Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe.
Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because we are aware that he is a thinly veiled version of the author himself, a giant of early-twentieth American literature? Critics have suggested that Cowley's revision was undertaken due to negative reviews of the temporal structure of the book on its first release. The first version, published in 1934, uses flashbacks whilst the second revised version, prepared by Fitzgerald's friend and noted critic Malcolm Cowley on the basis of notes for a revision left by Fitzgerald, is ordered chronologically this version was first published posthumously in 1951. It should also be noted that two versions of this novel are in print.
The early 1930s, when Fitzgerald was conceiving and working on the book, were certainly the darkest years of his life, and accordingly, the novel has its bleak elements. While working on the book he several times ran out of cash and had to borrow from his editor and agent, and write short stories for commercial magazines. It would be Fitzgerald's first novel in nine years, and the last that he would complete. The author rented the "la Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson to work on this book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychoanalyst and his wife, Nicole, who is also one of his patients. In 1932, Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was hospitalized for schizophrenia in Baltimore, Maryland. It is ranked #28 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.
It was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues. Tender Is the Night is an English language novel by F.
0 kommentar(er)
