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Fitzgerald – Poet of the Jazz Age – a litmus test

By Old Grumpy Guy on February 8, 2009 at 10:15 PM in Humor, OldGrumpyGuy, Political Correctness

Just as the world can be divided into those who prefer Mozart to Bach and those who don’t, so the world can be divided into those who prefer F. Scott Fitzgerald over Ernest Hemingway and those who don’t.

In my series on the great composers, I found that some of those who preferred Bach over Mozart tended to be very rude and hostile in their dismissal of Mozart (and of my series). These people screamed that after all Bach had done for counterpoint and in his development of the fugue, anyone who thought Mozart was the greater composer was an imbecile. It reminded me of the abuse I attracted for daring to question Obama’s credentials for being President.

I love many pieces by Bach, and ranked him third in the list, but I always felt he lacked the originality, the poetic soul and the expressive range of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven (or even Brahms, Prokofiev and many others). It’s the same thing I feel in comparing Hemingway with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway, in my opinion, lacked the poetic soul and the expressive range of a great writer like Fitzgerald.

I remember a literary critic I once worked with on a newspaper praising the “lean, sparse prose” of Hemingway. I asked him to give me an example, and he read me the following passage:

“He had a beer. It was good. He had another.”

I was totally unimpressed, but with Hemingway so highly recommended by this literary critic (who had a degree in English literature, which I didn’t), I felt I should give him a chance and tried to familiarize myself with his work. I read some of his most well known novels, but never experienced the same feeling of involvement, of going on a journey of discovery, that I did with Fitzgerald and other writers I came to love and admire.

I also found that those who preferred Hemingway tended to be hostile and insultingly dismissive of me for regarding Fitzgerald as more deserving of the title of “Great American Writer” than Hemingway, who in my opinion was nowhere near as brave or as eloquent as Fitzgerald in baring his soul and capturing both the darkness and the humor of life.

I see the same kind of attitudes behind this, and behind the reactions to my composer series, playing out in many areas of political and social life.

Naked hostility and insults are always a sign of people who are on flimsy ground and therefore feel the need to defend their elitist positions with sneering dismissal of those who don’t agree with them.

Now who does that remind you of?

  • http://firefox AnnieCollier

    OGG, I’m with you on the comparison of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Fitzgerald is really wonderful and brings you into his world perfectly.

    Looking forward to more fun with Grumpy! Thanks.

  • Tricia Spiegel

    Wonderful! I love your work, Grumpy.

  • candymarl

    Excellent OGG. I too, prefer Fitzgerald to Hemingway.

  • AlexisM

    OGG – Love Fitzgerald. My all time favorite is the short story The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Second favorite is Tender is the Night…love Nicole and Dick Diver…I agree Fitzgerald before Hemingway. Although the Hemingway family itself is its own crazy story. Sadly I knew Ernest’s granddaughter Margaux, whose life didn’t end very well and it seemed to be part of the “Hemingway Curse.”

  • ahs

    Methinks you dost protest too much.

    Love ‘em both, although I slightly prefer Hemingway. Anyway, the pseudo-psychoanalysis of literary critics, done apparently so that you could throw slaps at Obama, is pretty silly.

    On any issue of taste (and in today’s dumbed-down political environment, political preference is too often about taste), there are going to be people on both sides who are contemptuously dismissive of the “other” side. Those people are jerks. But in such circumstances, self-victimization is unattractive.

  • ahs

    Methinks you doth protest too much.

    Love ‘em both, although I slightly prefer Hemingway. Anyway, the pseudo-psychoanalysis of literary critics, done apparently so that you could throw slaps at Obama, is pretty silly.

    On any issue of taste (and in today’s dumbed-down political environment, political preference is too often about taste), there are going to be people on both sides who are contemptuously dismissive of the “other” side. Those people are jerks. But in such circumstances, self-victimization is unattractive.

    • ahs

      oops, sorry for the double post.

