[HN Gopher] Scott Fitzgerald's Last Act
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Scott Fitzgerald's Last Act
Author : samclemens
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-10-28 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.city-journal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.city-journal.org)
| cft wrote:
| I am curious if there was a single non-commercial writer anywhere
| in the world that ended up happy. Hemingway drunk himself to
| dealth, Tolstoy ended up wandering barefoot, James Foster Wallace
| committed suicide, JD Salinger went into exile, Jack Kerouac died
| at 47 from liver complications of alcoholism
| soneca wrote:
| Maybe going into exile meant happiness to Salinger.
|
| I have the impression that Toni Morrison had a happy later
| life.
|
| Denis Johnson published his important works after quitting
| drugs and alcohol. I also have the impression that his later
| life was happy.
| cafard wrote:
| To be fair, Tolstoy made it to 80 and a bit.
|
| And Hemingway did not drink himself to death, though I suppose
| he could have, given the time--but he used a shotgun.
|
| I should say that a fair number of respected writers lived long
| and perhaps happy lives.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| And if the implication is somewhat tinged with "lack of
| success leads to unhappiness," Hemingway's father blew his
| own brains out, so it's less that Hemingway was unhappy with
| his literary results and more genetically predisposed to
| shooting his head off.
|
| (Hemingway was, also, definitionally a commercial writer, as
| he was literally a war correspondent. I.e., someone writing
| serves commerce.)
| pinewurst wrote:
| Hemingway committed suicide after having his brain fried with
| repeated ECT sessions (and back then, it was far more
| intense) and quite probably suffering from dementia, either
| environmental or inherited.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I am curious if there was a single non-commercial writer
| anywhere in the world that ended up happy.
|
| What does "non-commercial" writer mean? Do you mean someone who
| is not selling their work for money? Or do you mean someone who
| is not working on advertising?
| Calavar wrote:
| I am really confused by "non-commercial" as well. Hemingway
| and F. Scott Fitzgerald were professional writers in the
| modern sense. Hemingway started off as a newspaper reporter.
| F. Scott Fitzgerald was a Hollywood screenplay writer.
| krisoft wrote:
| Yeah. It is a very amorphous constraint. Also what does
| "ended up happy" mean? Does Victor Hugo count? He was
| celebrated by the masses, had a long-long and productive
| life. But he had the misfortune of outliving his spouse,
| and by all accounts he was quite lonely in his last years.
| Does that count as "ended up happy"?
|
| Or what about Terry Pratchett? As far as I know he died
| surrounded by his loved ones. But he died due to
| Alzheimer's disease, which must have been terrifying.
|
| But if we can't call someone as successful as Victor Hugo
| or Terry Pratchett "non-commercial" then maybe someone
| obscure? Do you need to be published to be a writer? I
| don't think so. My friend's dad wrote a really funny, and
| heartfelt story about the history of their family. Never
| published it, probably nobody will publish it ever. I still
| count him as a writer. And he died surrounded by friends
| and family. Does that count as "ended up happy"?
| hluska wrote:
| Nobody knows your friend's dad. How are we supposed to
| guess if he ended up happy? If we use Kerouac and F.
| Scott Fitzgerald as examples of people who did not end up
| happy, maybe he did. Or maybe he died totally miserable
| pining for a woman he met when he was 14. We don't know
| and that's the great mystery of strangers.
|
| It doesn't help your comment much to start off talking
| about amorphous constraints when you conclude with
| something even more amorphous.
|
| And finally, I'm sure they're talking about literary
| fiction.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Nobody knows your friend's dad.
|
| What an astute observation. Almost as if you got my
| point. Some writers are unknown to the whole world.
|
| > How are we supposed to guess if he ended up happy?
|
| I didn't ask if he did. I asked if what I described
| counts as "ended up happy"?
|
| > It doesn't help your comment much to start off talking
| about amorphous constraints when you conclude with
| something even more amorphous.
|
| Perhaps if you give it an other read you will realise
| that what I'm doing is unpacking what I find amorphous
| about the question. Who is a writer? Who can we truly say
| that they have ended up happy? So yes, of course you will
| find much ambiguity in my answer.
|
| But if you can't handle it imagine that all I said:
| Victor Hugo, Terry Pratchett.
| martinpw wrote:
| > But he died due to Alzheimer's disease, which must have
| been terrifying.
|
| I wonder. Having had a parent go through this, one of the
| small mercies, at least for them, was that they
| themselves were not aware of what was happening. Their
| world felt normal to them. Instead, they thought
| everything and everyone else around them was becoming
| confused, crazy and hostile.
|
| But then, this is just one data point. As they say, when
| you have seen one case of dementia, you have seen one
| case of dementia.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| What does "non-commercial writer" mean? It seems so amorphous
| as to be anything.
|
| > James Foster Wallace committed suicide
|
| _David_ Foster Wallace, and he was certainly a commercial
| writer. He 's actually pretty famous for his commercial writing
| about tennis in particular.
|
| > JD Salinger
|
| He went into exile because his debut novel was so fabulously
| successful that he couldn't take the pressure of a follow-up.
| This seems like he'd be the very definition of a commercial
| writer, that his debut novel is extremely commercially
| successful.
| cxr wrote:
| > Hemingway drunk himself to dealth
|
| "Drunk up 'til his death", maybe.
| vundercind wrote:
| "Happiness writes white."
| hluska wrote:
| I suspect that when you say "non-commercial", you're talking
| about literary fiction. If so, yes there are a lot of tragedies
| within the field. David Foster Wallace is certainly one, as
| were Fitzgerald and Kerouac. J.D. Salinger had some interesting
| personal habits I don't agree with, but he largely became a
| recluse to hide from fame.
|
| But outside of those examples, you will find a large number of
| literary fiction writers who actually lived relatively normal
| lives. William Carlos William was a doctor as well as a writer
| - he served as Head of Pediatrics at a hospital in New Jersey
| for almost forty years until he died. Margaret Atwood turns 85
| in a couple of weeks - her long term partner recently died but
| she's still somewhat active on Twitter sharing information
| about the situation in Ukraine.
|
| And I could keep going.
|
| Writers are human and so express the full range of humanity,
| from dying young via suicide or alcoholism, to having
| successful medical practices and family lives.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Especially in that era, and perhaps also true a bit today, a
| lot of the famed novelists were recruited to write screenplays,
| and many of them were extremely unhappy despite the money. So
| whether or not it's commercial has nothing to do with it.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Pynchon seems happy
| CBarkleyU wrote:
| What has the old Pine-Cone been up to these days?
| adamc wrote:
| EM Forster lived a long life and seems to have found some
| happiness. Joseph Heller wrote one of the best American novels
| of the 20th century, and while he had medical issues later in
| life, I don't think he suffered from hard living.
|
| Also, I don't know why you think "non-commercial" matters.
|
| I think writers are similar to other people; the outcomes vary.
| We tend to notice the most atypical cases.
| voisin wrote:
| Hemingway didn't drink himself to death. He blew his head off
| with a shotgun.
| keiferski wrote:
| Borges seemed pretty happy in his old age.
| dwlg00 wrote:
| First one that comes to mind is Kobo Abe
| OisinMoran wrote:
| One of these is not quite like the others...
| lqet wrote:
| Cormac McCarthy seemed to be quite content with his life.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Sheilah Graham mentioned here was an interesting character,
| nowadays she's only known as Fitzgerald's paramour, but she had a
| long career as a columnist
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheilah_Graham). I really
| enjoyed her book _Beloved Infidel_ where she details her time
| with Fitzgerald.
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