Tag: Ernest Hemingway

     Pg. 284 of David Markson’s copy of Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

     On which Markson placed a bracket and a line next to (and underlined the first sentence and last part of the last sentence of) the following paragraph from a letter from Fitzgerald to Hemingway discussing Hem’s For Whom the Bell Tolls:
     “Congratulations too on your new book’s great success. I envy you like hell and there is no irony in this. I always liked Dostoiefski with his wide appeal more than any other European—and I envy you the time it will give you to do what you want.”

—-

     Congratulations too on your new book’s great success.

     I envy you like hell and there is no irony in this.

     I envy you the time it will give you to do what you want

     Fitzgerald said other complimentary things of For Whom the Bell Tolls in the letter in the above scan too:
     – “It’s a fine novel, better than anybody else writing could do.”
     – “The massacre was magnificent and also the fight on the mountain and the actual dynamiting scene.”
     – “The scene in which the father says goodbye to his son is very powerful.”
     – “I’m going to read the whole thing again.”

     What’s interesting about these kind remarks is that when I went to Markson’s books to see if the marked quote was used by Markson—or if any of the other quotes were used—I found something quite fascinating:
     Fitzgerald’s sentiments on For Whom the Bell Tolls ARE mentioned in the tetralogy, but not the sentiments from the above letter. Instead apparently Fitzgerald thought differently of For Whom the Bell Tolls when not writing directly to Hemingway:
     “A thoroughly superficial book with all the profundity of Rebecca.
     Scott Fitzgerald called For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
     Markson tells us on pg. 135 of Vanishing Point.

     Fitzgerald singing an altogether different tune…

     Pg. 270 of David Markson’s copy of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein:

     On which Markson has placed a line next to the entire page (in fact he has done so from pg. 260 to pg. 271—the entire section about Hemingway), and then underlined a specific passage:
     “It was then that Gertrude Stein said, Hemingway, remarks are not literature.”

—

     The beginning of the page of this scan reads:
     “He had added to his stories a little story of meditations and in these he said that The Enormous Room was the greatest book he had ever read. It was then that Gertrude Stein said, Hemingway, remarks are not literature.”

     David Markson underlined that last sentence on this page and, in a piece titled “The Failing of Americans” in the Review of Contemporary Literature, Dan Visel makes an interesting assertion about this passage and Markson’s prose:
     “Remarks are not literature, Stein said to Hemingway; but these books are an attempt to make them exactly that.”
     “These books” meaning Markson’s last four novels, The Notecard Quartet (Reader’s Block, This Is Not A Novel, Vanishing Point and The Last Novel).
     Visel continues: 
   “Reader’s Block sets the model for the next three: anecdotes about writers and artists are mixed with quotations, significant phrases (titles of works, characters, places), and occasional statements, in this particular book, about a Reader who is thinking of writing a novel about a Protagonist. But this apparently metafictional plot is subservient to the rush of literary trivia.”

Remarks are or are not literature?

      One of Gertrude Stein’s remarks futher down on this page of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was reused in Markson’s This Is Not A Novel:
     “They sat and talked a long time. Finally I heard her say, Hemingway, after all you are ninety percent Rotarian. Can’t you, he said, make it eighty percent. No, said she regretfully, I can’t. After all, as she always says, he did, and I may say, he does have moments of disinterestedness.”
     So reads the second to last paragraph on this page.

     “A pansy with hair on his chest, Zelda Fitzgerald called Hemingway.
     Ninety percent Rotarian, supplied Gertrude Stein.”
     So reads Markson’s reiteration of Stein’s remark on pg. 136 of This Is Not A Novel.

     Remarks are or are not literature?