The Elegant Variation: ON REVISIONS

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August 06, 2007

ON REVISIONS

Revisions are finished. At last. If you're waiting for an answer to an email, for a book to be mailed or, pretty much, anything else, there's a chance that life can gradually begin to resume its normal contours.

I'm exhausted, pleased and relieved. Now it's back to one of those windows of waiting for reactions. In the meantime, I found myself turning, as I have many times before, to F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby. The tales of his revisions are legendary - right down to massive rewriting on the page proofs (which modern publishing contracts, I note, promise to charge back to the novelist).

I have a second-hand, yellowing edition of Scibners's The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1963) which I often return to and aimlessly poke through. This time I was looking specifically for letters that had to do with the revision process, and I came across this letter to Max Perkins, dated February 18, 1925, when Fitzgerald was staying in Capri:

After six weeks of uninterrupted work the proof is finished and the last of it goes to you this afternoon. On the whole it's been very successful labor.

(1) I've brought Gatsby to life.
(2) I've accounted for his money.
(3) I've fixed up the two weak chapters (VI and VII).
(4) I've improved his first party.
(5) I've broken up his long narrative in Chapter VII.

It was strangely heartening to see his list. Now, I'm not suggesting for a nanosecond that I've written a Gatsby but I had my own problems to solve in this draft, and now I've a similar list of things accomplished to show for my efforts. The process is universal, indeed. Still, most writers never stop worrying and noticing flaws, and in a 1925 letter to Edmund Wilson, Fitzgerald can't resist lamenting what he'd missed:

The worst fault in it, I think the BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe. However, the lack is astutely concealed by the retrospect of Gatsby's past and by blankets of excellent prose that no one has noticed it - tho everyone has felt the lack and called it by another name.

Wilson, however, didn't seem as worried as Fitzgerald. In an anonymous 1926 essay entitled "The All-Star Literary Vaudeville" (available in the Library of America's excellent forthcoming Edmund Wilson collection) which entertainingly surveys the whole landscape of 1920s American fiction, Wilson - after indicating general disdain for the contemporary American novel - considers Fitzgerald an exception:

Scott Fitzgerald, possessing from the first, not merely cleverness, but something of inspired imagination and poetic literary brilliance, has not until recently given the impression of precisely knowing what he was about; but with The Great Gatsby and some of his recent short stories, he seems to be entering upon a development in the course of which he may come to equal in mastery of his material those novelists whom he began by surpassing by vividness in investing it with glamor.

Unfortunately, by 1940, in another letter to Perkins, Fitzgerald was fretting about what would become of his mastepiece.

Would the 25-cent press keep Gatsby in the public eye - or is the book unpopular? Has it had its chance? Would a popular reissue in that series with a preface not by me but by one of its admirers - I can maybe pick one - make it a favorite with classrooms, profs, lovers of English prose - anybody? But to die, so completely and unjustly after having given so much!

Within months, Fitzgerald would be dead in Los Angeles. His notes for The Last Tycoon were edited by Wilson for publication the following year.

Posted at 12:03 AM in Personal | Permalink

Comments

I'm pretty shocked that Gatsby's money wasn't accounted for until the revision phase!

It makes me deeply curious about how early versions of that book might have read.

Posted by: Evan | August 06, 2007 at 09:32 AM

You can actually read the early version. Trimalchio - Gatsby's original title - was released a few years ago and is readily available:

http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/6818648/used/Trimalchio:%20An%20Early%20Version%20of%20the%20Great%20Gatsby

Posted by: TEV | August 06, 2007 at 09:45 AM

Mark this all makes me feel so much better.

Posted by: Daniel | August 06, 2007 at 09:52 AM

the editorial correspondence between fitzgerald and maxwell perkins is marvelous. a favourite nugget is that perkins convinced fitzgerald to change the title back from the proposed, "Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires."
howsmynovel.blogspot.com

Posted by: jessie | August 06, 2007 at 11:13 AM

I love his comments about the unresolved aspects of Gatsby's and Daisy's relationship being concealed by his "blankets of excellent prose."

Posted by: The Individual Voice | August 06, 2007 at 11:20 AM

I find it fascinating to read the thoughts of other writers on their work ... it's sad how many brilliant novelists never got to experience the true success of their efforts.

Posted by: JanePoe (aka Deborah) | August 07, 2007 at 08:37 AM

Congrats on finishing your revisions! What a relief that must be. And I'm glad F. Scott was able to help you on your way. I find Kafka and S. Plath's journals especially helpful when I feel like my work is particularly hellish-it's nice to know that other writers also sometimes want to kill their children.

Posted by: Kate Durbin | August 09, 2007 at 09:41 AM

Yes, congratulations on completing revisions -- for now. To pronounce them finished is a wicked temptation to fate.

Thanks for this entry; how reassuring. Makes me want to pick up my copy of TGG again.

Posted by: P. Amy MacKinnon | August 09, 2007 at 01:37 PM

When I submitted my first book, Time Adjusters and Other Stories, to iUniverse, I thought it was finished. Fortunately, iUniverse sends a PDF proof file and allows the author a certain number of free corrections. I used up all my freebies.

Some of the changes were simple typo corrections. Some were the rewording of sentences to "tighten them up." Done at last! Or so I thought.

When the author copies arrived, I couldn't make myself read it for about a month. I was too gorged on the thing. It was like the ancient torture where they made a man drink oil until he burst. Fortunately, all in good time, my appetite for writing returned voraciously.

When I finally did read it, I knew it was not finished. Oh, it was paid for and splashed up on Amazon.com, but deep inside, I knew it was incomplete in ways that, maybe no one else would notice, but I knew.

There was only one thing to do. I paid the publisher a substantial fee to make more corrections. I added two or three paragraphs to sufficiently account for the actions of the "dark priest" character. One whole passage of exposition seemed lazy so I beefed it so it strengthened the narrative rather than distracted from it.

I also redesigned the cover at the suggestion of Levi Asher from Litkicks.

Now I'm very pleased with the book. The thing is, a lot of people may not realize how demanding self-publishing can be. I need a Max Perkins?

Posted by: Bill Ectric | August 09, 2007 at 03:36 PM

Obviously, I need a Max Perkins even worse than I thought. That last sentence was not supposed to end with a question mark. I originally wrote, "Where is Max Perkins when you need him?" When I changed the sentence, I forgot to change the "?" to a period. Then, of course, I told myself, don't past a follow-up message, let it stand. But no, I couldn't. See how I am?

Posted by: Bill Ectric | August 09, 2007 at 07:18 PM

I'm one of David Leavitt's students at U. Florida -- thank you for the comments on Fitzgerald, especially in regards to his short stories!

Posted by: Tony | August 10, 2007 at 02:23 PM

Hey, have you read Susan Bell's The Artful Edit? She has lots of nice commentary on the Perkins/Fitzgerald relationship as well as Fitzgerald's revision process on the ms.

Posted by: Dolen | August 11, 2007 at 11:47 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

August 06, 2007

ON REVISIONS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

August 06, 2007

ON REVISIONS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism