Delft. (Where? Cafe de V I think, according to the menu) filling up with Dutch people eating, drinking, speaking English when asked.
So, plot and narrative. Losing the plot. Maintaining a narrative. I’m a real life example of that. Now. But my central point is, tying it all together; I was shocked into wonder, annoyance and competitiveness as to how bloody good Babylon Revisited is.
F. Scott Fitzsgerald. What a bitch!
Notes
1) Notice how I eschewed the Titanic reference? Eschew the obvious. It’s what separates us from AI. The human brain is - when engaged - synaptically more creative than the AI. That’s what annoys me when people revert through laziness or foolishness to using AI in place of thinking.
2) I now know this starting in the middle thing is called In Medias Res. I warned you at the start of this article I was going to be pretentious but not as annoying I will be next time I find the opportunity to use this Latin phrase. Wanker.