Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Introduction w/Jesan Sorrells

1
00:00:01.199 –> 00:00:04.880
Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and

2
00:00:04.880 –> 00:00:08.639
understand yet another business book, on the Leadership Lessons from the Great

3
00:00:08.639 –> 00:00:12.400
Books podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the

4
00:00:12.400 –> 00:00:15.975
great books of the Western canon. You know, those

5
00:00:15.975 –> 00:00:19.575
books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in

6
00:00:19.575 –> 00:00:23.175
between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in

7
00:00:23.175 –> 00:00:26.960
high school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the

8
00:00:26.960 –> 00:00:30.720
entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn’t have the time

9
00:00:30.720 –> 00:00:34.320
to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from

10
00:00:34.320 –> 00:00:38.160
literature to execute leadership best practices in the

11
00:00:38.160 –> 00:00:41.460
confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now

12
00:00:41.520 –> 00:00:45.315
inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western civilization

13
00:00:46.255 –> 00:00:49.235
at the intersection of literature and leadership.

14
00:00:49.695 –> 00:00:53.395
Welcome to the leadership lessons from the great books podcast.

15
00:00:54.335 –> 00:00:57.970
Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is Leadership

16
00:00:57.970 –> 00:01:01.650
Lessons from the Great Books Podcast, episode number

17
00:01:01.650 –> 00:01:03.990
one forty seven.

18
00:01:07.250 –> 00:01:11.010
One hundred years ago, during the roaring twenties, the

19
00:01:11.010 –> 00:01:14.445
gap between the American wealthy and elite

20
00:01:14.445 –> 00:01:18.284
classes and the American rural poor and the veterans of World War

21
00:01:18.284 –> 00:01:21.905
one was as massive as the gap is

22
00:01:21.965 –> 00:01:25.325
in our current era. An

23
00:01:25.325 –> 00:01:28.840
era of, quote, unquote, racing along under its its own power

24
00:01:29.140 –> 00:01:31.960
served by great filling stations full of money,

25
00:01:33.219 –> 00:01:37.060
these disparities between classes, while nothing new in

26
00:01:37.060 –> 00:01:40.805
The United States and the tensions between those classes having always

27
00:01:40.805 –> 00:01:44.345
been a factor in the rulings too that is the culture of The United States

28
00:01:44.965 –> 00:01:48.345
led to a lot of dissatisfaction.

29
00:01:51.285 –> 00:01:54.810
Writers, poets, comedians, and entertainers have always been

30
00:01:55.130 –> 00:01:58.829
the class or part of the class of people who have held up a mirror

31
00:01:58.890 –> 00:02:02.570
to the tensions and frictions inherent in a society and

32
00:02:02.570 –> 00:02:05.549
culture that is based on freedom

33
00:02:06.329 –> 00:02:09.709
and a creed that is supposed to be raceless,

34
00:02:10.514 –> 00:02:14.275
classless, and ethno-less, and

35
00:02:14.275 –> 00:02:17.974
yet stubbornly, humanly insists

36
00:02:18.034 –> 00:02:21.875
on being so. Those same writers,

37
00:02:21.875 –> 00:02:25.650
poets, comedians, and entertainers have sought to educate, explain,

38
00:02:25.650 –> 00:02:29.430
and elucidate these splits between people

39
00:02:29.810 –> 00:02:33.430
in a general population and to a general population

40
00:02:33.970 –> 00:02:37.590
that may not always be paying that close attention.

41
00:02:39.705 –> 00:02:43.385
Some of the best elucidators of the tensions of the lost generation

42
00:02:43.385 –> 00:02:47.145
one hundred years ago included folks like Gertrude Stein, Ernest

43
00:02:47.145 –> 00:02:50.825
Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. And

44
00:02:50.825 –> 00:02:54.560
the author that we are going to introduce to you today

45
00:02:54.860 –> 00:02:58.159
was one of the most delicate, personal, and poignant chroniclers

46
00:02:58.940 –> 00:03:02.700
of the nature and the habits of

47
00:03:02.700 –> 00:03:06.400
the elite culture that sat at the top

48
00:03:06.459 –> 00:03:09.335
of a lost, cynical, and wounded generation

49
00:03:10.035 –> 00:03:13.875
who, to paraphrase from Kurt

50
00:03:13.875 –> 00:03:16.615
Cobain in another lost generation,

51
00:03:17.555 –> 00:03:20.535
just wanted to be entertained now.

52
00:03:22.440 –> 00:03:25.960
But also, this lost generation wanted

53
00:03:25.960 –> 00:03:29.580
revenge for the last war that the senator’s son,

54
00:03:29.640 –> 00:03:33.480
the millionaire’s son, and the elite man’s son didn’t have to

55
00:03:33.480 –> 00:03:36.140
go to the Western Front to fight.

56
00:03:38.194 –> 00:03:41.555
Today, we will be opening up and

57
00:03:41.555 –> 00:03:45.174
introducing some of the themes embedded

58
00:03:45.235 –> 00:03:49.075
for leaders in the Romana Clef of

59
00:03:49.075 –> 00:03:52.310
decadent decline, what was euphemistically

60
00:03:52.690 –> 00:03:55.510
called the lost generation during the roaring twenties,

61
00:03:56.450 –> 00:03:59.990
Tender is the Night by f Scott Fitzgerald.

62
00:04:02.450 –> 00:04:06.150
Leaders, it’s not the society that’s tragically screwed up.

63
00:04:06.905 –> 00:04:09.805
It’s all of us as individuals.

