Tuesday, September 18, 2007

F Scott Fitzgerald

The Guardian is running a series of transcripts, audio pieces and commentaries called Great Interviews of the 20th Century. Their most recent addition is F Scott Fitzgerald interviewed by Michael Mok.

The article that introduces the series is called What Makes a Good Interview? by Paul Laity. Here is his take on the Fitzgerald interview:

No interview with a writer has featured more prominently in his own legend than Michel Mok's meeting with a broken-down, drunken F Scott Fitzgerald in 1936. Rumour had it that, having read the interview, the novelist tried to commit suicide. The flame was guttering, he thought, his fame as a novelist was well nigh extinguished. He could not, of course, have been more wrong.

2 comments:

laurie said...

ah how sad a life his turned out to be. he's from st. paul, you know, where i live.... we have a statue of him in a park downtown. it's very short, yet somehow has a lot of sadness and dignity to it.

David said...

It has been a great Guardian series, though the F Scott is not the only interview in it that has become self-eating mythology.