West of Sunset

Some books you sip and savor."West of Sunset" is one.Stewart O’Nan’s effortless, three-dimensional prose wrapped around the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s waning, troubled years in Hollywood? It seems like a perfect combination.It is.One O'Nan's epigrams is Fitzgerald’s own assertion, “There are no second acts in American lives.”While there’s controversy over that line and precisely what Fitzgerald intended, "West of Sunset" certainly seems to underscore the point in spades (or cocktails).If you want to know whether this book might be for you, I can suggest no better investment of time than to go the Authors on Tour podcast, which captures live presentations from The Tattered Cover in Denver. O’Nan reads three substantial chunks of the book at the beginning of the talk and you’ll know immediately if you are going to agree with his take on Fitzgerald’s internal space and world view.O’Nan follows the details of Fitzgerald’s last few years—the films he was hired to write, his trips to visit Zelda, his affair with Sheilah Graham, his drinking, his attempts to not drink, and his increasingly penniless state. If you haven’t studied Fitzgerald, what better way than fiction to pick up the general flow of a writer’s career, in this case the last few years? Works for me. But it’s not Fitzgerald’s wanderings that interest O’Nan, it’s his search for dignity and a place to apply his talents. In Hollywood, he comes across a bit like a stranger in a strange land, never quite feeling comfortable in his own skin, particularly when comparing himself to one Ernest Hemingway.“Back in his office reading Conrad, Scott was unsure was whether Ernest wanting to see him was good or not, and yet he was flattered that he’d asked after him. He liked to think he had sensitivity to and unselfish reverence for talent—or was it just a weakness for success? All his life he’d been attracted to the great, hoping, through the most diligent exertion of his sensibility, he might earn his place among them. It was harder to believe now, and yet, if he could still count Ernest as a friend and rival, perhaps he wasn’t the failure he accused himself of being. He’d never had any doubts about Ernest’s powers, only his misapplication of them, a judgment he trusted was reciprocal.”Fitzgerald can’t quite find his footing—the teamwork aspect of writing for Hollywood (Fitzgerald worked on famous films and many obscure ones, too) and the celluloid storytelling style didn’t come naturally, though he applied himself to the task. His body starts to revolt from years of heavy drinking. Is it a recurrence of TB or “the beginning of the inevitable weakening?” World War II is starting to rumble. And, finally, Sheilah has a few surprises that keep him unsettled. He's between women and between careers and uncertain if his talent works in the Hollywood way. He wonders what has happened and perhaps thinks through hard work he can regain his own second act (something that frequently gives him trouble when working on scripts). “He’d had a talent for happiness once, though he was young then, and lucky. But wasn’t he lucky now, again?” He isn't sure.Fitzgerald’s determination is palpable as O’Nan inhabits Fitzgerald’s being. It’s almost as if Fitzgerald thinks he can regain what he’s lost through the sheer number of hours he invests in fiddling with a line of dialogue.We all know how this is all going to end, with Fitzgerald’s much-too-early death in 1940. As the pages dwindle, the ache is right there, all the unfinished business and a famous man starting to realize that there are greater forces he can't control.Famously, Billy Wilder once compared Fitzgerald’s work in Hollywood to “a great sculptor who is hired to do plumbing.” A novelist working in film, said Wilder, Fitzgerald “did not know how to connect the pipes so the water could flow.”Stewart O’Nan, one great writer fictionalizing another, has no such trouble.

This was a book that was selected for my local reader's group and I was pretty excited about it. I was the kid who loved reading "Great Gatsby" in high school. I've read many other Fitzgerald works since.What a great premise- a story about a famous writer who had success during a decadent and glamorous era, fell from grace and suffered from much tragedy when Zelda (supposedly the great love of his life) went through her mental illness and the great depression impacted everyone.The prose itself is well crafted, but the story itself.... Well, I expected so much more.The main character portrayed here doesn't appear to struggle or suffer- not really- not for losing Zelda, not for having to compromise in Hollywood, not for being broke, not for not-finishing another novel. So many of F.Scott Fitgerald's novels have a perfectly tragic element and I thought it might be mirrored here in a fictional story about him, but I didn't get that here. We read about his drinking and health, but (for me) I never like the character enough to really care. And the depictions of hanging out / writing for pictures in Hollywood aren't interesting enough to enough to offset this.For me- It's okay, but definitely not what I was hoping for.

