February Discussion: Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (spoilers)
 

Let's discuss the February MobileRead Book Club selection, Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. What did you think?

I thought it was fabulous. I was was sucked in by the gorgeous writing from the first paragraph; the imagery placed me on the Riviera in 1925 and I continued to be beguiled by the subtle characterizations and the slow and indirect reveal of the story at the heart about the beautiful couple who so entranced Rosemary at her first glimpse of them.

It's both a very American and very Fitzgeraldian story, about disintegration and second acts and who gets to have them (Grant in Galena) and who doesn't, about people who use others, those who observe and those who act. Other themes include that of Amerians abroad, Americans and race, I could go on and on. I thought it was very dense, much more so than The Great Gatsby.

For all that it's supposed to be about Gerald and Sara Murphy, it's obvious that it's more about Scott and Zelda. Presumably Fitzgerald was engaging in projection/aspiration. I have New Critic tendencies that don't like to delve to deeply into these origins, but I'm mentioning it for those who find the shift from Murphy to Fitzgerald a little disconcerting and unjustified. I think it worked, myself.

IMO, the book wouldn't have been nearly so effective told chronologically. We would have missed the slow reveal and the outsider's perspective of the Divers, which can be expected to be flawed, unlike that of an omniscient narrator. What was Malcolm Cowley thinking?

I know a lot of posters didn't care for it at all and I'll be interested to read their reactions. I couldn't put it down.

I completely agree about the beautiful writing. I too found myself right there, on the riviera!
I also agree that I probably would have enjoyed the chronological version less.

About a third, or maybe halfway through the book I realized I didn't like the characters at all and I really didn't care at all what happened to them. With so many book on my TBR and gave up on this one. So unfortunately not much more to add.

I read it, and in general, I liked it.

I think I did have some problems with the writing. I did appreciate how it was written, and enjoyed it for a short while, but to me, it got in the way of the story. I had problems following the story sometimes. For example, I didn't realize that someone was falsely accused/arrested (or the bearing to the story), or didn't appreciate (realize it was happening) Dick's fall into alcoholism and the part it played in the story line.

Reading the Wiki page afterward cleared up a lot of plot points. :)

I can't read anyone's comments too deeply at the moment as I'm only 70% through. But here is what I will say at this stage of the book:

Completely agree about the writing. It's mesmerising. However, I did struggle sometimes understanding exactly what was being said.

Loved the ordering of Book I and Book II. I understand there is an edition that tells the story in chronological order. I couldn't think of anything worse. The transition from Book I to Book II was perfect for me.

I'm looking forward to getting this finished so I can read everyone's comments in more detail, but at the moment I don't even know what's going to happen and I don't want to spoil it.

I'm still at the begining of the story but expect to keep reading. I just finished reading Rhys Bowen's latest "Her Spyness" mystery, called "Naughty In Nice", so its fun to read another book set in almost the same locale and in almost the same time period...of course Naughty in Nice was probably alot more fun to read!

What I appreciate most by reading Tender is the Night on my Nook Color is there have been many words that I've been able to do a quick look up to see what it means, or to ensure that the meaning I associate with word is the same (or different) from Fitzgeralds. What a handy tool! I'm highlighting them also, so I can go back and look at them again at a later point.

I have very mixed thoughts about this book. There are lines, and more rarely, passages that are really nice. He has brought out a few characters who will live on for me, though I truly liked none of them. By the end of the book, I was ready to toss all of them into the nearest deep body of water!

For me, it doesn't really deserve the hype. Overall, I felt the writing was inconsistent and cried out for a really good editor.

And why in the romance month? That makes no sense to me. I'd nominate it for melodrama month. (If I nominated it at all, that is :blink:)

It seemed like Part I was told from Rosemary's point of view and I think this provided a great start to the book. I think it allowed for a fairly dramatic transition at the end of Book I and the start of Book II where the focus shifted to Dick.

However, it looked like Book III was going to Nicole and it didn't seem to last long. We slid back to Dick.

I liked the story. I think in terms of discussing it I would focus on what how the relationship was constructed such that a pivotel event/person in the form of Rosemary could cause it to unravel over a period.

What do we think?

To me, I believe that Nicole was a mentally ill woman who is looking at making a person responsible for her recovery/wellness. When Dick arrived on the scene she built him into almost superhuman status and made him responsible for her sanity.

