If You Are Like Me, You Also Think Peter Jackson’s Best Movie Is The Frighteners

If you are like me, the only definitive knowledge of F. Scott Fitzgerald you possess was gleaned from high school English class, where you were forced to read The Great Gatsby. You most likely remember very little about it, but fancy it qualifies as great literature because Mrs. Libby insisted.

You might have a vague notion that after he wrote this great masterpiece of American literature, Fitzgerald dropped off the map. He gets mentioned at a dinner party, and, wanting to be a part of the conversation, you chime in by mentioning after he wrote his first novel, he became so wrapped up in his new-found celebrity, he took to living beyond his means, partied himself into irrelevancy, and never wrote a decent follow-up.

Fitzgerald is the 20th century’s first one-hit wonder, you propose, quite pleased with yourself.

Also, if you are like me, you have notebooks and notebooks stored in your mother’s basement with your plans to take over the world.

It turns out that you were wrong. Fitzgerald did produce a subsequent novel, Tender Is The Night, nine years after The Great Gatsby, in 1934.

Tender Is The Night, the ill-fated love affair between two wealthy expatriates flitting between the French Riviera and Switzerland, denounces the corrosive effect of too much money. No one has a firm idea of what they are supposed to be doing in life, but they insist on behaving civilly and circulating in the proper society while they figure it out.

If you are like me, you thoroughly enjoyed reading Tender Is The Night on the train from Beijing to Kunming, and you will recommend it to anyone who likes to grapple with life issues such as self-worth and sanity. Now if you could just get through chapter one of Ulysses.

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