64
00:04:46.740 –> 00:04:50.440
So today on the podcast, we will be joined by a guest.

65
00:04:51.220 –> 00:04:53.800
We talked about in episode,

66
00:04:54.820 –> 00:04:58.420
one forty six with Tom Libby, how we were going to be

67
00:04:58.420 –> 00:05:01.845
changing up the format of the show a little bit, and this will be our

68
00:05:01.925 –> 00:05:05.765
first attempt at doing that. Normally, on solo

69
00:05:05.765 –> 00:05:08.265
episodes, I will wax poetically,

70
00:05:09.285 –> 00:05:13.125
about some particular book and some themes that I have pulled from

71
00:05:13.125 –> 00:05:16.965
the book. And normally, that poetic waxing will take around forty five

72
00:05:16.965 –> 00:05:20.780
minutes, usually about a half hour with the music breaks not

73
00:05:20.780 –> 00:05:23.840
inserted, and, then we’ll get on out of here.

74
00:05:24.780 –> 00:05:27.340
However, we’re gonna go in a little bit of a different direction today. So I’m

75
00:05:27.340 –> 00:05:30.945
not gonna talk overwhelmingly about the themes

76
00:05:31.085 –> 00:05:34.685
in Tender is the Night, although we may touch on some of

77
00:05:34.685 –> 00:05:38.525
that. Instead, I’m going to introduce the book. I’m going to

78
00:05:38.525 –> 00:05:41.965
talk about the author. I’m going to talk about, his

79
00:05:41.965 –> 00:05:45.330
background and his life, for those of you who don’t know anything about f Scott

80
00:05:45.330 –> 00:05:49.110
Fitzgerald, and sort of tee up, f Scott

81
00:05:49.169 –> 00:05:52.789
and tee up Tender is the Night, in anticipation

82
00:05:53.889 –> 00:05:57.490
of future guests coming on in the next couple of

83
00:05:57.490 –> 00:06:01.225
episodes to talk about this writer, talk about the

84
00:06:01.225 –> 00:06:04.665
book, and to talk about how it intersects with

85
00:06:04.665 –> 00:06:08.185
leadership today. So that’s where we’re

86
00:06:08.185 –> 00:06:11.945
going. This is the beginning of that new

87
00:06:11.945 –> 00:06:15.590
project, that new approach, this new format that we are going to be

88
00:06:15.590 –> 00:06:19.430
taking on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. And

89
00:06:19.430 –> 00:06:23.110
I invite you to join us. I invite you to

90
00:06:23.110 –> 00:06:26.675
come along for the ride, and I invite you I invite

91
00:06:26.675 –> 00:06:30.514
you to take a listen and consider the life and

92
00:06:30.514 –> 00:06:33.495
times of f f Scott Fitzgerald.

93
00:06:57.395 –> 00:07:01.155
So let’s, open up the door, and let’s talk a little bit about

94
00:07:01.155 –> 00:07:04.290
f Scott Fitzgerald. So Frances Scott Key

95
00:07:04.530 –> 00:07:07.910
Fitzgerald, born 09/24/1896,

96
00:07:08.290 –> 00:07:11.730
died 12/21/1940, was

97
00:07:11.730 –> 00:07:14.950
a novelist, depicting the flamboyance

98
00:07:15.730 –> 00:07:19.330
and the dominant excesses of what was

99
00:07:19.330 –> 00:07:21.935
nominally called the Jazz Age.

100
00:07:23.194 –> 00:07:26.414
During his lifetime, he published four novels,

101
00:07:27.194 –> 00:07:30.974
including Tender is the Night, This Side of Paradise,

102
00:07:31.354 –> 00:07:34.175
The Beautiful and the Damned, and, of course,

103
00:07:34.930 –> 00:07:38.310
his most, most popular

104
00:07:38.449 –> 00:07:42.289
novel, at least the one that was most popular after his death, The

105
00:07:42.289 –> 00:07:46.050
Great Gatsby. He published four

106
00:07:46.050 –> 00:07:49.715
short story collections and 164 short

107
00:07:49.715 –> 00:07:53.495
stories, mostly to make money. We’ll talk a little bit about why in

108
00:07:53.555 –> 00:07:57.235
later episodes, but, he he did publish a lot of

109
00:07:57.235 –> 00:08:00.835
short stories. He was born into a

110
00:08:00.835 –> 00:08:04.570
middle class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, though he

111
00:08:04.570 –> 00:08:08.410
was raised primarily in New York State. He dropped

112
00:08:08.410 –> 00:08:12.090
out of Princeton University in 1917 to join the United States Army

113
00:08:12.090 –> 00:08:15.770
during World War one. Now during the

114
00:08:15.770 –> 00:08:19.070
course of World War one, he,

115
00:08:19.985 –> 00:08:23.664
he began to really, come into

116
00:08:23.664 –> 00:08:27.044
his own with writing. Although he,

117
00:08:27.905 –> 00:08:31.650
as a second lieutenant during the, quote, unquote, great war,

118
00:08:31.889 –> 00:08:35.650
he largely described himself as, quote, unquote, the army’s

119
00:08:35.650 –> 00:08:39.250
worst aide de camp, largely because he preferred

120
00:08:39.250 –> 00:08:42.789
writing to tactics and training.

