Hey, Old Sport, Pete has a new book review

A review of West of Sunset, a novel by Stewart O’Nan

There are no second acts in American lives wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps not, though he nearly did have his own second act were it not for failing health.

Stewart O’Nan’s latest novel, West of Sunset, tells the story of Fitzgerald’s final few years as a Hollywood screenwriter. But this is not the high flying Fitzgerald of the Gatsby days, or the years after spent chasing Zelda around Paris. In this chapter of his life we find Fitzgerald nearly broke, Zelda confined to a sanitarium, and daughter Scottie off at boarding school. Though only in his early 40’s, this Fitzgerald has had too many late nights, too many cigarettes, and his efforts to quit drinking mostly end in failure. Through connections, however, he is given a chance to go to Hollywood and write for the movies.

As a contract screenwriter, Fitzgerald finds himself much lower on the totem pole than he is used to. The actors, directors, and especially the producers run the town. You can be hired one day, fired the next, or be easily replaced by someone’s relative or friend. Still, he begins carving out some kind of life for himself, even finding a steady girlfriend in gossip columnist Sheilah Graham (who has quite a story of her own). But with Zelda’s deteriorating mental health and his own drinking problem, it’s a life of ‘boats against the current ‘ as he wrote so well in The Great Gatsby.

As I was reading this interesting novel, I thought of the character Hubbell Gardner from the movie The Way We Were. Hubbell writes a story about a bright young man similar to himself. “In a way he was like the country he lived in; everything came too easily to him.” Fitzgerald may have felt like that after success at such a young age, and it’s fascinating to read about him reflecting back to those days while looking forward to a very uncertain future. Are there no second acts in American lives? If not, he sure came close.

Pete has a new book review for you...

I'm a big fan of Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, which later became a stage musical and eventually the film Cabaret. Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, a novel by Francine Prose, takes place in roughly the same era but different city. The depression lingers, the Germans are threatening, but at the Chameleon Club you can be whatever you want to be. A budding photographer takes the picture of a sultry woman with her lesbian lover who dresses as a man in a tuxedo. But who are these women really, and what becomes of them when Paris becomes occupied by the Germans in 1940? 

The story is told from several points of view including the photographer's letters home, from a struggling American writer (think Henry Miller), from a biographer interested in the story of Lou Villars, the woman who wanted to dress as a man (not so easy in those days) but ended up as a tool for the Gestapo, and from a wealthy baroness, who married a homosexual automaker but is in love with the photographer who snapped the photo 'Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932' (or, by its real life name: Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1932). 

Not only was this is novel a joy to read, but it's also based on true events. Like me, you'll probably want to see who the real Lou was, and was that really Henry Miller sitting at a bar with Picasso? You'll no doubt want to learn about the photographer in question ( in real life, Brassai) and view the much discussed photographs. They're quite beautiful. 

I so look forward to recommending this book. From the titular photograph, it's hard to have an opinion one way or another about Lou Villars. All she wanted to do was dress like a man. But maybe there was something else lurking in her heart, or maybe it's more likely that she had no heart at all.