In essence

Why did Fitzgerald die a failure in his mind? The wavering and short-lived worldly success he did experience peaked and died away as he took other writing positions (that he didn't care for) to make money. It wasn't until the 1950s that he was placed among the ranks of great American writers. Why then and not before?

"What, then, ultimately differentiates Fitzgerald among the novelists of his time is his paradoxical clothing of a hard, ironical pessimism in a style that is soft and woven with a gossamer tracery. Yet, for all the peculiar excellence of the style, the range of his ideas remains hemmed in by the singular negativism of his view of the world and the dogged, unvaried way in which this is repeated from story to story — which further tends to pin Fitzgerald in the ranks of the minor writers."

— The Essence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leo and Miriam Gurko

In addition to this, the context of his literary works were not of interest in his time, around the Great Depression.

There are only...

"A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: 'There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.'"

— The Great Gatsby, Ch. 4


How strikingly true. Fitzgerald cuts to the core of unmasking people in all their human flaw and mess. The life process is a drudge to find a place of hope, something to motivate you, give you purpose. Fitzgerald calls out these "commendable worldly efforts" and (in the case of some) habits for what they really are — the shallow man-made illusions that keep us pursued, pursuing, busy and/or tired.

Maury Noble

"Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now — on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.

There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm — the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing."


— The Beautiful and the Damned, page 259-260


With this passage I felt a part of Maury Noble's transition of thought — this mental flow of any man or woman who has felt time and space eating away at existence, at his or her potential to be great. I loved the choice of word's — "radiance of existence", "broken instrument of his mind." Fitzgerald has the ability to perfectly paint the unknowns of our minds. He has the ability to describe these shadows of uncertainty and purpose that creep and pull at human existence. 

Something more powerful than the God made in the image of man

"...She became conscious that she was miserable and that the tears were rolling down her cheeks. She wondered if they were tears of self-pity, and tried resolutely not to cry, but this existence without hope, without happiness, oppressed her, and she kept shaking her head from side to side, her mouth drawn down tremulously in the corners, as though she were denying an assertion made by some one, somewhere. She did not know that this gesture of hers was years older than history, that, for a hundred generations of men, intolerable and persistent grief has offered that gesture, of denial, of protest, of bewilderment, to something more profound, more powerful than the God made in the image of man, and before which that God, did he exist, would be equally impotent. It is a truth set at the heart of tragedy that this force never explains, never answers — this force intangible as air, more definite than death."


— The Beautiful and the Damned, page 414


As I read, and still re-read, this passage describing Gloria Patch's disillusion with life (and I would argue the materialistic approach to fulfillment), I begin to think over the relative grief to our own consciousness that we all feel at points in time — this brokenness to adapt and feel sufficient and useful to the world in which we live. What is this force? What is this catch-22 to ever-learn, explore and enrich or accept the fates as acts of God?


Fitzgerald was aware of his egotism. Was his exchange of "God made in the image of man" an attempt at satire?

A matter of civilization

“I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t got what I wanted things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted, within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor. God! And that taught me you can’t have anything, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it — but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone —”

— The Beautiful and the Damned (p. 341)


Fitzgerald said that his material was taken from his life. Each character has some of himself, and we see autobiographical truths spring up in each of his novels. Here, the protagonist Anthony Patch, is talking to a woman with whom he had an affair.


We as humans have an innate drive towards competition and success. This can intertwine with intimate interaction; what is the motivation for your desire of another person? At a very early age, Fitzgerald felt pressure towards societal success. In the Beautiful and the Damned, Anthony marries Gloria, mainly for her beauty. The two lack a connection and look for fulfillment in a lavish lifestyle, attempting to fight away an ever-creeping emptiness. 


This quotation can be interpreted in different ways to each reader depending upon their motivation for success, and how they measure that success.