I actually enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. O'Nan's descriptions of Hollywood in that era--the energy, the environment, the people--are great, entertaining and very colorful, and really carried the book for me. As just one example, the conversations (real or imagined) between Fitzgerald and Humphrey Bogart were dead-on. They made me laugh out loud because of how well O'Nan drew Bogey. Its true of all his other character portraits as well. he nails them. Plus, I always get a charge when writers effectively paint a picture of the LA Basin before it became the total urban monster it is today...certainly the skeleton is recognizable in the '30s and '40s, but it hadn't yet started its urban steroid regimen. O'Nan alludes enough to this "emerging LA" that the feeling of the place comes through. A good historical novel makes you hear the soundtrack of the era, even without actually putting on the music; I heard the soundtrack here.Oh, and then there's that Fitzgerald guy. Its a sad story, the ending of which I hadn't known previously. And (for the most part) O'Nan's version is a true one, even if a bit rearranged here and there (like a good screenwriter would do.). A drunken Fitzgerald living hand to mouth while trying to outrun his demons and have a normal life is sadly evocative even without the Hollywood backdrop, and O'Nan nails this as well.It doesn't have to be 100% accurate to be truthful; for me, the other litmus test of a good historical novel is it makes you curious enough about the "facts" to go back and research them--and learn even more--without feeling like you have to castigate the novelist for taking (gasp!) historical liberties. I learned a lot about Fitzgerald that I hadn't known, not only from the novel itself, but also from follow-up research I did when he piqued my curiosity. O'Nan also got me (finally) to re-read "Great Gatsby" on my Kindle, order the modern rendition of Fitzgerald's last (unfinished) novel about Hollywood, and even his collected short stories (which I'll read while trying to imagine cranking them out and then having to peddle them for $300 each to afford another bottle to hide in the closet....Recommended.

Indeed, the critics were correct: this is a finely and beautifully written novel, which is becoming rare these days.I was curious about Zelda, Scott's wife, and after reading about her online I feel she was maybe an even more interesting character; had she been male, words like "American Rimbaud" and "seer" would have probably been used to described her.Therefore I had little sympathy for Scott's misfortunes as a father and a husband burdened with responsibilities. I kept thinking that had it been the mother whose husband was declared mad, and her having the power to free him or keep him locked receiving electro chock treatments, and had she ran on her own private adventures of love (with boys half her age) and career, abandoning her daughter to a boarding school, the public would have not been as understanding as it has been, even today, of Scott's choice for freedom. Not to mention that Scott very likely stole some of Zelda's writing and published it in his novel under is name...It is possible that he was jealous in real life and played a big part in proving to a male panel of judges (doctors) that she was mad, to free himself.Nevertheless, despite the cliche male choices and the tragic fate of Zelda, I really liked this book.I chuckled and laughed sometimes as the descriptions of people and situations were so accurate.The progression of events is also finely thought out. The only things that kept me a bit confused were the fast dialogues from the Hollywood colleagues around Scott. English not being my first language and not living in the USA but Europe, at times I was a bit lost...but then otherwise, a beautiful book.Now I will read fiction and autobiographies about ZELDA!!

O’Nan, Stewart. West of Sunset.Zelda Fitzgerald, the mostly absent invalid in the book, concludes this account of her husband’s death with platitudinous religious cant about ‘the blessings of faith.’ Scott himself avoids such pieties, as does his paramour Sheilah, whose work occupies her to the exclusion of the failed writer waiting for something to turn up - though it never does. The Fitzgerald of the Jazz Age is a constant backdrop rolled out as the rejections pile up, driving Scott into desperate strategems.As portrait of a drunken failure O’Nan’s book is a brave attempt to give his hero respectability, but is it compelling enough? True there are some good scenes - Scott’s pursuit of Zelda down hotel corridors, his escape into youth with Bud at the Winter Carnival and his final collapse - but all the movie gossip, the resurgence of the ‘in’ crowd and the cartloads of celebs paraded - many mere names - put a brake on the action.

Although O'Nan clearly states that this is a work of fiction, I wholeheartedly admire the tons of research he must have undertaken to become so deeply enmeshed in the life of F Scott Fitzgerald, his crazed wife, oft neglected daughter, and the struggles the famed writer went through in early Hollywood to make a buck, as a screenwriter. At times it was almost like we could see too clearly the suffering of the tortured writer's soul -- a little too close an examination of Fitzgerald's psyche.

Es interesante porque parece un docu-ficción: cuenta detalles de la vida de Fitzgerald en Hollywood desde el punto de vista del escritor, con lo que podemos reflexionar sobre sus sentimientos, emociones, sobre su conflicto interno, etc.

A bit slight but interesting in explanation of the Fitzgerald's last days.