121
00:08:44.174 –> 00:08:48.015
The fact that he never saw combat, the armistice arrived as his infantry

122
00:08:48.015 –> 00:08:51.555
unit was preparing to ship abroad, was a lifelong

123
00:08:52.175 –> 00:08:54.995
regret as he

124
00:08:55.935 –> 00:08:59.600
was surrounded by people, most notably Ernest Hemingway and

125
00:08:59.600 –> 00:09:03.279
others who had actually been to war and actually

126
00:09:03.279 –> 00:09:07.120
been in, as they would say in later wars, the

127
00:09:07.120 –> 00:09:10.880
shit. Fitzgerald’s third novel, The

128
00:09:10.880 –> 00:09:14.535
Great Gatsby, received generally favorable reviews, but was a

129
00:09:14.535 –> 00:09:18.375
commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in

130
00:09:18.375 –> 00:09:22.214
its first year. As a matter of fact, The

131
00:09:22.214 –> 00:09:25.910
Great Gatsby, just like the majority of f Scott Fitzgerald’s

132
00:09:25.910 –> 00:09:29.449
other novels, and we’re gonna talk specifically about Tender is the Night,

133
00:09:30.389 –> 00:09:33.910
right now or today on the podcast. But the

134
00:09:33.910 –> 00:09:37.269
majority of his novels, now being read by high school

135
00:09:37.269 –> 00:09:40.490
students would probably make Fitzgerald

136
00:09:40.975 –> 00:09:44.575
blanch and become a little bit disgusted if he could see it

137
00:09:44.575 –> 00:09:48.335
now. After a long struggle with

138
00:09:48.335 –> 00:09:52.095
alcoholism, he attained sobriety only

139
00:09:52.095 –> 00:09:55.860
to die of a heart attack in 1940 at age

140
00:09:56.019 –> 00:09:59.800
44. After Fitzgerald’s death,

141
00:09:59.860 –> 00:10:03.399
Edwin Wilson, who befriended Fitzgerald at Princeton University,

142
00:10:03.860 –> 00:10:07.620
described Fitzgerald’s writing style. And I

143
00:10:07.620 –> 00:10:11.140
quote, romantic, but also cynical. He is

144
00:10:11.140 –> 00:10:14.655
bitter as well as ecstatic, astringent as well as

145
00:10:14.655 –> 00:10:18.255
lyrical. He casts himself in the role of playboy, yet at the

146
00:10:18.255 –> 00:10:21.955
playboy, he incessantly mocks. He is vain,

147
00:10:22.015 –> 00:10:25.860
a little malicious, of quick intelligence and wit, and has

148
00:10:25.860 –> 00:10:28.920
the Irish gift for turning language into something iridescent

149
00:10:29.620 –> 00:10:32.440
and surprising, close quote.

150
00:10:34.260 –> 00:10:38.019
That’s the literary life or at least the beginning of the literary

151
00:10:38.019 –> 00:10:40.279
life of f Scott Fitzgerald.

152
00:10:56.610 –> 00:11:00.370
So I’m gonna leap into some ideas that are explored in

153
00:11:00.370 –> 00:11:04.130
f Scott Fitzgerald’s biography that comes directly from the

154
00:11:04.130 –> 00:11:07.970
f Scott Fitzgerald Society. And you can go check

155
00:11:07.970 –> 00:11:09.250
them out at the

156
00:11:09.250 –> 00:11:13.954
fscottFitzgeraldsociety.com.

157
00:11:13.954 –> 00:11:17.394
So, couple of things that I wanna point out that I think are

158
00:11:17.394 –> 00:11:20.834
relevant for understanding Tender is the Night and understanding f Scott

159
00:11:20.834 –> 00:11:24.670
Fitzgerald as a writer, and they’re also relevant for leaders to pay

160
00:11:24.670 –> 00:11:28.130
attention to, as they read this book.

161
00:11:29.550 –> 00:11:33.310
Fitzgerald suffered from a lifelong inferiority complex that he

162
00:11:33.310 –> 00:11:36.290
later claimed distinguished him from Hemingway, his chief rival.

163
00:11:37.230 –> 00:11:41.035
Quote, I talk with the authority of failure, he insisted, earnest with

164
00:11:41.035 –> 00:11:44.735
the authority of success. That’s from his notebooks three eighteen.

165
00:11:46.635 –> 00:11:49.135
Fitzgerald was a man who was perpetually,

166
00:11:51.275 –> 00:11:54.255
not necessarily down in the mouth, but per perpetually,

167
00:11:56.820 –> 00:12:00.500
at least according to him, failing at life. He was failing

168
00:12:00.500 –> 00:12:03.640
at writing, failing at his talent, failing at his creativity,

169
00:12:04.339 –> 00:12:07.700
failing at being a friend to others, and most

170
00:12:07.700 –> 00:12:11.325
notably, particularly in a post Victorian

171
00:12:11.545 –> 00:12:15.385
or rapidly becoming post Victorian America. He was

172
00:12:15.385 –> 00:12:18.605
failing at the one shining aspect of Victorian

173
00:12:18.745 –> 00:12:22.445
morality, his marriage to

174
00:12:22.905 –> 00:12:24.205
Zelda Sayer.

