Fitzgerald's Mentors
128 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Hardcover
Release Date:06 Feb 2012
ISBN:9780817317614
Fitzgerald's Mentors
Edmund Wilson, H. L. Mencken, and Gerald Murphy
University of Alabama Press
A fresh and compelling study of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s intellectual friendship with Edmund Wilson, H. L. Mencken, and Gerald Murphy
Fitzgerald was shaped through his engagements with key literary and artistic figures in the 1920s. This book is about their influence— and also about the ways that Fitzgerald defended his own ideas about writing. Influence was always secondary to independence.
Fitzgerald’s education began at Princeton with Edmund Wilson. There Wilson imparted to Fitzgerald many ideas about education and literary values, among them respect for the classics and an acute awareness of literary tradition.
In New York H. L. Mencken impressed upon Fitzgerald his belief in the stifling effect of public morality on writers. Furthermore, Mencken’s The American Language changed Fitzgerald’s thinking about the power of everyday language.
After moving to France in 1924, Fitzgerald’s intellectual life took a very different turn. Gerald Murphy exposed him to the visual arts— including the work of Fernand Leger, Pablo Picasso, and Man Ray—and to people deeply interested in the perception of art in daily life. Equally important, Fitzgerald had many discussions about artistic values with both Gerald and Sara Murphy.
‘As with Berman’s previous writing on Fitzgerald, and on Modernism generally, this is excellent work, fresh and provocative, informed by deep knowledge of Fitzgerald and of the writers and philosophers of his time.’
—James L. W. West III, author of William Styron: A Life and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King, His First Love
‘Ronald Berman’s new book, Fitzgerald’s Mentors, is a remarkable and extremely valuable contribution to Fitzgerald studies. As he has done in the past, Berman looks beyond the biographical details of the author’s world to focus on the intellectual life of Fitzgerald and the era.’
—Ruth Prigozy, editor of The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald and coeditor of F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Perspectives and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Twenty-First Century
Ronald Berman is emeritus professor of English literature at the University of California at San Diego and past chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of several books, including The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s World of Ideas and Fitzgerald—Wilson—Hemingway: Language and Experience.
Introduction: Teaching and Learning 1
1. Edmund Wilson’s Authority 29
2. H. L. Mencken’s Democratic Narrative 47
3. Gerald Murphy and the New Arts 69
Notes 91
Bibliography 109
Index 117
1. Edmund Wilson’s Authority 29
2. H. L. Mencken’s Democratic Narrative 47
3. Gerald Murphy and the New Arts 69
Notes 91
Bibliography 109
Index 117
