Tompkins County Public Library Book Kit
Tender is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1
Book Kit Guide Index
Book Summary …………………………………………………………………………………..Page 3
Author Bio…………………………………………………………………………………………..Pages 4-5
Book Reviews……………………………………………………………………………………..Pages 6
Reading Guide Questions…………………………………………………………………..Pages 7-8
Read-A-Likes……………………………………………………………………………………….Pages 9-16
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Tompkins County Public Library Book Kit
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book Summary
In Tender Is The Night, Fitzgerald deliberately set out to write the most ambitious and far-reaching novel
of his career, experimenting radically with narrative conventions of chronology and point of view and
drawing on early breakthroughs in psychiatry to enrich his account of the makeup and breakdown of
character and culture.
First published in 1934, Fitzgerald's classic story of psychological disintegration was denounced by many
as an unflattering portrayal of Sara and Gerald Murphy (in the guise of characters Dick and Nicole Diver),
who had been generous hosts to many expatriates.
Only after Fitzgerald's death was Tender Is the Night recognized as a powerful and moving depiction of
the human frailties that affect privileged and ordinary people alike. (From Scribner edition.)
More
In Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald distilled much of his tempestuous life with his wife Zelda, and the
knowledge of the wrecked, fabulous Fitzgeralds adds poignancy and regret to this tender, supple and
poetic portrait. To the just-fashionable French Riviera come Dick and Nicole Diver—handsome, rich,
glamorous and enormous fun. Their dinners are legend, their atmosphere magnetic, their intelligence
fine. But something is wrong. Nicole has a secret and Dick a weakness. Together they head towards the
rocks on which their lives crash—and only one of them really survives. (From Penguin Essentials 2
Edition.)
*This book summary is from LitLovers- litlovers.com
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Author Bio
• Birth—September 24, 1896
• Where—St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Died—December 21, 1940
• Where—Hollywood, California
• Education—Princeton University
F. Scott Fitzgerald was named for his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, though he was always referred
to as "Scott." Minnesota born and Princeton educated, Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of
Paradise, in 1920 to critical and popular acclaim.
That same year, he married Zelda Sayre, the queen of Montgomery, Alabama youth society, and the two
lived a boisterous, decadent life in New York City. To better afford their extravagant lifestyle, the couple
moved to France, where Fitzgerald befriended Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, becoming part of the
legendary group of expatriate writers and artists, which Stein labeled the "Lost Generation." In Paris he
wrote his finest novel, The Great Gatsby (1925).
Zelda was eventually hospitalized in 1930 for the first of many breakdowns, and Fitzgerald moved to
Hollywood (William Faulkner was there, too), where his heavy drinking ended his screen writing career.
In 1934 he published Tender Is the Night. He died there of a heart attack six years later at the age of 44.
More
The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. The Great Gatsby, Scott's
masterpiece, was published in 1925. Hemingway greatly admired The Great Gatsby and wrote in his A
Moveable Feast "If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an
even better one" (153). Hemingway expressed his deep admiration for Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's
flawed, doomed character, when he prefaced his chapters concerning Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast
with:
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he
understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later
he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not
fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been
effortless. (129)
Much of what Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast helped to create the myth of Fitzgerald's eventual
demise and Zelda's hand in that demise. Though much of Hemingway's text is factually correct, it is
always tinged with his disappointment with Fitzgerald.
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Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial
difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories, and by the schizophrenia that struck
Zelda in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of her life. In 1932, she was
hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland.
Scott rented an estate in the Baltimore suburb of Towson and began work on Tender Is the Night, the
story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist who falls in love with and marries
one of his patients. Some critics have seen the book as a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel recounting
Fitzgerald's problems with his wife, the corrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, his own
egoism and self-confidence, and his continuing alcoholism. Indeed, Fitzgerald was extremely protective
of his material (their life together). When Zelda published her own version of their lives in Europe, Save
Me the Waltz, Fitzgerald was angry and succeeded in getting her doctors to keep her from writing any
more.