175
00:12:26.720 –> 00:12:30.160
Most of Fitzgerald’s fiction, was promoted as

176
00:12:30.160 –> 00:12:33.600
autobiographical, and because he tended to do this, early

177
00:12:33.600 –> 00:12:37.220
critics tended to dismiss him as being a facile

178
00:12:37.680 –> 00:12:41.525
writer. However, during the peak years of his popularity from

179
00:12:41.525 –> 00:12:45.365
1920 to 1921 I’m sorry, 1925, when

180
00:12:45.365 –> 00:12:48.745
he wrote, you know, This Side of Paradise, he wrote short stories

181
00:12:49.045 –> 00:12:52.850
for the Saturday Evening Post that were incredibly popular. Of

182
00:12:52.850 –> 00:12:55.430
course, he wrote The Beautiful and the Damned,

183
00:12:56.530 –> 00:13:00.310
and, of course, his penultimate book, The Great Gatsby.

184
00:13:02.370 –> 00:13:04.470
When he wrote these books

185
00:13:06.774 –> 00:13:10.535
and became a popular writer, he was probably The United

186
00:13:10.535 –> 00:13:13.915
States’ First most widely read writer

187
00:13:14.135 –> 00:13:17.895
among the elite and among the common people who wanted

188
00:13:17.895 –> 00:13:21.435
to see what the elite were doing, who wanted to be

189
00:13:21.710 –> 00:13:25.010
and walk hand in hand with envy and jealousy

190
00:13:25.710 –> 00:13:29.470
of what the elite had. From

191
00:13:29.470 –> 00:13:33.310
the great Gatsby, you get the idea from its

192
00:13:33.310 –> 00:13:36.815
narrator, Nick Carraway, of being inside and

193
00:13:36.815 –> 00:13:39.955
outside the action. You also

194
00:13:40.575 –> 00:13:44.035
see the challenges of dissipation,

195
00:13:45.295 –> 00:13:48.399
the challenge of a lack of cardinal virtues,

196
00:13:49.019 –> 00:13:52.480
and a world so prone to cynical expedience

197
00:13:52.940 –> 00:13:56.000
and plausible deniability that optimism,

198
00:13:56.860 –> 00:13:59.680
any kind of optimism, can seem tragically

199
00:14:00.300 –> 00:14:04.095
naive. As a matter of fact, the

200
00:14:04.095 –> 00:14:07.775
Great Gatsby, contains several of the most evocative

201
00:14:07.775 –> 00:14:11.455
symbols in all of American literature, including, the green

202
00:14:11.455 –> 00:14:14.975
light at the end of Daisy’s Dock, the Valley Of Ashes that separates Long Island

203
00:14:14.975 –> 00:14:18.389
from New York City, and the disembodied eyes of doctor TJ

204
00:14:18.389 –> 00:14:20.970
Eckleburg that peer out from an abandoned billboard.

205
00:14:22.790 –> 00:14:26.630
Gatsby’s ambition, which is supposed to be, I

206
00:14:26.630 –> 00:14:30.225
believe, a pronouncement, moralistic one, I

207
00:14:30.225 –> 00:14:33.985
believe Edmund Wilson would say, pronouncement on the American dream

208
00:14:33.985 –> 00:14:37.685
of the roaring nineteen twenties is, of course, exemplified

209
00:14:38.225 –> 00:14:41.985
in Fitzgerald’s most cited passage and elegized as

210
00:14:41.985 –> 00:14:45.440
an expression of the American dream. And I quote

211
00:14:45.660 –> 00:14:49.500
from the great Gatsby, Gatsby believed in the

212
00:14:49.500 –> 00:14:53.339
green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before

213
00:14:53.339 –> 00:14:57.180
us. It alluded us then, but that’s no matter. Tomorrow, we will run

214
00:14:57.180 –> 00:15:00.665
faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine morning,

215
00:15:01.845 –> 00:15:05.205
so we beat on boats against the current, borne back

216
00:15:05.205 –> 00:15:08.805
ceaselessly into the past, close

217
00:15:08.805 –> 00:15:09.305
quote.

218
00:15:12.480 –> 00:15:16.240
Fitzgerald’s other novel, the novel that we are going to be focusing on, Tender

219
00:15:16.240 –> 00:15:19.700
is the Night, is so totally the opposite of The Great Gatsby.

220
00:15:19.920 –> 00:15:23.300
It’s kind of as if they were written by two different writers,

221
00:15:24.560 –> 00:15:27.995
written over the course of a nine year period, that saw

222
00:15:27.995 –> 00:15:31.675
Fitzgerald handicapped by his alcoholism and by

223
00:15:31.675 –> 00:15:35.295
his wife Zelda’s descent into schizophrenic

224
00:15:35.755 –> 00:15:39.295
madness. The book is chaotic. It’s nonchronological.

225
00:15:40.170 –> 00:15:43.790
It’s confusing. It had the urinations and rhetorical

226
00:15:43.930 –> 00:15:47.690
sideshows. It did not sell nearly as well as

227
00:15:47.690 –> 00:15:51.070
f Scott Fitzgerald wanted it to because people

228
00:15:51.210 –> 00:15:54.764
wanted a linear story. They wanted

229
00:15:54.764 –> 00:15:58.524
more of Gatsby. They wanted more of this side

230
00:15:58.524 –> 00:16:01.964
of paradise. They wanted more of The Beautiful and the Damned. They wanted more of

231
00:16:01.964 –> 00:16:05.425
the short stories. As a matter of fact, they wanted Gatsby to dance

232
00:16:05.644 –> 00:16:09.120
like a trained monkey, and they also

233
00:16:09.820 –> 00:16:13.440
wanted Fitzgerald to make Gatsby dance

234
00:16:13.740 –> 00:16:17.200
like a trained monkey. And Fitzgerald

235
00:16:18.540 –> 00:16:22.205
well, Fitzgerald wrote a story that expounds upon

236
00:16:22.205 –> 00:16:25.585
the historical, cultural, and philosophical nature

237
00:16:26.365 –> 00:16:29.805
of being an expat away from America and in

238
00:16:29.805 –> 00:16:33.425
Europe in a post World War one world,

239
00:16:34.190 –> 00:16:37.870
Full of ruminations, full of sadness, and

240
00:16:37.870 –> 00:16:41.710
also full of chaos, the book shines a light on

241
00:16:41.710 –> 00:16:45.470
what it means to start out as being serious as a leader

242
00:16:45.470 –> 00:16:49.084
or as a person of any kind and then what it means to

243
00:16:49.084 –> 00:16:52.764
descend to descend with

244
00:16:52.764 –> 00:16:56.384
all speed into un

245
00:16:56.764 –> 00:16:57.264
seriousness.

