The Dynamic Friendship of Ernest Hemingway and Fitzgerald :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Dynamic Friendship of Hemingway and Fitzgerald In 1930 F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were two working on novels Fitzgerald was writing Tender is the Night and Hemingway Death in the Afternoon. They were both living in vastly different places and dealing with different types of situations in their lives. Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scotts wife, was hospitalized in Switzerland for the better part of 1930-31 after suffering a intellectual breakdown. Unfortunately for Scott this meant that he had to put aside his novel writing and save several short stories which would be sold to cover the cost of Zeldas medical exam treatment. Hemingway was residing in the United States during this time but also traveled to Spain during this period. thither was no correspondence between the two about Zeldas illness until April, 1931, more or less a year after her hospitalization.In October, 1931 Hemingway and Fitzgerald met but scholars are unreadable as to the circumstances surrounding th is meeting. Around this time however, the two authors began utilize Maxwell Perkins, their editor, as a courier for their messages to one another. This seems to show that Hemingways and Fitzgeralds acquaintance was drifting apart. Perkins must have sensed this because he began to include word about each of them in his letters to them. Its thought that perhaps the lose of correspondence between Hemingway and Fitzgerald during this period fell more on the shoulders of Fitzgerald who was source to feel guilty about his writing and lack of success. In 1932, Zelda Fitzgerald suffered a relapse of her mental condition and had to be hospitalized again. During her hospitalization she wrote Save Me the trip the light fantastic toe which would be published by Scribners in October, 1932. Fitzgerald became uneasy after larn that his wifes book would be published within months of Hemingways Death in the Afternoon. Fitzgerald brainsick that Hemingway would resent the fact that Death in th e Afternoon would be competing with Zeldas book.Hemingway and Fitzgerald met in New York in January 1933. This meeting, however, was ruined because Fitzgerald was in the middle of one of his benders. They met for dinner party with their friend Edmund Bunny Wilson and most of the evening was spent with Fitzgerald arguing with both Wilson and Hemingway. This meeting furthered Hemingways notion that Fitzgerald was a drunken fool who wasted his talent. Hemingway, in a letter to Max Perkins in February 1933, wrote of Fitzgerald Hes gone into that cheap Irish love of defeat, betrayal of himself etc.