666 "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Lev Grossman

Summary

Episode 666 Summary: "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Lev Grossman

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Episode Overview

In episode 666 of The History of Literature, host Jack Wilson, alongside literary aficionado Mike Palindrome, delves into F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal short story "Winter Dreams." The episode features an in-depth discussion of the story’s themes, character dynamics, and Fitzgerald's literary prowess. Additionally, best-selling novelist Lev Grossman joins the conversation to discuss his novel Bright Sword and reflect on the profound impact of literature on personal growth.

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Listener Letter: Ronald’s Reflections (00:15 - 04:57)

The episode opens with Jack Wilson reading a poignant letter from a dedicated listener, Ronald. Ronald, a writer of Arthurian Legends, shares his contemplations on mortality and the enduring influence of literature in his life. He references his recent readings, including John Steinbeck’s interpretation of Thomas Malory's myths, and muses about the finite nature of his literary journey at the age of 82.

Notable Quote:

“I’ll probably have to take it with me when I go. It’ll probably be the last book that I shall ever read.”
— Ronald (00:48)

Jack responds with heartfelt encouragement, emphasizing the universal relevance of reflecting on mortality and the preciousness of time, setting a contemplative tone for the episode.

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Discussion with Mike Palindrome: Introducing "Winter Dreams" (04:57 - 14:44)

Mike Palindrome, president of the Manhattan-Based Literature Supporters Club, joins Jack to discuss current literary trends and the group's recent reading selections, including Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time and Carl Ove Knausgaard’s Seasons Quartet. Their conversation transitions to Fitzgerald, with Mike expressing his admiration for both Fitzgerald’s novels and short stories.

Jack introduces "Winter Dreams," highlighting its pre-World War II setting and its exploration of the American Dream through the pursuit of love and success. The duo underscores Fitzgerald’s mastery in capturing the fleeting nature of beauty and ambition.

Notable Quote:

“Winter Dreams made me nostalgic for that era... fiction had a pride of place and a centrality in American lives that it doesn't really have today.”
— Jack Wilson (14:33)

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Reading: "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (14:44 - 73:31)

Jack proceeds to read an extensive excerpt from Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams," narrating the story of Dexter Green, a successful young man from the Midwest, and his tumultuous relationship with Judy Jones, a captivating and enigmatic socialite. The narrative vividly portrays Dexter’s relentless pursuit of Judy and his struggle to reconcile his ambitions with his desire for love.

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Analysis with Mike Palindrome: Themes and Character Dynamics (73:31 - 110:50)

Post-reading, Jack and Mike delve into a comprehensive analysis of "Winter Dreams." They dissect Dexter Green’s character—his ambition, sense of propriety, and inherent sense of inferiority rooted in his modest background. The discussion illuminates Judy Jones as a multifaceted character whose charm masks deeper vulnerabilities and destructive tendencies.

Key Themes Explored:

• The American Dream: Dexter’s quest for success and social elevation.
• Ambition vs. Love: The tension between personal aspirations and romantic entanglements.
• Fleeting Beauty and Youth: The transient nature of attraction and vitality.
• Mortality and Time: Reflections on aging and the passage of time impacting personal fulfillment.

Notable Quotes:

“She always looks as if she wanted to be kissed, turning those big cow eyes on every calf in town.”
— Mike Palindrome (80:39)

“It is rather amazing... he loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving.”
— Jack Wilson (52:27)

The analysis also touches on the story’s ending, interpreting Dexter’s profound grief not just as sorrow for lost love but as mourning the end of his youthful dreams and the inevitable decline of beauty. Mike and Jack debate the psychological depth Fitzgerald imparts to Dexter, portraying him as a man caught between enduring ambition and unfulfilled emotional desires.

Notable Quote:

“Long ago he said long ago there was something in me but now that thing is gone now that thing is gone I cannot cry I cannot care that thing will come back no more.”
— Dexter Green (73:31)

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Guest Segment: Lev Grossman on "Bright Sword" and Literary Impact (110:50 - 116:10)

Best-selling novelist Lev Grossman joins the podcast to discuss his novel Bright Sword, a modern retelling of the King Arthur legend. He reflects on a listener’s poignant question about choosing a last book to read, selecting Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as his final literary experience. Grossman shares how the play profoundly impacted him during his youth, offering solace and a sense of shared human experience.