246
00:17:13.875 –> 00:17:17.714
The great relationship between Ernest Hemingway and f Scott

247
00:17:17.714 –> 00:17:21.335
Fitzgerald is one that, quite a lot of digital

248
00:17:21.875 –> 00:17:24.935
and literal ink has been spilled upon,

249
00:17:25.720 –> 00:17:29.260
particularly when Hemingway was an ex pat in,

250
00:17:29.880 –> 00:17:33.560
the nineteen twenties in Paris along with f Scott

251
00:17:33.560 –> 00:17:37.400
Fitzgerald and his wife. And Hemingway happened to be writing

252
00:17:37.400 –> 00:17:41.100
The Sun Also Rises, which we covered on this podcast

253
00:17:41.535 –> 00:17:44.435
before with Libby Younger. You should go check that episode out.

254
00:17:45.215 –> 00:17:48.835
And, there’s a great story that,

255
00:17:49.695 –> 00:17:53.455
relates in specifically to f Scott Fitzgerald and to

256
00:17:53.455 –> 00:17:57.040
his wife, Zelda, and their

257
00:17:57.040 –> 00:18:00.660
relationship, based off of the ruminations

258
00:18:01.280 –> 00:18:04.740
and the observations that Ernest Hemingway

259
00:18:04.880 –> 00:18:08.275
made, about their marriage that was

260
00:18:08.275 –> 00:18:12.115
published in A Movable Feast, another book that

261
00:18:12.115 –> 00:18:15.255
we covered by Hemingway on this podcast.

262
00:18:16.275 –> 00:18:19.875
And I quote from A Movable Feast, the essay

263
00:18:19.875 –> 00:18:22.295
entitled Hawks Do Not Share.

264
00:18:24.330 –> 00:18:27.549
That fall of nineteen twenty five, I was upset because I would not,

265
00:18:29.210 –> 00:18:31.929
because I would not show him the manuscript of the first draft of The Sun

266
00:18:31.929 –> 00:18:35.610
Also Rises. I explained to him that it would mean nothing until I had gone

267
00:18:35.610 –> 00:18:38.735
over it and rewritten it, and that I did not want to discuss it or

268
00:18:38.735 –> 00:18:42.575
show it to anyone first. We were going down to Schruns

269
00:18:42.575 –> 00:18:46.115
in the Voroburg in Austria as soon as the first snowfall there.

270
00:18:47.135 –> 00:18:50.495
I rewrote the first half of the manuscript there, finished in January, I

271
00:18:50.495 –> 00:18:54.049
think. I took it to New York and showed it to Max Perkins of

272
00:18:54.049 –> 00:18:57.650
Scribner, then went back to Schreun’s and finished rewriting the book. Scott did not see

273
00:18:57.650 –> 00:19:01.090
it until after the completed rewritten and cut manuscript had been sent to Scribner’s at

274
00:19:01.090 –> 00:19:04.929
the April. I remember joking with him about it and him being worried and

275
00:19:04.929 –> 00:19:08.044
anxious to help as always once a thing was done.

276
00:19:08.585 –> 00:19:11.404
But I did not want his help while I was rewriting.

277
00:19:13.384 –> 00:19:17.144
While we’re living in Vorarlberg and I was finished rerunning the novel,

278
00:19:17.144 –> 00:19:20.024
Scott and his wife and child had left Paris for a watering place at the

279
00:19:20.024 –> 00:19:23.840
Lower Pyrenees. Zelda had been ill with that familiar intestinal complaint that

280
00:19:23.840 –> 00:19:27.460
too much champagne produces and which was then diagnosed as colitis.

281
00:19:27.840 –> 00:19:31.680
Scott was not drinking and starting to work, and he wanted to us to come

282
00:19:31.680 –> 00:19:35.475
to Roi Le Pen in June. They They would find an

283
00:19:35.475 –> 00:19:38.195
inexpensive villa for us, and this time he would not drink, and it would be

284
00:19:38.195 –> 00:19:41.315
like the good old days. And we would swim and be healthy and brown and

285
00:19:41.315 –> 00:19:44.995
have one aperitif before lunch and one before

286
00:19:44.995 –> 00:19:48.750
dinner. Zelda was well again, and they were both fine,

287
00:19:48.750 –> 00:19:52.429
and his novel was going wonderfully. He had money coming in from a dramatization of

288
00:19:52.429 –> 00:19:55.549
The Great Gatsby, which was running well, and it would sell to the movies, and

289
00:19:55.549 –> 00:19:59.070
he had no worries. Zelda was really fine, and everything was going to be

290
00:19:59.070 –> 00:20:02.895
disciplined. I had been down to Madrid in

291
00:20:02.895 –> 00:20:06.735
May working by myself and came by train from Bayonne to Juan

292
00:20:06.735 –> 00:20:10.495
Le Pen’s third class and quite hungry because I’d run out of money stupidly and

293
00:20:10.495 –> 00:20:14.160
had eaten last in Hendaye at the French Spanish frontier.