      • Winston

        Now it looks like you are the one protesting ONCE too much. Just kidding!! :)

  • elise

    You are setting people up here, OGG. If we don’t agree with you, we are hostile and angry and I don’t like to be played in that fashion. However, I am not a big fan of Hemingway’s. I had a college professor who thought he was the great American writer and he assigned a term paper to review one of Hemingway’s book. I chose A Farewell To Arms and wrote my paper. A couple of days after I turned it in, the prof asked me to stay after class and he handed the paper back to me. He said I could do better and I had to rewrite the paper. I told him I didn’t much like Hemingway and he went on a prodigious rant. I rewrote the paper, turned it in and a few days later he asked me to stay after class. I got an A on the paper, but he still insisted I could have done better. He was a wonderful teacher and I got along fine with him otherwise, but he had a blind spot about Hemingway.

    • Old Grumpy Guy

      I’m only getting at people who add insults to disagreement, not people who disagree with me.

      • candymarl

        Yes, OGG, goodness forbid we should point out the nastiness directed at those that dared disagree.

        I just happen to agree with you on these particular writers (but not so much on the composers).

        • OldGrumpyGuy

          I have no problem with people who disagree, only those who do it with insults. I do not think I was being nasty in pointing it out.

  • http://sonicninjakitty.wordpress.com Sonic Ninja Kitty

    If anyone feels so strongly about their opinion, why don’t they do their own video?

    As for OGG, I really appreciate how he points out things I never noticed before. People who criticize are a dime a dozen in this world. People whose minds are open to new thoughts and viewpoints are the ones that make worthwhile contributions.

    • elise

      I have strong opinions about most things, Sonic Ninja Kitty, that’s why I come to nq. I don’t happen to disagree with him about Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I also agreed with him about Mozart, but I still believe he was preempting possible disagreement.
      For example, I like Coca Cola and if I say people who like Pepsi are disagreeable, the Pepsi drinkers are less likely to express their opinion.

      • http://sonicninjakitty.wordpress.com Sonic Ninja Kitty

        Point taken.

      • OldGrumpyGuy

        I was simply pointing out that some Hemingway lovers, like some Bach lovers, have been extremely rude and insulting in their dismissal of opinions that differ. I am never the first to dish out gratuitous insults.

    • Old Grumpy Guy

      Thanks Sonja.

      • http://sonicninjakitty.wordpress.com Sonic Ninja Kitty

        OGG, are you going to give us your take on that fabulous new literary sensation, B.H. Obama? (Though I hear he’s moved on to other things lately.) That would be tremendously humorous!

        • OldGrumpyGuy

          Unfortunately I find little to amuse me in the subject matter

  • Peggy Sue

    Another series I fully expect to enjoy, OGG.

    You are the man, grumpiness and all! I’m a Gatsby fan myself. But please continue.

  • AF catfish

    I never understood the appeal of Fitzgerald. Granted, I only read Gatsby, but I read it twice and didn’t see the genius in it either time.

    I’m still open to him, if somebody can explain the greatness in that book I’m all ears. Feels like I’m missing out.

    • AlexisM

      AF that’s not my favorite. Go easy on yourself and read the Diamond As Big As The Ritz. It’s lovely and has a great message and theme.

      • andrew191

        Fitzgerald takes time and devotion, the focus should be more on prose than plot, although it has not been missed by me that our current economic problems have had a disturbing correlation to the release of “B. Button”, and a re-make of “The Grapes of Wrath” at this point in time will send me over the edge. There’s simply no where else to go.

    • Old Grumpy Guy

      Gatsby was not really one of my favorites either.

  • truthtelling007

    Just anything but that Heinrich Ibsen…who isn’t American anyway, but I’ll read just about anything before that boring drivel.

    My favorite American author is Robert Anton Wilson, not because of the subject matter either, but because he was both daring, genius, beyond illustrative with his words, and imaginative.

    He’ll never be a classic, but certainly worth a read.

    • OldGrumpyGuy

      No I will not be including Henrik Ibsen, but I do like his epic poem Peer Gynt, mainly because I acted in a production of it and quite like the music that Grieg did for t.

