Then I walked to the local coffee shop and and read a couple of chapters of "The Great Gatsby," by
F. Scott Fitzgerald (he was named after his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," but he was called only "Scott"). Turning each page I was just awed by his lyrical prose. It's so deft and smart and pleasant to read that "lyrical prose" doesn't do it justice. And Fitzgerald wrote this in his twenties! He died at 44 and I just kept thinking how far behind I am, how I will never catch up, and how, maybe, I should just forget about writing at all.Walking home I thought that if I work at it hard, things will be different in 10 years.
Most people don't know that Fitzgerald lived in New Orleans for a while. In 1920, he took a room at a cheap boarding house on Prytania Street, in the historic and grandiose Garden District. With $600 from winning the O. Henry Prize (by the way, short story writer O. Henry fled to New Orleans to avoid embezzlement charges from a bank in Texas) he bought his future wife Zelda a platinum and diamond watch and went to Montgomery to propose. But she wouldn't marry him until, "This Side of Paradise" was published the following spring.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway were ex-pat friends in Paris, and Hem had great respect for Scott's writing. But they argued, as writers do. I heard a story that after Fitzgerald wrote a long written critique of a new Hemingway novel, Hem scrawled, "Kiss my ass," after it. But I'll bet he re-read the critique and took it to heart and improved his writing.
Later Hem wrote elegantly about how natural and effortless Fitzgerald's talent was. He wrote this in the preface to, "A Moveable Feast" one of my all-time favorite books:
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
Fitzgerald was destroyed by drink and his crazy wife Zelda, who was in and out of mental institutions, and who encouraged him to drink and write short stories for fast money, rather than to focus on novels (a source of contention between Hem and Scott). Zelda was a Southern Belle, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, but a real firecracker who later was recognized as a leader for women's rights. Scott called her the"golden girl," and "the original flapper."
Scott and Zelda were always drinking and fighting. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, "Clothes for a Summer Hotel," about Scott and Zelda's tumultuous relationship. It takes place when Scott takes a visit to see Zelda at a mental institution in North Carolina, where she later burned to death after Fitzgerald's untimely death of a heart attack. It was Tennessee's last play to debut on Broadway but was a critical and financial failure (although it sounds interesting, doesn't it?)
Back to my day: After a stop at the grocery, and few glances from Mexican housewives, I walked home and took a short nap.
My neighbor, a defrocked lawyer (who is just another one of the miscreants who have landed in Tijuana), stopped by and brought a quart of beer so we split it. We talked about how he's been working hard on his Spanish and meeting a lot of girls and that I should learn more, and he taught me a new word. Then we talked about how crazy it is that they caught the leader of the big drug cartel, and that 150 people had been killed in TJ in the last 2 months. But that it doesn't affect us here at the beach. In fact, it doesn't affect anyone unless they are in the drug or police business, except that fewer people go out to nice restaurants after a recent slaughter (of drug runners) at one.
He headed back to cook dinner for his roommate, and I went over to the local seafood restaurant to watch the sun set over the ocean and return to "Gatsby." I read while I drank a few more Tecate beers and ate three shrimp tacos. I didn't bother with telling them that I prefer them not to be fried, since I was pretty hungry. I read as much as I could, between glimpses of the salmon-pink sunset and shimmering waves, and then I just closed the book and thought.
After a short stop at home I walked up to a little smoky dive bar, had a couple more beers with limes, ate some peanuts and looked over at the two incredibly cute and young senoritas.
"I really gotta learn Spanish," I thought.
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