294
00:20:14.220 –> 00:20:17.340
It was a nice villa, and Scott had a very fine house not far away.

295
00:20:17.340 –> 00:20:21.020
And I was very happy to see my wife, who had the villa running

296
00:20:21.020 –> 00:20:24.860
beautifully, and our friends. And the single aperitif before lunch was very

297
00:20:24.860 –> 00:20:28.515
good. And we’ve several more before lunch, which was very good, and we

298
00:20:28.515 –> 00:20:32.275
had several more. That night, there

299
00:20:32.275 –> 00:20:36.115
was a party to welcome us at the casino, just a small party, the

300
00:20:36.115 –> 00:20:39.875
McLeish’s, the Murphy’s, the Fitzgerald’s, and we who were living at the villa. No one

301
00:20:39.875 –> 00:20:43.500
drank anything stronger than champagne, and it was very gay and obviously a splendid place

302
00:20:44.220 –> 00:20:47.680
place to write. There’s going to be everything that a man needed to write except

303
00:20:48.460 –> 00:20:52.220
to be alone. Zelda was

304
00:20:52.220 –> 00:20:55.580
very beautiful and was tanned, a lovely gold color, and her hair was beautiful dark

305
00:20:55.580 –> 00:20:59.055
gold, and she was very friendly. Her

306
00:20:59.055 –> 00:21:02.815
hawk’s eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything

307
00:21:02.815 –> 00:21:06.255
was alright and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned

308
00:21:06.255 –> 00:21:09.555
forward and said to me, telling me her great secret,

309
00:21:11.250 –> 00:21:14.690
Ernest, don’t you think Al Jolson is

310
00:21:14.690 –> 00:21:16.150
greater than Jesus?

311
00:21:18.290 –> 00:21:22.050
Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda’s secret that

312
00:21:22.050 –> 00:21:25.650
she shared with me as a hawk might share something with a

313
00:21:25.650 –> 00:21:29.245
man. The hawks do not share.

314
00:21:30.825 –> 00:21:34.365
Scott did not write anything anymore that was good

315
00:21:35.305 –> 00:21:38.845
until after he knew that she was

316
00:21:40.105 –> 00:21:40.605
insane.

317
00:21:57.405 –> 00:22:00.625
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a man with an inferiority complex

318
00:22:01.005 –> 00:22:04.765
who happened to come along and happened to have a talent for

319
00:22:04.765 –> 00:22:08.305
writing during a time when

320
00:22:09.005 –> 00:22:12.490
we were in an at the end of

321
00:22:12.490 –> 00:22:16.190
an unraveling era during the last

322
00:22:17.130 –> 00:22:20.750
great eighty year succulent cycle in America.

323
00:22:21.850 –> 00:22:25.230
That last great succulent cycle ended, of course,

324
00:22:25.530 –> 00:22:29.045
with the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima

325
00:22:29.585 –> 00:22:33.265
and Nagasaki. But during the

326
00:22:33.265 –> 00:22:36.945
unraveling that took place between the end of world war

327
00:22:36.945 –> 00:22:40.545
one and the beginning and throughout the great

328
00:22:40.545 –> 00:22:43.740
depression, and through the Roaring Twenties,

329
00:22:44.520 –> 00:22:48.360
we were convinced in America because the Roaring Twenties was part of the high

330
00:22:48.360 –> 00:22:52.200
and then the Great Depression was the unraveling. We were convinced that we

331
00:22:52.200 –> 00:22:54.700
were, at least in The United States, okay.

332
00:22:56.735 –> 00:23:00.115
During a high, during a generational high, men like Fitzgerald,

333
00:23:02.735 –> 00:23:06.275
these men set the table for other men who will come later.

334
00:23:06.735 –> 00:23:10.435
Interestingly enough, the the man who was, Fitzgerald’s

335
00:23:10.735 –> 00:23:14.390
military commander at, at the training camp

336
00:23:14.390 –> 00:23:17.930
at, at Fort Leavenworth was Dwight d

337
00:23:18.150 –> 00:23:21.750
Eisenhower, interestingly enough, a man

338
00:23:21.750 –> 00:23:25.210
who would be responsible for getting us out of the chaotic

339
00:23:25.350 –> 00:23:28.090
period of World War two and the president

340
00:23:29.325 –> 00:23:32.065
himself, a man Fitzgerald did not like.

341
00:23:33.165 –> 00:23:36.304
Fitzgerald did not understand that his

342
00:23:36.525 –> 00:23:40.205
words, his critique of the high, and the

343
00:23:40.205 –> 00:23:43.799
excesses of it in preparation for the unraveling

344
00:23:44.419 –> 00:23:47.940
would allow for men like Eisenhower and even

345
00:23:47.940 –> 00:23:51.380
Truman and many others to make hard

346
00:23:51.380 –> 00:23:55.075
decisions while people who

347
00:23:55.075 –> 00:23:57.095
would have to suffer under those hard decisions,

348
00:23:58.914 –> 00:24:02.534
were becoming more and more, in the twenties anyway, at least

349
00:24:03.075 –> 00:24:06.294
cynical about the bloom on the proverbial

350
00:24:06.995 –> 00:24:10.730
rose. Fitzgerald, as I said before,

351
00:24:10.730 –> 00:24:14.090
was a man with an inferiority complex. And because he was a man with an

352
00:24:14.090 –> 00:24:17.690
inferiority comp an inferiority complex, he fell in love

353
00:24:17.690 –> 00:24:20.510
with a woman with mental health problems,

354
00:24:21.850 –> 00:24:25.505
a woman who his friends opposed

355
00:24:26.125 –> 00:24:29.345
and deemed Zelda ill suited for him.