  • bert

    I look forward to this series by OGG. I love reading and I love good stories. I am much better at fiction than music. Guess it is becasue I was a very early reader. I used to live at the library and my first job was as a page in a library.

    Of the two authors OGG mentions here I don’t really have a favorite. If pressed to choose it would be Fitzgerald by a very small margin only becasue some of his passages are almost poetic.

    However, I also have to say that I never expected to like The Old Man and the Sea which was required reading in college. I kept putting it off and putting it off. When I finally got to it, I could not put it down. I read it in one sitting finishing up at 3:30 in the morning. However, in retrospect it really is not much of a novel. It was compelling during the read but does not have lasting power. It is like eating a Big Mac – lots of empty calories.

    I will be interested to see who else you profile in this series and if any of my favorites will be highlighted. At least one should be as he wrote one of the greatetst novels ever.

    After music and literature are you going to do art?

    • OldGrumpyGuy

      No, I have no plans to do art, but that may change. If I do, it will just be a pick of my favorites, as with the writing. I would be interested to know who it was you feel wrote one of the greatest novels ever. He might not be included because this series is not about who was greatest. simply about writers that have given me a lot of pleasure and some enlightenment maybe.

      • bert

        I think Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is one of the greatest novels ever written, if only for its depth and breath of topics and characters. It is my all time favorite novel. I have read it three times already and will read it once more before I leave this grand earth. Each time I read it I bring new expereinces to it and see something new and different in it.It covers all of the major topics of life that we all face in the course of our lives played out against the backdrop of Bonaparte’s major blunder (later to be duplicated by Hitler)thinking he could invade and conquer Russia in winter. Listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overature sounds all together different after I read War and Peace. It takes on a new powerful meaning because after’becoming’ all those Russinas characters in the book I knew how emotional they felt about anything celebrating defeating Bonaparte.

        My favorite scene is when Pierre is sitting in a French prisoner of war camp, freezing in the frigid air. And he starts laughing out loud, a booming laugh in the frigid cold star-filled night. He had discovered that the French could capture his body, but no one could ever capture his mind or his thoughts and therefore he would always be free. That thought and understanding just so resonates in me, even to this day.

        I also think The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the greats. I like redemption stories like this and like A Christmas Carol for the same reason. Another great is A Tale of two Cities. As for American authors, nothing beats Margaret Mitchel’s Gone With the Wind, whuch I read in eight grade. It was my mother’s book and I still have it. Second printing.

        More info than you wanted, I am sure. I am talkative today.

        • OldGrumpyGuy

          You are never too talkative, bert (whom I always thought was a guy but now discover is a woman). Your posts are always enjoyable and well written. I’m not a great lover of War and Peace, though I agree with you about its breadth and it is certainly a great literary achievement. I became more involved with Tolstoy when I started writing an operatic version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina with the guy who wrote the lyrics for “The Living Years” for Mike and the Mechanics . (It was never finished, though I still have recordings of parts of it). But generally I have never really been able to get deeply involved with the Russian writers. I think I jus prefer people whose language and experiences are closer to home.

          • bert

            Anna Kerenina has all the right story elements to make a great opera. Too bad you and your friend never finished it.

            A lot of people think bert is a male. But in this case it is an abreviated nickname of my first name. Hope it was not a disappointment to learn that I am a she.

            • OldGrumpyGuy

              Not disappointed at all.

  • FLDemFem

    Comparing Hemingway and Fitzgerald is like comparing apples to oranges. Hemingway started out as a reporter and carried that style into his writing. His writing was observational, not intimate. He wrote what would have been seen by an observer, but wasn’t very good at involving the reader in the emotional life of his characters. This is, in my opinion, what makes the devotees of Fitzgerald see him as an inferior writer. And Hemingway wasn’t good at novel construction, he was better at short stories and novellas. The Old Man and the Sea is a masterpiece novella. Hemingway’s novels are flawed in their structure which makes them much less effective than Fitzgerald’s novels which are close to perfect in structure.

