A Quote by Ron Carlson

My first novel was called 'Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald,' about the difficulties of graduating from college, the longing and mourning you feel when all your promise seems to float away.
Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel.
If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed.
What is most appalling in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book is that it is peopleless fiction: Fitzgerald writes about spectral, muscledsuits; dresses, hats, and sleeves which have some sort of vague, libidinous throb. These are plainly the product of sickness.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation.
I can only remember two books from college that moved me: E.M. Forster's 'Howards End' and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby.'
'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, remains the most perfect novel that has ever come out of the United States. Everything in the book moves as it should, in the manner of a piece by Bach or Mozart.
I'm a long time [Scott] Fitzgerald fan, as probably everyone in America is. And I've always been fascinated by that theme of, what is the price of the American dream and what parts of your soul do you walk away with? The conflict of art versus commerce was also very interesting to me.
Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald’s contemporaries couldn’t bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall.
The disappointing second novel is measured against the brilliant first novel - often no novel lives up to the first. Literary improvement seems like an unfair expectation.
Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel.
At a time when the average student is graduating from a four-year college $27,000 in debt, when hundreds of thousands of capable young people no longer see college as an option because of high costs and when the U.S. is falling further and further behind our economic competitors in terms of the percentage of young people graduating from college, no agreement should be passed which, over a period of years, makes a bad situation worse and will make college even less affordable than it is today.
And just like that, the universe goes wrong. Just like that, all the enormity seems to shrink into a ball and float away from my reach. I feel it, and she doesn't. Or I feel it, and she won't.
It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us that, even though Gatsby dies and the small and corrupt survive, his longing was nonetheless magnificent.
I very comprehensively studied Irving Thalberg and his biographies. He's who [Scott] Fitzgerald roughly modeled the character after. He worked for him, as a writer, when he was at MGM. And, of course, I revisited the novel and the politics of MGM and the studio system at the time and familiarized myself with the world. There was a great deal of physical and literary work that went into it.
and i don't just mean that they change you. a lot of people can change you - the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. it's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people......i'm talking about the ones who, for whatever reason, are as much a part of you has your own soul. their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business.
How about your favorite book?" "This Side of Paradise by From. Scott Fitzgerald." "Why?" "Because it was the last one I read." This made them laugh because they knew I meant it honest, not show-off. Then they told me their favorites, and we sat quiet.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!