Tender was finally published in 1934, and critics who had waited nine years for the follow up to The
Great Gatsby had mixed opinions about it. The novel did not sell well upon publication, but the book's
reputation has since risen significantly.
Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in dire financial straits
and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts for
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including some unfilmed work on Gone with the Wind), and his fifth and final
novel, posthumously published as The Last Tycoon (based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg).
Scott and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on the east coast, while
he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, a well-known gossip columnist, in Hollywood.
Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his
extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's
biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis. Fitzgerald suffered two
heart attacks in late 1940, and on December 21, while awaiting a visit from his doctor, Fitzgerald
collapsed in Sheilah Graham's apartment and died. He was 44.
*This biography is from LitLovers- litlovers.com
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Book Reviews
(Older works have few mainstream press reviews online.)
Independent UK
For Fitzgerald desolation is a precondition of the lyrical. Hence the most distinctive impression of
Tender: A beautiful novel about failure.
Amazon Reviews
In the wake of World War I, a community of expatriate American writers established itself in the salons
and cafes of 1920s Paris. They congregated at Gertrude Stein's select soirees, drank too much, married
none too wisely, and wrote volumes—about the war, about the Jazz Age, and often about each other. F.
Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were part of this gang of literary Young Turks, and it was while living
in France that Fitzgerald began writing Tender Is the Night. Begun in 1925, the novel was not actually
published until 1934. By then, Fitzgerald was back in the States and his marriage was on the rocks,
destroyed by Zelda's mental illness and his alcoholism.
Despite the modernist mandate to keep authors and their creations strictly segregated, it's difficult not
to look for parallels between Fitzgerald's private life and the lives of his characters, psychiatrist Dick
Diver and his former patient turned wife, Nicole. Certainly the hospital in Switzerland where Zelda was
committed in 1929 provided the inspiration for the clinic where Diver meets, treats, and then marries
the wealthy Nicole Warren. And Fitzgerald drew both the European locale and many of the characters
from places and people he knew from abroad. In the novel, Dick is eventually ruined—professionally,
emotionally, and spiritually—by his union with Nicole.
Fitzgerald's fate was not quite so novelistically neat: after Zelda was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and
committed, Fitzgerald went to work as a Hollywood screenwriter in 1937 to pay her hospital bills. He
died three years later—not melodramatically, like poor Jay Gatsby in his swimming pool, but prosaically,
while eating a chocolate bar and reading a newspaper. Of all his novels, Tender Is the Night is arguably
the one closest to his heart. As he himself wrote, "Gatsby was a tour de force, but this is a confession of
faith.
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Discussion Questions
1. How would you describe the characters of Dick and Nicole Diver? What is the nature of their
marriage? Do they love one another? Talk about how and why their marriage changes during the course
of the novel?
2. Talk about Nicole's psychological state? Why did Dick marry her? As his patient, their relationship
most likely would be viewed today as a violation of the the American Psychiatric Association's (APA)
code of ethics. Why would marrying a patient concern the APA? How does Nicole's mental illness affect
their marriage?
3. What do you make of Rosemary Hoyt? Is she a "provocateur" with regards to the Divers' marriage?
Would you describe her as innocent, aggressive, duplicitous...or as a young, naive American out of her
depth? Why is Dick Driver attracted to her? What, if anything, does she offer him? What does it say
about Rosemary that she is also attracted to Brady right after professing her love for Dick?
4. Rosemary encounters two parties on the beach at the beginning of the book. What is the distinction
she makes between the two—and what do two circles represent? What is your opinion of the two
groups?
5. The book is concerned with the differences between Americans and Europeans. How does that
difference present itself? Would you say that Dick is more European or more American?