Notable Quote:

“I remember that as the first work of literature that I ever experienced where I felt as though nobody was lying to me. It really saved me.”
— Lev Grossman (111:43)

Grossman elaborates on the transformative power of literature, emphasizing its role in providing understanding and empathy, particularly during personal struggles. His insights resonate with the episode's overarching theme of literature’s enduring influence on individuals’ lives.

Notable Quote:

“I could have wept at the wonder of her return.”
— Lev Grossman (112:30)

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Conclusion (116:10 - 117:36)

Jack wraps up the episode by thanking Ronald for his heartfelt letter, producer Emma for her contribution in reading "Winter Dreams," and guest Mike Palindrome for his insightful analysis. He also extends gratitude to Lev Grossman for his thoughtful participation. Jack teases future episodes that will explore diverse literary topics, from Edith Maude Eaton's portrayal of Chinese American experiences to the covert roles librarians played as spies.

Closing Quote:

“Waiting for Godot. Off to a great start, aren't we? This year, 2025.”
— Jack Wilson (116:10)

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Final Thoughts

Episode 666 of The History of Literature offers a rich exploration of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "Winter Dreams," blending literary analysis with personal reflections and guest insights. Through thoughtful discussion and evocative storytelling, Jack Wilson and his guests illuminate the complexities of ambition, love, and the inexorable passage of time as depicted in Fitzgerald’s work, while also highlighting the profound personal impact of literature as shared by Lev Grossman.

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Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for Career.

[Mike Palindrome]

Day and said he was a big roas man.

[Jack Wilson]

Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be To Be hello and happy New Year. Today on the podcast, a letter from a listener, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mike Palindrome and more. That's all coming up on today's History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast, everyone, and welcome to the new year. I'm Jack Wilson, your host, eager to kick things off with some enthusiasm and hope. And so we turn to a listener, Ronald, who has checked in with us from time to time throughout the years. He's a good friend of the show. He writes Arthurian Legends. Hi Jack. I wish you and yours a wonderfully cheerful time. Thank you, Ronald. I wish you and yours the same. I want to tell you this is Ronald again. I want to tell you how glad I was to hear you discuss the new book about the Arthurian legend with your guest author, Lev Grossman, because I have recently read John Steinbeck's take on the Thomas Malory version of the mythic Heroes escapades. As for the White Book, here he's talking about the Once and Future king novel by T.H. white, I believe. As for the White Book, which is still collecting years of dust on my crowded shelves, I intend to get around to reading it someday. I'll be 82 the week before Christmas, so I may have to take it with me when I go. I hope they'll have enough light there. I know they'll have the heat turned up when I arrive. It'll probably be the last book that I shall ever read. Oh, Ronald. Hmm, he says. I just started reading the Rector of Justin by Lewis Auchincloss, a Kennedy relative whose house was painted by my brother in law and was given an autographed copy of his last book in thanks for a job well done. I've got that now dustily unread as well. I love your show and who knows, it may be the last podcast I'll ever hear. Ronald. Then he says on that note. Okay, Ronald, well, first of all, happy birthday. I hope you had a wonderful day and a wonderful holiday. And let's put these last books and last podcast ideas aside. I know I'm a bit hypocritical since I often close the show with a my last book. But Ronald, I'm sure you will have many more happy days and months and years of reading and listening ahead of you. Although in another sense we all could use a dose of that, couldn't we? Of thinking about our mortality. Because our time is precious and let's make the most of it. Not just the 82 year olds among us, but all of us could live that way. One never knows when the blow will fall, as Graham Greene liked to say. Which is a good transition to F. Scott Fitzgerald's story Winter Dreams. First published in December of 1922, this story is about a Midwesterner's pursuit of a wealthy heiress and socialite. Mike and I will explain what you need to know before you hear the story. And then you're going to hear the story and then we'll discuss it and then we'll wrap things up with a My Last Book by. Well, how about Lev Grossman, since his ears were already burning thanks to Ronald's email. What an action packed episode we have today, people. Pow. And what else did they say on action packed episodes? Pow. And ker Pow. You can see my creative powers are already in high gear here in 2025. Mike Palindrome is next.

[Ronald]

Foreign.