356
00:24:30.205 –> 00:24:33.585
Of course, she was an Episcopalian back when religion

357
00:24:33.965 –> 00:24:37.644
actually mattered, and the Episcopalians were

358
00:24:37.644 –> 00:24:39.740
wary of Scott’s Catholic background.

359
00:24:41.080 –> 00:24:43.900
They were also wary of whether or not a writer could actually

360
00:24:44.520 –> 00:24:47.100
make any money. Fitzgerald

361
00:24:47.880 –> 00:24:50.886
died, in

362
00:24:51.640 –> 00:24:55.435
Hollywood. Right? You know? And, Hollywood

363
00:24:55.435 –> 00:24:58.835
at the time was not a thing. If you wanna sort of make a

364
00:24:58.835 –> 00:25:02.355
parallel to today, Fitzgerald died at a time when

365
00:25:02.355 –> 00:25:05.795
Hollywood would have been, like, would have been considered in the public

366
00:25:05.795 –> 00:25:09.335
consciousness the way that YouTube is considered in the public consciousness

367
00:25:09.395 –> 00:25:13.159
today. It wasn’t a place of serious work. If

368
00:25:13.159 –> 00:25:16.039
you wanted to be serious, you wrote books. If you wanted to be serious, you

369
00:25:16.039 –> 00:25:19.240
went and worked in the theater in New York. But if you wanted to fool

370
00:25:19.240 –> 00:25:21.740
around, you went into the movies.

371
00:25:23.720 –> 00:25:27.235
Fitzgerald wound up working in the movies, which for him was a bitter

372
00:25:27.235 –> 00:25:30.915
comedown the way that working on youtube would be a bitter

373
00:25:30.915 –> 00:25:34.755
comedown for someone like well I don’t know name

374
00:25:34.755 –> 00:25:36.535
your writer here of this era

375
00:25:38.320 –> 00:25:42.080
Fitzgerald was exposed to many, many of

376
00:25:42.080 –> 00:25:45.860
the most famous folks of his day. I already mentioned some of these, Gertrude

377
00:25:45.920 –> 00:25:49.700
Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and of course, Ernest Hemingway,

378
00:25:50.715 –> 00:25:54.395
people who would wind up cast on the shores of their

379
00:25:54.395 –> 00:25:58.235
own degradation at the end of the roaring twenties and the

380
00:25:58.235 –> 00:26:01.775
beginning of the chaos leading into world

381
00:26:01.915 –> 00:26:03.135
war two.

382
00:26:07.410 –> 00:26:11.170
Fitzgerald was not ready for the Great Depression, and

383
00:26:11.170 –> 00:26:13.750
he became bankrupt and spent most of

384
00:26:14.130 –> 00:26:17.730
1936 and 1937 living in cheap

385
00:26:17.730 –> 00:26:21.544
hotels, writing about the same things he had written about before, and

386
00:26:21.544 –> 00:26:24.905
not really understanding that the world was

387
00:26:24.905 –> 00:26:28.125
moving on. Suffering

388
00:26:28.345 –> 00:26:32.125
from illness and constant guilt over Zelda’s

389
00:26:32.345 –> 00:26:35.820
mental health, he, he struggled to

390
00:26:35.820 –> 00:26:39.600
do anything creative, finally achieving sobriety

391
00:26:39.660 –> 00:26:42.240
a year before his death and,

392
00:26:43.180 –> 00:26:45.040
well, then dying.

393
00:26:48.044 –> 00:26:51.565
Fitzgerald was not critically evaluated, and his writing wasn’t

394
00:26:51.565 –> 00:26:55.245
critically evaluated as being more than light pop culture froth

395
00:26:55.245 –> 00:26:58.065
when he was alive. But in retrospect,

396
00:26:59.005 –> 00:27:02.690
he is probably the most famous chronicler of

397
00:27:02.690 –> 00:27:06.210
the jazz age that we have. The folks who don’t

398
00:27:06.210 –> 00:27:09.830
like, or don’t appreciate Ernest Hemingway’s

399
00:27:09.970 –> 00:27:13.410
hard look at the world through The Sun Also Rises, who

400
00:27:13.410 –> 00:27:16.630
consider Hemingway to be too cynical, and he is.

401
00:27:17.595 –> 00:27:21.295
They really like Gatsby, who’s romantic. By the way,

402
00:27:22.235 –> 00:27:25.915
Gatsby or not Gatsby, I’m sorry. They like Fitzgerald, who is

403
00:27:25.915 –> 00:27:29.515
romantic. Gatsby was romantic too, but in a different kind of way. They like

404
00:27:29.515 –> 00:27:31.535
Fitzgerald, who they consider to be romantic.