6. The narrator refers to French Mediterranean Coast as a region in a state of flux. How so?
7. The book's narrator identifies with Rosemary in the first part of the novel. Thus we see the characters
through her perspective. Starting in Book 2, however, the narrator is allied with Dick Driver...as we
follow him into his decline. Why would Fitzgerald have used two perspectives?
8. Hollywood is, of course, the capital of acting. How does "acting" become a theme throughout the
novel? Who besides Rosemary acts? What does Hollywood as "the city of thin partitions" mean? How
might that descriptive phrase apply to the main characters?
9. How does McKisco change after the duel...and what inspires the change? Talk about the juxtaposition
of his rise with Diver's fall.
10. What is the significance of the scene in the restaurant, where the Divers, Norths and Rosemary
measure the "repose" of American diners? How does "repose" reflect on Americans' ability to maintain
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elegance and dignity? Are those qualities important?
11. In what ways can Dick be considered a father figure for women? Would you say he has a need to
fulfill that role?
12. Does Nicole ruin Dick's potential to become a great psychiatrist? In other words, did she ruin his
career...or is he the cause of his own downfall?
13. By the end of the novel, Nicole seems to have achieved a healthy mental state. Is Dick responsible
for her cure?
14. Who loves whom in this book? Do Dick and Nicole love one another? Does Dick love Rosemary?
Does Nicole love Tommy Barban?
15. Critics and scholars see Tender Is the Night as partially autobiographical, tracing F. Scott's and Zelda's
marriage. Do a little research and discuss how the book parallels the Fitzgeralds' own lives.
16. Does Dick's disappearance in America resolve any problems raised in the novel? Why would
Fitzgerald have ended his story in this way? Do you find the ending satisfying...or would you have
preferred a different one?
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Further Reading
If you enjoy reading the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, try the works of these authors or any of the
titles linked below.
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Ernest Hemingway
William Faulkner
Henry James
J.D. Salinger
Arthur Miller
John O'Hara
Richard Yates
John Cheever
Fiction
The Good Soldier
By Ford, Ford Madox
Designed by Saunders, Max
Designed by Judd, Alan
1991-10 - Everyman's Library
0679406654 Check Our Catalog
When John Dowell and his wife befriend Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, they
appear to be the perfect couple. He is a distinguished soldier and she is beautiful
and intelligent. However, what lies beneath the surface of their marriage is far
more sinister and their influence leads John into a tragic drama that threatens to
destroy everything he cares about.
Ford Madox Ford wrote "The Good Soldier," the book on which his reputation most
surely rests, in deliberate emulation of the nineteenth-century French novels he so
admired. In this way he was able to explore the theme of sexual betrayal and its
poisonous after-effects with a psychological intimacy as yet unknown in the English
novel.
The Quiet American
By Greene, Graham
Introduction by Stone, Robert
2004-08 - Penguin Books
9780143039020 Check Our Catalog
Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam
9
"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,"
Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet
American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the
brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon,
where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.
The Golden Bowl Tie-In
By James, Henry, Jr.
Editor Crick, Patricia
Introduction by Vidal, Gore
2001-03 - Penguin Books
0141000902 Check Our Catalog
An American widower and his attractive daughter enjoy the high-society life in
London until a mysterious golden bowl shatters the polished surface of their
charmed lives.
The Sun Also Rises
By Hemingway, Ernest
2006-10 - Scribner Book Company
9780743297332 Check Our Catalog
The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, "The Sun Also Rises" is one of
Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful
writing style.
A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I
generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable
characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant
Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to
the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. First
published in 1926, "The Sun Also Rises" helped establish Hemingway as one of the
greatest writers of the twentieth century.
10
Winesburg, Ohio
By Anderson, Sherwood
Editor White, Ray Lewis
Editor Norton, W. W.
1995-11 - W. W. Norton & Company
0393967956 Check Our Catalog
Set against the backdrop of a fictional 1890s town, Sherwood Anderson s
Winesburg, Ohio depicts the not-so-simple lives of its residents as seen through the
eyes of George Willard, a young and observant resident.