Doctor Dick was a person whose need of admirers/love made him susceptible to the beautiful woman pinning her hopes to him. He was wooed not by her personality, but by her admiration for him.

So I already have two major issues with their relationship. One is that Nicole's recovery does not come from within and she is effectively using Dick as a medicine for her problems and secondly that Dick is falling in love with admiration and dependence rather than with a person.

As the story progresses, I believe Rosemary lodged a subtle wedge between the two. It wasn't overt, but I believe Nicole has understood the implications of Rosemary to her relationship with Dick and I think that over the course of the next 5 years her impression of him changes subtly in line with his gradual decline. As a reader we don't really see it until the story is told from her point of view, but by then we're seeing the end of the relationship and Nicole's re-evaluation of Dick is rather severe by this stage.

For Dick, Rosemary seems to be the first beautiful woman who has broken through this illusion of perfection he's created around himself and Nicole. He doesn't pretend that Nicole is not mentally ill, but he pretends that his relationship with her is not flawed, a shell which has protected them both until Rosemary's excessive admiration and romantic notions finally penetrate. It's after this that he starts slowly falling apart; that he realises that Nicole's dependence does not sustain him the way he always thought it did.

Interestingly, I think to some extent that it is Dick's decline that provides the right environment for Nicole to actually break her depedendence on him and stage a somewhat self-funded recovery. This gradual transition for Nicole only exacerbates Dick's decline because he has been sustained for too long by admiration and it is gradually being withdrawn. By the end of the book, I think we see a largely healed Nicole who can now live life on her own terms. Unfortunately, I don't think we can say the same for Dick. He ends the book as a man travelling from place to place looking for enough sustenance from the admiration of women to continue.

I'm interested to know what other people think of this.

The meeting of Nicole and Dick on the funicular was heavily symbolic of their relationship. Fitzgerald explicitly tells us that the funicular works by having the descending car pull the ascending car up. I thought that was beautifully done as foreshadowing of the course of Dick's and Nicole's marriage.

I only half agree with you, though, on the nature of their feelings for each other. I do think Nicole drained Dick, but I also think he really loved her--the reason he resisted Rosemary to the extent he did. Both Rosemary and her mother are quite pernicious, by the way. Anything for the experience and damn the cost to others.

Does anyone else think that Rosemary also had an early sexual experience, not incest per se, but that she was pimped out by her mother? And yet she, unlike Nicole, was able to move past it.

I absolutely agree with what you've said about Rosemary and her mother. And I love your link between the funicular and Dick and Nicole's relationship. I guess you'd say that Nicole's rise was sponsored by Dick's fall - that Nicole used him in a much deeper (although inadvertant way) than Rosemary and her mother used him.

I do think in some ways though that he was designed to be used. He was absolutely fed by admiration and fawning and it seemed to me that if you supplied enough of it, he responded (especially if you happened to be a pretty girl).

With Rosemary, I do think she was probably "pimped out" by her mother to get a start on her career. She was a product of her mother. I didn't spend too much time thinking about Rosemary though because I began to think of her as a handy instrument of destruction rather than a character in her own right.

I finally finished the book, and here are some thoughts:

His use of innuendo was superb:


But sometimes after a big build-up, the lack of detail was anti-climatic:


Humor seemed to pop up in unexpected places:


It's been said that you never know what's in a person until they're squeezed. If this is true, Dick Diver was a lemon. I was appalled by his racism.


Even though its use was limited, I quickly grew tired of this "clever" device:


His descriptions of the tribulations of his patients were some of the most interesting sections of the book:


That put me in mind of one of my favorite (and very short) poems, "Counting the Mad" by Donald Justice. I'd love to post it here, but since I'm concerned about copyright issues, I'll simply direct you to this page of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, where it is reprinted with permission.

I have more to say, but this post is quickly becoming too long, so I'll save the rest for later.

Do check out that Donald Justice poem, though. I suspect you'll like it.

