RARA-AVIS: Fitzgerald & Kennedy

From: Victoria Esposito-Shea ( victoria@esposito-shea.com)
Date: 11 Mar 2002

 From Jim Blue:

>And also, the mood and cinema verite' observation in Gatsby (and
>elsewhere in Fitzgerald's work) marches in time with Chandler, Ross McDonald,
>and others. The monied life is lush, beautiful, and empty -- romance is the
>best thing that can happen, but it is invariably doomed. Those wonderful
>opening paragraphs of "The Long Good-bye" read like much like a passage from
>Fitzgerald.

Absolutely. Fitzgerald draws from fairy-tale traditions (dysfunctional fairy tales, really) in much the same way that Chandler did chivalrous traditions, with a very similar effect. And, interestingly enough, one of the real-life models for Gatsby was supposed to have been "Legs" Diamond, who of course became the protag of William Kennedy's first Albany novel
(and my favorite of his books that I've read).

Victoria

Victoria Esposito-Shea Editor and Co-Founder HandHeldCrime and HandHeldCrime/Coffee Cup Press http://www.handheldcrime.com/

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