Zuleika Dobson
By Beerbohm, Max
1998-09 - Modern Library
037575248X Check Our Catalog
Originally published in 1911, Max Beerbohm's sparklingly wicked satire concerns
the unlikely events that occur when a femme fatale briefly enters the supremely
privileged, all-male domain of Judas College, Oxford. A conjurer by profession,
Zuleika Dobson can only love a man who is impervious to her considerable charms:
a circumstance that proves fatal, as any number of love-smitten suitors are driven to
suicide by the damsel’s rejection.
The Weight of Water
By Shreve, Anita
Editor Pietsch, Michael
1997-01 - Little Brown and Company
0316789976 Check Our Catalog
Journeying to Smuttynose Island, off the coast of New Hampshire, to shoot a photo
essay about a century-old double murder, a photographer becomes absorbed by
the crime and increasingly obsessed with jealousy over the idea that her husband is
having an affair.
Collected Yates
By Yates, Richard
Foreword by Russo, Richard
Introduction by Russo, Richard
2001-05 - Henry Holt & Company
0805066934 Check Our Catalog
Yates's short fiction is collected in a single volume, featuring the stories of his
classic works "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" and "Liars in Love", plus nine new
stories.
11
The Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
By Wharton, Edith
Illustrator Howard, Maureen
Introduction by Howard, Maureen
2004-08 - Barnes & Noble Classics
159308143X Check Our Catalog
Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, "The Age of Innocence" is Edith Wharton's
masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old
New York, a time when society people " dreaded scandal more than disease."
This is Newland Archer's world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but
conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska
returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with
her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will
either courageously define his life-- or mercilessly destroy it.
The Painted Veil
By Maugham, W. Somerset
2004-02 - Vintage
1400034213 Check Our Catalog
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the
beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous
affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped
of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so
hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to
reassess her life and learn how to love.
The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow,
to change, and to forgive.
The Voyage Out
By Woolf, Virginia
Introduction by Harleman, Pagan
2005-01 - Barnes & Noble
1593082290 Check Our Catalog
We meet young, free-spirited Rachel Vinrace aboard her father's ship, the
"Euphrosyne", departing London for South America. Surrounded by a clutch of
12
genteel companions--among them her aunt Helen, who judges Rachel to be
"vacillating," "emotional," and "more than normally incompetent for her years"-Rachel displays a startling maturity when she finds her engagement to the writer
Terence Hewet listing toward disaster. As she soon discovers, "tragedies come in
the hungry hours."
The Bostonians
By James, Henry, Jr.
Introduction by Hustvedt, Siri
Notes by Sobelle, Stefanie
2005-04 - Barnes & Noble
1593082975 Check Our Catalog
Nearly a century before the birth of the contemporary feminist movement, Henry
James dealt with its nineteenth-century forerunner in "The Bostonians." Mixing
acute social observation and psychological analysis with mordant humor, James
hangs his story on a unique instance of the traditional romantic triangle. At its apex
stands the vibrantly beautiful Verena Tarrant, an intense public speaker who
arouses the passions of two very different people. Olive Chancellor, a Boston-bred
suffragette, dreams of turning Verena into a fiery campaigner for women's rights.
Basil Ransom, a Mississippi-bred lawyer, dreams of turning her into his wife. As
these two struggle for possession of Verena's soul-- and body-- their confusions,
crises, and conflicts begin almost preternaturally to prefigure today's sexual
politics. In fact, James's complex portrait of Olive and her ideals, savagely satirical
yet sympathetic and so controversial when it first appeared, continues to evoke
both anger and admiration. But he treats Verena and Basil with equal complexity,
climaxed by the novel's quietly haunting final sentence.