405
00:27:34.210 –> 00:27:38.050
So what do we take from all of this? What

406
00:27:38.050 –> 00:27:41.650
do we what do we to conclude about f Scott

407
00:27:41.650 –> 00:27:45.010
Fitzgerald before we go into considering the

408
00:27:45.010 –> 00:27:48.825
themes of Tender is the Night in our next episode and talking about

409
00:27:48.825 –> 00:27:52.585
that with our guest. Well, one of the first things we can consider

410
00:27:52.585 –> 00:27:56.285
is that in order to be a serious writer, a serious leader,

411
00:27:57.225 –> 00:28:01.050
a serious artist, a serious creative, a serious person of any kind, you

412
00:28:01.050 –> 00:28:04.190
must at the very minimum take your talent seriously.

413
00:28:05.930 –> 00:28:09.630
One of the great knocks that Hemingway had against f Scott Fitzgerald

414
00:28:09.690 –> 00:28:12.990
was that he felt the drinking and the carousing and the partying

415
00:28:13.995 –> 00:28:17.755
was making Fitzgerald weak. Now that might have

416
00:28:17.755 –> 00:28:21.595
been the Victorian coming up in Hemingway, but he may have also had

417
00:28:21.595 –> 00:28:25.435
a point because two things can be true at the same time even

418
00:28:25.435 –> 00:28:29.250
if they come from a source that we moderns and we postmoderns

419
00:28:30.510 –> 00:28:32.929
may not particularly like.

420
00:28:35.070 –> 00:28:38.750
You also have to do the work. I think that’s the other

421
00:28:38.750 –> 00:28:42.590
lesson that we can take. Fitzgerald was really good at writing short

422
00:28:42.590 –> 00:28:46.294
stories, and perhaps he should have stuck merely to that. But

423
00:28:46.294 –> 00:28:49.515
the novel was the place where the status was, but he could never really

424
00:28:49.975 –> 00:28:53.655
wrap his arms around the discipline to do the work because he was

425
00:28:53.655 –> 00:28:57.355
always being distracted by, well, other things.

426
00:28:58.570 –> 00:29:02.269
And that’s probably the third lesson we can pull from the literary

427
00:29:02.330 –> 00:29:06.169
life of f Scott Fitzgerald, do the work in

428
00:29:06.169 –> 00:29:09.769
a disciplined way. Discipline, as

429
00:29:09.769 –> 00:29:13.365
Jocko Willock would say in our era, equals freedom.

430
00:29:14.945 –> 00:29:17.925
If you don’t have discipline, you don’t have anything.

431
00:29:18.705 –> 00:29:21.925
And some folks are natural talents. Don’t get me wrong.

432
00:29:22.385 –> 00:29:26.225
But most of us most of us are not natural talents at anything that

433
00:29:26.225 –> 00:29:30.039
will get us paid, but we’re natural talents at a bunch of stuff that the

434
00:29:30.039 –> 00:29:33.880
market doesn’t care about. But if we’re natural talent and

435
00:29:33.880 –> 00:29:37.559
the market does care about it and we can get paid, then we

436
00:29:37.559 –> 00:29:41.325
owe it to the market to treat our talent seriously,

437
00:29:52.764 –> 00:29:56.160
between treating all that stuff seriously and maybe

438
00:29:56.700 –> 00:29:59.920
maybe putting our egos on the back burner

439
00:30:00.780 –> 00:30:04.400
and treating ourselves as leaders, writers, creatives,

440
00:30:04.540 –> 00:30:07.520
engineers, scientists, business people, whatever,

441
00:30:08.460 –> 00:30:10.995
a little bit less seriously.

442
00:30:14.995 –> 00:30:17.735
I don’t know. This is just a few of my thoughts.

443
00:30:19.075 –> 00:30:22.055
Let’s, let’s get into the book.

444
00:30:24.179 –> 00:30:27.940
And well, that’s it

445
00:30:27.940 –> 00:30:28.679
for me.

446
00:31:15.154 –> 00:31:18.455
Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast

447
00:31:18.595 –> 00:31:22.410
today, And now that you’ve made it this far, you

448
00:31:22.410 –> 00:31:26.170
should subscribe to the audio version of this show on all the major podcast

449
00:31:26.170 –> 00:31:30.010
players, including Apple iTunes, Spotify, YouTube

450
00:31:30.010 –> 00:31:33.470
Music, and everywhere else where podcasts are available.

451
00:31:34.595 –> 00:31:38.115
There’s also a video version of our podcast on our YouTube

452
00:31:38.115 –> 00:31:41.875
channel. Like and subscribe to the video version of this podcast on

453
00:31:41.875 –> 00:31:45.235
the leadership toolbox channel on YouTube. Just search for

454
00:31:45.235 –> 00:31:48.780
leadership toolbox and hit the subscribe button there on YouTube.

455
00:31:49.660 –> 00:31:53.500
And, while you’re doing that, leave a five star review if you like

456
00:31:53.500 –> 00:31:56.940
what we’re doing here on Apple, Spotify, and

457
00:31:56.940 –> 00:32:00.720
YouTube. Just go below the player and hit five stars.

458
00:32:01.245 –> 00:32:04.925
We need those reviews to grow and it’s the easiest way to help grow this

459
00:32:04.925 –> 00:32:08.445
show and tell all your friends, of course, in

460
00:32:08.445 –> 00:32:12.125
leadership. By the way, if you don’t like what we’re doing here,

461
00:32:12.125 –> 00:32:15.710
well, you can always listen to another leadership show. There are several

462
00:32:15.850 –> 00:32:19.610
other good ones out there. At least that’s what

463
00:32:19.610 –> 00:32:22.990
I’ve heard. Alright. Well,

464
00:32:23.610 –> 00:32:24.910
that’s it for me.