Books: Sophisticates Abroad

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Author Fitzgerald calls his story a ''romance.'' Its effect on the reader is painful. Unfriendly critics might damn it in words from its own pages: ". . . The absurdity of the story rested in the immaturity of the attitude combined with the sophisticated method of its narration." But to the plain reader, his critical judgment softened by the glittering persuasiveness of Fitzgerald's writing. Tender Is the Night will be exciting in spite of its bitterness, moving in spite of its morbid sentiment. It will not be ranked as a great U. S. novel, and as a document of the post-War generation it has been anticipated by The Sun Also Rises. But it will not damp the expectations of Fitzgerald's admirers. Once again he has issued a promise that is more exciting than most of his contemporaries' achievements.

The Author. Princeton, which he left in 1917 to join the U. S. Army, still remembers Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and is not quite sure whether to be proud of him or not. Perennial undergraduate, projecting the roystering side of his bright college years into grown-up life, he has been the guiding spirit and principal actor in many an epic junket. He spent all of his freshman year at college writing a show for the Triangle Club, which was accepted, and then tutored in the subjects he had failed so that he could come back and act in it. In the Army he wrote his first novel, The Romantic Egotist, which was rejected. After trying his hand at advertising in Manhattan he went home to St. Paul, wrote his novel over again, called it This Side of Paradise. It was an immediate success. He became the accredited spokesman of the jazz generation, his book the bible of the ''flappers" and "snakes" of his day.

Though he rapidly became a commercially successful writer. Author Fitzgerald never entirely succumbed to the magazine school of fiction. His one play (The Vegetable) was ambitious but a flat failure; The Great Gatsby, first novel to be written about the rising phenomenon of the racketeer, was only a critical success. To support himself and his family he continued to turn out slickly-machined short stories, but between parties and potboilers he cultivated Literature. Never grim enough to be considered an expatriate, he has spent much of his time abroad. Among his good friends are Critic Edmund Wilson, the late Ring Lardner, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Dean Christian Gauss of Princeton.

Stocky, alert, indefatigable. Author Fitzgerald lives at high speed, loves elaborate parlor games, night clubs, amateur psychoanalysis. He still looks younger than his age (37). Married, with one daughter, he lives at Rodgers Forge, Md.

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