The Beautiful and Damned
By Fitzgerald, F. Scott
1999-02 - Scribner Book Company
0684852764 Check Our Catalog
The work that signaled Fitzgerald's maturity as a storyteller and novelist, "The
Beautiful and Damned" is a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age.
Anthony Comstock Patch is a Harvard-educated gallant who leisurely aspires to
author a book as he awaits an enormous inheritance upon his grandfather's death.
Not quite gorgeous, but considered handsome here and there, he thinks himself an
exceptional young man -- sophisticated, well-adjusted, and destined to achieve
13
some subtle accomplishment deemed worthy by the elect. Gloria is a sparkling
young socialite and a rare beauty. Armed with an incisive wit, she's at once level
and reckless.
Patch's impassioned marriage to Gloria is fueled by alcohol and consumed by
greed. The dazzling couple race through a series of alcohol-induced fiascoes -- first
in hilarity, and later in despair. "The Beautiful and Damned" is a piercing and tragic
depiction of New York nightlife, reckless ambition, squandered talent, and the faux
aristocracy of the nouveaux riches.
A Moveable Feast
By Hemingway, Ernest
Preface by Hemingway, Ernest
1996-05 - Scribner Book Company
068482499X Check Our Catalog
This vibrant portrait of Paris in the 1920s, published posthumously in 1964, is
vintage Hemingway--evocative, self-mocking and frank. In an extraordinary
chronicle of the sights, sounds, and tastes of Paris in a bygone era, Hemingway
offers readers a view of his life and the people that populated his expatriate world-Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and other literary luminaries.
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Non-Fiction
The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks
and Albums of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
By Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Editor Smith, Scottie Fitzgerald
Editor Kerr, Joan P.
2003-12 - University of South Carolina Press
1570035296 Check Our Catalog
This pictorial autobiography of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald documents two lives that
have become legendary. The Romantic Egoists draws almost entirely from the
scrapbooks and photograph albums that the Fitzgeralds scrupulously kept as their
personal record and provides a wealth of illustrative material not previously
available.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
By Bryer, Jackson R.
Author Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Editor Bryer, Jackson R.
2002-04 - St. Martin's Press
0312268750 Check Our Catalog
With an Introduction by Eleanor Lanahan, the Fitzgeralds' granddaughter, this
stunning collection includes mostly unpublished love letters chronicling one of the
most passionate and legendary romances of all time. 30 photos throughout.
Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days
By Donaldson, Scott
2009-07 - Columbia University Press
023114816X Check Our Catalog
Known for his penetrating studies of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Donaldson traces
the creative genius of these authors and the surprising overlaps among their
works. Fitzgerald and Hemingway both wrote fiction out of their experiences
rather than about them. Therefore Donaldson pursues both biography and
criticism in these essays, with a deep commitment to close reading. He traces the
influence of celebrity culture on the legacies of both writers, matches an analysis
of Hemingway's Spanish Civil War writings to a treatment of Fitzgerald's leftleaning tendencies, and contrasts the averted gaze in Hemingway's fiction with the
role of possessions in The Great Gatsby. He devotes several essays to four novels,
Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms, and others
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to lesser-known short stories.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
By Fowler, Therese Anne
Read by Lamia, Jenna
2013-03 - MacMillan Audio
1427230145 Check Our Catalog
When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a
country club dance in 1918, she is 17 years old and he is a young army lieutenant.
Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability:
Scott isn't prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting that his writing will
bring him both fortune and fame.
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (REV)
By Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Author Smith, Scottie Fitzgerald
Editor Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph
2002-08 - University of South Carolina Press
1570034559 Check Our Catalog
The standard work on Fitzgerald, revised, enlarged, and updated; Since its first
publication in 1981, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur has stood apart from other
biographies of F. Scott Fitzgerald for its thoroughness and volume of information. It
is regarded today as the basic work on Fitzgerald and the preeminent source for
the study of the novelist. In this second revised edition, Matthew J. Bruccoli
provides new evidence discovered since its original edition.
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