BOOKS
they
don't have to write for the mass media unless they want to strike
it rich-but it is doubtful that any of these ways would have done a
man like Fitzgerald any good; it isn't easy to picture him accepting
handouts from foundations or teaching creative writing at Bard.
Arnold Gingrich, the publisher of
Esquire,
has written an intro–
duction to the book which sounds like the record of a man's dealings
with his bank. He reminds us that Fitzgerald was broke during those
last years and again and again quotes his urgent requests for money
all for no purpose except possibly to point out that Gingrich and
Esquire
always come through when things get really tough. He dis–
misses the idea some people have that the stories are hack work be–
cause they are about a hack (he calls this idea a "pathetic fallacy")
which he doesn't seem to realize is an insult to Fitzgerald's talent and
puts Pat Hobby
in
the same class as Monroe Stahr, giving Pat back
the seat he once had at the studio commissary's Big Table. But because
two men sit at the same table does not necessarily put them in the
same class. That makes
two
pathetic fallacies.
Gene Fowler, in his biography of John Barrymore, another artist
who didn't belong
in
Hollywood and who died the wrong way, quotes
the critic Ashton Stevens on Barrymore's appearance in the potboiler
farce
My Dear Children:
"'Cynics . . . came to sneer, but presently
wore friendly smiles; for, what was left of the most fascinating actor of
his day still held some of the old magnetism. Quicksilver would gleam
again in strange moments of this strange impersonation of a lightweight
father
in
a lightweight comedy, wherein Hamlet became not only
Prince Hal but Falstaff too.' " These stories were written for the same
reason Barrymore appeared on that stage and although they have none
of Fitzgerald's old magnetism or even gleams of quicksilver it doesn't
really matter that much because all of his finest writing is in print and
is always there for 'Us to go back to after parting company with Pat
Hobby.
Wilson Pollock