I must confess to having been more fascinated by this book than I anticipated. It wasn't the easiest book to read, and I often found the transitions between scenes somewhat abrupt and confusing, but the psychological insights he offered into the characters was worth the effort. Naturally, I speak only of my own experience here, and again,naturally, I hardly agreed with all of the author's psychological views, but I felt some of his insights were absolutely revelatory and served to spur further thought, such as this one, speaking of Dick Diver's method of child-rearing:


Not having encountered any serious studies to either confirm or refute this premise, it nonetheless seems to resonate with me intuitively as true. It also may serve, in part, to explain why women, as a group, are better observers than men. Asked to describe a scene, men will almost invariably miss details that women have picked up on. This may be innate; it may be part and parcel of how our different bodies are influenced by hormones and chemistry, but it may be largely social as well: from their youth, it is generally the boys who are encouraged to take the lead and to play hard, while girls who behave in such a boisterous manner are reminded that such behavior is "not ladylike". We have all heard that boys will be boys, but girls should be more reserved. Such a forced inhibition, it seems to me, no matter how subtle, must surely encourage in some measure the compensatory development of the powers of observation, just as the encouragement to be more physical and outgoing in their play must dampen in some measure, however slight—or at least not give as great an encouragement to—the development of verbal skills in boys.

If anyone in the book deserved a happy ending, it was Nicole. She seemed to undergo a maturation process that went hand in hand with the progress in her mental stability. I don't know that there were any real villains, but Dick Diver's character was surely the most tragic. While Nicole overcame a lot of adversity and grew stronger in the process, Dick nearly totally disintegrated and became much smaller and petty by the book's end

Are you saying we need a melodrama month? :rofl:

Yes, despite all of the romantic entanglements, I wouldn't consider it a romance either. It seemed to belong firmly in the drama category.

I didn't have a problem with the romance category. I though this was about the romance of Nicole and Dick. And I think romantic (rather than realistic) is how I would label the construction of their relationship.

But I agree that this is the darker side of romance - when a relationship disintegrates along with the people involved. Of course Nicole seemed to get gradually stronger, but Dick was a mess.

Are you saying we need a melodrama month? :rofl:

Uh, nope! We already had it ;)

[QUOTE=WT Sharpe;1980261]If anyone in the book deserved a happy ending, it was Nicole. She seemed to undergo a maturation process that went hand in hand with the progress in her mental stability. I don't know that there were any real villains, but Dick Diver's character was surely the most tragic. While Nicole overcame a lot of adversity and grew stronger in the process, Dick nearly totally disintegrated and became much smaller and petty by the book's end/QUOTE]

I agree that Dick's end was the most tragic. For me, it is because he gave the most and ended by losing everything. He had the most to offer the world at large, but spent it all in the service of one person. It seemed to me that he truly loved her, and maybe most of the time counted his sacrifice well spent. His dissolution at the end surely had some aspects of recognizing that all dreams and possibilities had been squandered, no more chances, and just maybe the trade wasn't enough.

I don't know - I'm not as sympathetic towards Dick. To me his part is not tragic, but a tragedy in Shakespearian terms.

I believe his own flaws and weaknesses were always destined to bring him down and that it was only a matter of time before Nicole realised she was leaning on the wrong person for her mental health.

I think his flaws were not his compassion and love, but his overwhelming need to be admired and loved. Additionally, I think Nicole's mental illness sustained him somewhat. So it made sense that when Nicole started to grow - he started to shrink.

I agree, caleb72, and think you summed things up pretty well. I felt there was some character flaw in Dick Diver's character that led to his fall, and I think you hit the nail on the head. While I was initially more sympathetic to the character in the early parts of the book, it became clear by the latter part of the novel that he was very much dependent upon his need to be seen as a savior; his motivations were much more self-serving than he pretended, both to himself and to others. And, yes, as Nicole began to realize this, his importance in her life and his stature in his own eyes began to fade.

And again:

Wow...this is just so fascinating because I have much harder feelings toward Nicole! I do not see her as growing in strength or character or ability by the end of the book. I feel she merely transferred her dependence and need for a protector to someone who seemed the epitome of strength at the time--and away from someone who was no longer serving her well. Had she truly come fully into her own as an individual, she would have been able to stand on her own and BE Nicole instead of Nicole+1.

And if she were a fully restored and reintegrated person, I have to wonder about her jumping ship like rat fleeing a downed vessel. She was married to Dick for ages, had two children with him, and was as stable as she was due to the practice of his art, the strength of his personality, and the bedrock of his love for her. Where's the love and the assist for Dick when he clearly desperately needed it?

I wonder what would have happened if the latest Knight in Shining Armor hadn't shown up...what would Nicole have done? That isn't the story we are given, of course, but I think it was only a matter of time until someone/anyone who adored her enough and seemed worldly wise and strong enough came along to latch on to.

