Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931–2008)

Though I read most of this book while I waited for a global Wordpress glitch to correct itself, it still hasn't, I came off more satisfied than unsatisfied with Professor Bruccoli's lectures and theories on the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The book, essentially a collection of Bruccoli's undergraduate lectures on Fitzgerald, specifically his 1978 course at the University of South Carolina. Each chapter or two chapters per novel explored the various facets of Fitzgerald's writing, along with his motivations and his methods. At the end of certain chapters there is a back and forth between the Bruccoli and his students (unnamed).

I found his analysis and arguments on The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and The Love of the Last Tycoon, enlightening and persuasive. I found his views more enlightening than the essays featured in the (Harold) Bloom's Modern Critical Views edition on Fitzgerald. This should not be a surprise, given how in his life Bruccoli dedicated himself to be the foremost Fitzgerald scholar, and he was.

In particular, Bruccoli was not shy to point out the lazy, sloppy copyediting of Scribner's. Nor was he shy with his disdain for Fitzgerald’s first two books; which aren’t even covered. Nor did Bruccoli back away from highlighting all the flaws in The Great Gatsby, in particular Fitzgerald's sloppiness with time, dates, schedules, and math in Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.

If I have a complaint, it will be Professor Bruccoli's critical interpretation of the famous "shirt scene" from The Great Gatsby. Bruccoli argued that Daisy's cried at the sight of all those fine English shirts falling down were for the refinement and modesty that Gatsby lacked; how it was bona fide proof that he could never be Old Money like her. Then he wrote, "She is cruel and corrupt, but Daisy is not stupid (94)." Like Kathleen Moore from The Last Tycoon, Gatsby too is an outsider trying to break into a privileged wonderland. However, I believe that Bruccoli comes down way too hard on Daisy.

Firstly, who is to say that Daisy, and other women, didn't have an Emo fetish for bespoke men's shirts from London? She herself said, "I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before (92)."

Secondly, why are shirts a potent indicator of gaudy outsider versus refined insider status for Bruccoli or even Fitzgerald? The Queen of England, the President of the United States, and plenty of Old and New Money people, have people who select and buy clothes for them. Perhaps, according to his auteur and structuralist theories of writing, Fitzgerald led us and Bruccoli to this conclusion. However, Gatsby's enterprise to seduce Daisy is not self-contained in Chapter 5, it's the end novel, but Gatsby's check move is in Chapter 6 and his failed attempt at checkmate in Chapter 7.

Thirdly, while Daisy demonstrated her cruelty and corruption at the end of the novel, when she carelessly forgets about Gatsby, I doubt that she was deliberately scrutinizing Gatsby all of the way, that at this point of ecstasy thoughts of Old and New Money were far from her mind, and that Bruccoli just blamed the victim—Daisy.

Yes, Daisy's not stupid (94), of course, because she didn't seriously consider abandoning her Old Money life for Gatsby during the novel, however, she did consider it when she was young, before she moved east, and during the novel it doesn't seem that she's as malicious as Bruccoli argued. Daisy is bitter, from her husband's constant philandering. She is naive and shallow in her attraction to Gatsby's fantasies, his tricks. She is vengeful, passive aggressive, and shortsighted in her belief that she too can have her own Myrtle Wilson in Gatsby; a poor person she can emotionally and sexually exploit as her husband does. Her plans don't come to fruition because she has no convictions in them. In fact, in Chapter 7, she rejects the life Gatsby offers her.

I would argue that in the shirt scene that Daisy cried from being caught up in a flurry of emotions: (1) her marvel at the extent of Gatsby' love for her as when he created an empire to recapture her, and (2) her revelry in the success of her former-lover/current-boy toy/friend (for her)... that is, compersion. The first would explain why Gatsby and Daisy are on Cloud 9 for the rest of Chapter 5 and into the next. The second can be explained thusly: I think Daisy felt subconscious hints in Chapter 5 and then consciously knew in Chapter 7 that the "image" of her that Gatsby wanted to seduce was light-years apart from the person she became after her marriage and move east. However, that compersion initiated by the house tour would allow for Daisy to extract some joy and gratification from seeing a man ooze his entire life onto an image of her. But what are our alternatives?

Bruccoli wished us to believe that Daisy instinctually and critically analyzed the situation immediately upon the falling shirts, though she became visibly conflicted over her affair with Gatsby over the next two chapters. Why? If she knew that his love was impossible given their class differences, then she should've just ditched him and begone with it. No, Daisy, even after being corrupted by the east, still loved Gatsby. But her love was in her distant past and her love for Tom, though long dead, was nearer and more intimate. The Daisy that Gatsby once knew was a teenager whose future was unwritten. The Daisy that Gatsby later tried to (claim) from Tom had her future written: a mother and a socialite with an established reputation in high society. Though Gatsby and Daisy' residual love remained defiant, she could never just pack up and leave her life and her family.

Daisy’s personal characteristics/established psychological makeup and the development of those elements during the novel are the reasons why I would argue against any inner-critical analysis by Daisy at the end of Chapter 5. After all, people ordinarily don't critically analyze the meaning of events on a tour of an awe-inspiring monument, especially a monument devoted to them... unless they were a sour sport or a deeply cynical bastard. If even Rorschach from Alan Moore's The Watchmen could be momentarily impressed or swayed by Adrian Veidt's office, to believe in Bruccoli's Daisy Fay is to believe that Daisy was some sort of obscene, inhuman monster—the Aristocrats—was hidden behind her smile. But that can’t be, for Daisy was very human, once, and despite being lost and corrupted in the east, we should not allow ourselves to subscribe to the idea that among other things she became an airport metal-detector, constantly and methodically scrutinizing and categorizing people into firm, unshakable categories of “love” and “hate.” No, class stratification and exclusion functions are more subtly and more subconsciously than Bruccoli had argued, and in this novel social class exists in Daisy's mind in a state of tension with love and nostalgia. Yes, class wins in the end, but not I think in Chapter 5. Unless Scott Fitzgerald explained that scene as Brocculi has argued, I refuse to believe that (bad taste and low class) were foremost on Daisy's mind at the end of Chapter 5.

Regardless, this is a fine course book on art and lost talent of F. Scott Fitzgerald by the expert, Matthew J. Bruccoli.

Two Thumbs Up!… (mais)

James Gould Cozzens (b. 1903) is an interesting character. He was married to Bernice Baumgarten, and she is who really interests me. Bernice (b. 1902) was a literary agent--one of the best in the business at the time she was working. One of her clients was Shirley Jackson, and something that Jackson once said gets right to the heart of who Bernice was and how she worked:

Bernice was tough as nails, and Shirley repsected her. Said Shirley, "My old agent used to quit on any deal when it looked like she couldn't get as much as she wanted, and anyone would scare her, and she spent more time taking people out to lunch and asking me for news about the children than she ever did making money; but I don't think Bernice has ever taken anyone out to lunch and she has certainly never said two words to me about anything but business, and she isn't at all fond of children, and there is nothing she likes better than getting someone by the throat. I wouldn't like to have her for a sister, but I do love doing business with her."

Bruccoli did a good job on Cozzens, who is one of the least-read and least-understood of major American novelists. By Love Possessed (1957) is one of his best novels.… (mais)