    The two men’s private lives and how they handled the problems in them were also similar to their writing styles. Hemingway tended to run away from his problems, divorcing women and hanging out with the guys instead of having a home life. He cut short anything or anyone that didn’t fit into his current mood or feeling. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, was married to Zelda until she died and he tried hard to have a normal life with her. It wasn’t possible due to her mental illness and subsequent hospitalization, but he longed for the quiet family life that Hemingway ran from. He loved her his whole life and her tragedy was a constant presence in his life and in his work.

    Hemingway could write perfect sentences, and Fitzgerald could write perfect novels. Both of them excelled in different components of literature. If you want to be a great novelist, write sentences like Hemingway and structure the novel like Fitzgerald. And don’t drink yourself to death or eat a shotgun.

    • OldGrumpyGuy

      Nice comment FlDemFem.

    • AlexisM

      FLDemFem…Great post! I think both of their lives are interesting. Like I said, I had a window into the Hemingway nightmare life because of my friend. But, I always thought that the Fitzgeralds were so glamorous and fun. I loved their relationship, despite Zelda’s problems, and it was a great time for music, art and literature. Their friends were fascinating too. What a life. I often think that writers will mostly end up tormented and their lives end badly. Putting emotions on the page must be so disturbing. Having to conjure up images, and be honest about feelings…I would end up like F. Scott. Drunk in my bathrobe staring at the computer screen all day.

      • FLDemFem

        If you haven’t already read it, read “Zelda” by Nancy Milford. It is an excellent biography of her and it sheds a lot of light on the relationship between her and Scott. It also has some great photos of them and their friends. But it explores in depth her life and her relationship with her husband and daughter. It is a fascinating book.

        • OldGrumpyGuy

          The whole Scott-Zelda saga qualifies as one of the great American real-life tragedies and makes for fascinating reading

          • AlexisM

            I think that’s why Tender is the Night is more my favorite. It’s a thinly veiled portrait of their lives together.

            I would love to read Zelda, thanks.

            • OldGrumpyGuy

              The Beautiful and Damned is probably the best TITLE for their lives, or perhaps the Beautifully Talented and Damned

              • AlexisM

                Good one OGG!

  • oowawa

    Well OGG, I almost missed this post, and am sure glad I didn’t. You read beautifully. You would do very well (I think) making a series of recorded books for young children. You have a very calming and reassuring voice, and I’m sure you would send them happily off to slumberland in no time (no insult intended).

    Anyway, your comparison of Fitzgerald to Hemingway is, I think, quite right. In my reading experience, there is no more perfect novel than The Great Gatsby. I’m sure there are greater novels out there, but I have not read them. I also greatly admire the film. The casting was superb–Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, Bruce Dern as Tom, Karen Black as Myrtle–all brilliant choices, I think. This work, to me, is the mythical Great American Novel.

    I can tell I’m really going to enjoy this series. Thank you!

    • OldGrumpyGuy

      Thanks oowawa. There’s hope for you yet!

  • Interested party

    Agreed it is unfair to rate Hemingway against Fitzgerald. You would hope that each writer would be evaluated on their on merits, right?
    But then, since we’re talking about rating, time wise there are a number of exceptionally talented writers from that period American or otherwise and it makes me wonder what happen to literary talent after their stint was over.

    Looking forward to your review of other novelists/writers..

    • AlexisM

      Actually it is rather interesting to compare Hemingway and Fitzgerald because they themselves fought and were competitive with each other.

  • Interested party

    Comparison does not necessary entail rating.

    • OldGrumpyGuy

      Indeed not

  • http://firefox AnnieCollier

    OGG, I hope you include my very favorite writer, Colette. Now there was an interesting life!

    • OldGrumpyGuy

      Unfortunately, Annie, apart from “Gigi” I am not all that familiar with her work. I will be concentrating mainly on British and American writers who have had a big influence on me.

  • JulieD

    Old Grumpy Guy –

    I agree with you re: Mozart and Fitzgerald.