Guess I don't like her very much!!:p

True Confessions
 

It's 'fess up time. I have come to like this selection. A lot.

It's true that I found the first third a pure struggle and a seeming exercise in futility, but by the end of the second third I had come to accept that had its moments, and that the author was not without his merits. After finishing the novel, a transformation began in my estimation of the novel's worth, hastened largely by the fact that things the characters said and did kept swimming up to the forefront of my consciousness. I bought an audiobook version and re-"read" it, this time with my ears, and discovered a hundred nuances that I missed upon first reading. This work for me has that remarkable quality of being able to creep up on the mind and demand to be heard. It's got "stick-to-itness".

Thank you, issybird, for that nomination, and thank you caleb72 and hpulley for seconding and thirding that selection. And, of course, thanks to all who voted for Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Well done! :)

I'm glad you liked it. It was my first foray into F. Scott Fitzgerald and I was very impressed with the language.

I don't know if he'll ever be a "go to" author for me as I struggled a bit here and there, but I loved the subject matter he was covering in this book and I feel educated by the comments in this thread, particularly issybird's contribution regarding the funicular. It's use as a literary device was unfortunately lost on me on first reading. Once educated, I thought it was a wonderful working model of Dick's and Nicole's relationship.

Do you think - had Rosemary not entered the picture - whether Dick and Nicole would have lived in their illusion of happiness forever? Or do you think time would always bring them undone if not by Rosemary than by someone or something else?

I don't think Rosemary had that much influence on the outcome of their marriage; IMO it was headed for disaster from the beginning. I think what the episode with Rosemary showed was Dick's need to be seen as a protector. When they met, she was young, and unsure of herself. By the time they consummated their affair years later, she had matured and had grown in confidence and self-assurance. Interestingly, as she grew stronger, Dick lost interest.

I also wonder if his interest in the youthful Rosemary and the young Nicole might indicate that Dick secretly struggled against the same impulses that Nicole's father had succumbed to years before that brought secret shame to him and led to psychological scars for Nicole. Consider these statements by the two men:

I agree that their marriage would not have been a good one, with or without Rosemary. In my opinion their marriage never was a good one. At least it would not have been good or healthy for Nicole. For Dicky? Maybe. At least he might have been able to kid himself to thinking so.
I totally agree with Caleb's view of Dick. Or rather, my view of him is much harsher than that even, and had he not been a fictional character I would have been upset and disgusted over who/what/how he was.

Some weeks later, I'm turning this book over in my mind. I found such depth and nuance to it that it's still rewarding thought. Tom, that was lovely. I'm so glad you liked it. And for caleb, you might want to give The Great Gatsby a try. It's Fitzgerald's greatest novel and while I don't think it has the depth of Tender, it also doesn't have its flaws.

I'm still sympathetic to Dick. I think he can be seen as a Gatsby-type figure, one who flew too high and tumbled to earth. He transcended his upstate New York roots (and his losing Confederate ancestry). He worked hard, but he also got lucky, as we know from his being tapped for Bones and his "few ideas" that turned into a seminal text. Just the same, I think his life would have turned out as he planned, if not for his fatal meeting with Nicole on the funicular after he had done the right thing and walked away. Nicole sucked him dry. His struggles to maintain his integrity (buying his own shirts and re-wearing them!) were futile. I think his kindliness really was that, and one reason he was a good clinician.

In fairness to Nicole, their relationship was one of kill or be killed. Transference is one thing, but how do you manage being married to someone who is still managing your mental health? She could either look up to Dick or look down on him, but they met on the same plane only fleetingly (that funicular again, where we see the conductors having a brief interchange). I think Fitzgerald explicitly tells us that Tommy is her equal, when he describes the operation on his skull which leaves him vulnerable to a chance accident.

What I'm still struggling with is the theme of race. I think this is one of the flaws of the book; the theme is there but ultimately I don't know what Fitzgerald meant by it, which of course might be my own limitations. From the very first, we see that contrast on the beach between the tan skins of the Diver coterie and the pasty skins of the arrivistes. Then there's Jules Peterson, who sells shoe polish to Nordics! And whose death and Dick's reaction to it serves to highlight how Dick has lost his moral compass and is on his downward trajectory. Tommy is described as being so tan as to be Negroid. Finally, Mary North's marriage to someone of intermediate race and the excruciating scene where the Divers are fearful that somehow their son has been tainted by using the same bathwater of her stepson, as if race could rub off (the skin disease being only an excuse). And the daughter named Topsy!