[Jack Wilson]

Me now is our old friend Mike Palindrome, who's here for the millionth time. He's the president of the Manhattan Based Literature Supporters Club. Mike, welcome back to the History of literature.

[Mike Palindrome]

Hey, Jack.

[Jack Wilson]

So before we jump in with F. Scott Fitzgerald here, I wanted to ask you about Twitter together. You were the champion or one of the chief promoters of Twitter together. Did those all shift over to blue sky now?

[Mike Palindrome]

A big group of us did post election. I think the guilt got to us.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mike Palindrome]

Well, partly guild and also just sick of the bots.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah, it got to be kind of a swamp over there. So what are you guys currently reading?

[Mike Palindrome]

We're on book six of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. Yeah, and also we're slow reading Carl Ove Knauskaard's the Seasons Quartet.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, right, okay.

[Mike Palindrome]

Which I've read before and I've been kind of tepidly recommending it to people, but I have to say I'm enjoying it the second time around.

[Jack Wilson]

And what's the response? Been from the blue sky. Do you call each other Skeeters?

[Mike Palindrome]

I don't know. I mean, we just call each other followers. Readers.

[Jack Wilson]

So how do they like the Knaus Guard?

[Mike Palindrome]

They. Many of them really enjoyed my struggle, so just to hear his voice again is a treat. But I think they also feel like he can kind of just write about anything. You know, bottle caps and, you know, Twizzlers and.

[Jack Wilson]

And. Have you guys ever done a Fitzgerald book?

[Mike Palindrome]

No. You know, there's talk of doing Tender Is the Night, which is one of my favorite novels.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, we discussed that one here. That seems like the one to do. Just because it's kind of the most. It's kind of the thickest and the most. The best in terms of every 10 pages, you want to stop and talk to somebody about it.

[Mike Palindrome]

The other one I would consider is reading all of his short stories, which I think is one of these things where it reminds me of the way I used to read, which was I would try to read everything by a novelist.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And I have had this collection. I've got the Big Blue Book, the Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think I've had this book for 35 years or something.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, that's a classic.

[Jack Wilson]

So actually, this episode is probably going to run around January 1st or so. Do you know what the Blue Sky Together readers will be reading at that point.

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, the Powell. We're closing in on day 200. We're about halfway through.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Mike Palindrome]

There are 12 volumes.

[Jack Wilson]

Or if they want to just kind of hang around and wait for your next thing to start.

[Ronald]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, there's talk of Olga Toxurek. I always mispronounce her name. She just wrote a horror story rewriting of the Magic Mountain that has gotten some great reviews. So there's talk of doing that. There's also talk of rereading Madame Bovary, which quite a number of people have never read.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, wow.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah. I'm surprised by that. But, you know, a lot of people really find it challenging to read Pre World War II.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, that's kind of surprising, since I sort of prefer it. Okay, well, Speaking of pre World War II, we are headed back to the 1920s with this one. Would you say that F. Scott Fitzgerald was ever your favorite writer?

[Mike Palindrome]

Yes, in the spring of 1991. Starting then, he was for a full year. And that most important freshman year of college that, you know, I. A duty as every. For every American, is to read Gatsby in high school, which I did, but I think it was reading this side of paradise, about his days at Princeton. And then his short story is. I kind of lived off them. I bought all the little Scribners, the flappers and philosophers, diamond as big as the Ritz. I mean, the Pat.

[Jack Wilson]

Hobby stories.

[Mike Palindrome]

Cat hobby stories. Babylon Revisited. I've donated some of my other books from my library over the years, but I have not reduced the mini shelf of Fitzgerald.

[Jack Wilson]

So what's implied in that, in what you just said, is that he's no longer your favorite writer. And he was mine, I think for about a year or two, maybe about a two year stretch when I was about that age too, 19 or 20. But where does he. I mean, would he be in your top 10 now if you were to make such a list?

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, I would put Tender Is the Night in my top 10 of novels. I would put Babylon Revisited as possibly my favorite short story. I find that his form of sadness is the kind that I admire from afar. You know, it's intellectual, it's doomed. My life is so unlike his stories that I don't think many people think of him as escapism. But he is for me. I don't plan on living a desolate life. He's my little fix.