Honestly, though, I have no idea what Fitzgerald was trying to achieve with all of this. Any insight would be appreciated.

I will reread this. I regret that I didn't take more notes of my favorite turns of phrase, but there were so many I felt as if it would be like the freshman who highlights almost everything on the page.

I didn't see the skin disease being only an excuse in the bathwater debacle, but I could be wrong. Dick most certainly did have a lot of racial hatred in him, as seen by his frequent spewing of racial epithets when he got angry, and even some of his aside comments when he was more in control. Thankfully, Nicole didn't seem to share this unpleasant side of his character, and seem to recoil from these episodes.

Oh, I don't think the skin disease was an excuse; I think they were really afraid of it. But I also think it was covering up for deeper racism.

And of course Dick had southern roots at a time when the effects of the Civil War were still felt. On the other hand, it was Abe North (which is not a subtle name) who was responsible for the incarceration of one black man and the death of another, over a bar bill. Again, I really don't know what Fitzgerald was trying to say with all this.

I glossed on the racial aspects and tended to treat them as incidental. When things like that appear in books meant for a certain period I just take that as a history lesson on the side rather than a message or theme. I suppose that the author is reflecting the attitudes of the time for us - in this case with some honesty I imagine.

I could be wrong of course. Based on your post issybird, I did some searching on the internet and came up with the following article on F Scott Fitzgerald and race. It's a bit brief, but it seems to suggest that there might have been a transition for the author in his views on race over the course of his works. In his early works, scorn was directed at different races from his pen, but in later novels the scorn is directed to racist characters instead. Or at least that's what I think the article is saying:

http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1575

I finally finished it. As mentioned by others it was tough slogging at points but I was really glad I persevered as I quite enjoyed it in the end.

I don't think you can ignore the racism though we have to keep it in the appropriate historical context. There is also the foreign police organizations with the Italians beating him badly and the French accepting bribes.

Alcoholism is another interesting topic with a historical context, written around the time of prohibition and its repeal.

Dick knew his divorce was coming and expected it from the start as the marriage had little purpose once she was cured. And he could never be the provider, almost nothing he did could be good enough for the social circles he aspired to. While it lasted, Nicole's mlney helped but it was never something he could be proud of. Social strata is another theme but Nicole was mostly a patient for him.

The ending isn't all bad news for Dick though his shrinkage apparently continues.

Also like others I wouldn't call it a romance. Dramatic tragedy perhaps.

Interesting language for the time and some very funny stuff too.

Does Jewess mean what I think it does? "The woman who had recognized her was not a Jewess, despite her name. "

Of course there is a ton of male female conflict to go with the racial and class conflict.

I can't find the quote from Rosemary's mother where she says because Rosemary is an actress and can make money she is like a boy and can have sex whenever she likes.

It took me a long time, but I am really glad I read it - I enjoyed it thoroughly, though the prose was at times beyond me, but as a non native speaker I am (sadly) used to it!

I am also glad I am late, as I have really enjoyed your comments - so let me only mention three that I don't think you have touched upon.

First, I wondered whether Dick's total obliteration in the end was really necessary from the narrative point of view: it is story of love that fades, and the final paragraphs describing Dick's demise felt a bit of an overkill to me.

Secondly, the Divers children felt a bit of an afterthought, and the scenes with them for me did not feel as compelling as the rest.

Finally, one thing which struck me is that, this book being written when it was, I was really surprised by the lack of any reference to what was happening politically (the rise of fascism and the Nazi), besides the funny hats of Italian carabinieri!

It is (shamefully) my first Fitzgerald book, but it won't be the last!

When I read the following at the end of a chapter near the end of the ebook (book three chapter nine) I thought it was over and wish it had ended here. Being an ebook I didn't realize it was not finished yet until I clicked further.

I think the story that Fitzgerald was telling is that Nicole ultimately was a parasite, that her recovery took something vital from Dick. I think your your version also would work, however; why not have it be a love that ended without annihilation of one of the lovers? But I continue to see Dick as a Icarus-like figure, one who flew too high and crashed.

I did not know (before reading this thread, shame on me!) about Fitzgerald's wife, so I definitely have to agree with you, I had not thought about this take on their story.

As somebody else said above, this is a book that keeps "growing" on you long after having finished it!