[Jack Wilson]

And how do the short stories fit in? You sort of have famously come out against short stories before, but I mean, a lot of his stories are fairly long and kind of. They do have a bit of sweep to them. This one we're going to be talking about today certainly does. It's maybe not quite a novel, but it's also not a two pager or anything. Do you rank his short stories? I mean, for me, they're right up there with Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. They're kind of. I'd probably take them over a couple of his novels.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, I agree. I mean, the ones that really stand out are incredible. And they're really the American mythic dream. They embody that, I think, more than Kerouac, more than Whitman. He covers this success versus failure, the drinking, the audacity of behavior of the rich. And there's a lot of entertainment. The luck the narrators have with women, let's not forget. Yeah, there's something very, very American. And you can almost feel some pride when you read them. Like, this is your country.

[Jack Wilson]

And he is such a writer from the heart and you feel his vulnerability and you feel like he's putting himself into the page. And I feel like with the short stories there's just some where you're just getting him at his best, where you get the best version of Fitzgerald was the one who was sitting down to write a short story that day or that weekend. And where if that had been a stretch where he was working on a novel, maybe the novel would be great too. But what we have is what we have and he was writing these stories for money. And he made a lot more money from his short stories than he did from his novels.

[Mike Palindrome]

I was going to say, wasn't he paid some like the equivalent of like 100 grand a short story or something? I think I read somewhere that in today's dollars, it was just crazy how much he was paid.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. At his peak when he was landing things in the Saturday Evening Post. And I'd have to say, reading this story, we're jumping ahead a little bit to where I wanted to go before we actually hear the story. But it did make me kind of nostalgic for that era, which I don't know if I even say that I lived through it. Maybe I came in at the tail end of it, certainly pre Internet, but probably even pre television. It's sort of the era of my grandparents where you would really value that magazine being delivered to your door and having some fiction inside it. And that would be maybe your Saturday night. Maybe you'd read it aloud with the family or you'd enjoy it yourself next to the fire underneath the blanket. I'm sort of romanticizing all of it, but it does feel like fiction had a pride of place and a centrality in American lives that it doesn't really have today.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, sadly that's true.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so what should our listeners be thinking about when we hear Winter Dreams?

[Mike Palindrome]

I was just going to say I normally hate titles like Winter Dreams, like dreams, just that word. But I'd be curious to see how people think if it's in.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right. And we can talk about that afterwards. So let's take a quick break and then we will Listeners can hear the entire story Winter Dreams and then you and I will come back to discuss. Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means.

[Mike Palindrome]

No, not the diet resolutions.

[Jack Wilson]

A way for us all to try.

[Mike Palindrome]

And do a little bit better than.

[Jack Wilson]

We did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise.

[Mike Palindrome]

The price of wireless on you every chance I get.

[Ronald]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch $45 upfront payment required. Equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees, extra Speed slower above 40 GB on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details. Foreign Scott Fitzgerald. Some of the caddies were poor as sin and lived in one room houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard. But Dexter Green's father owned the second best grocery store in Black Bear. The best one was the hub, patronized by wealthy people from Sherry island, and Dexter caddied only for pocket money. In the fall, when the days became crisp and gray and the long Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box, Dexter's skis moved over the snow that hid the fairways of the golf course. At these times the country gave him a feeling of profound melancholy. It offended him that the links should should lie and enforce fallowness, haunted by ragged sparrows for the long season. It was dreary too, that on the tees where the gay colors fluttered in summer there were now only the desolate sandboxes knee deep in crusted ice. When he crossed the hills the wind blew cold as misery, and if the sun was out he tramped with his eyes squinted up against the hard dust. Dimensionless glare. In April the winter ceased abruptly. The snow ran down into Black Bear Lake, scarcely tarrying for the early golfers to brave the season with red and black balls. Without elation, without an interval of moist glory, the cold was gone. Dexter knew that there was something dismal about this northern spring, just as he knew there was something gorgeous about the fall. Fall made him clench his hands and tremble and repeat idiotic sentences to himself and make brisk, abrupt gestures of command to imaginary audiences and armies. October filled him with hope, which November raised to a sort of ecstatic triumph. And in this mood the fleeting, brilliant impressions of the summer at Sherry island were ready. Grist to his mill, he became a golf champion and defeated Mr. T.A. hedrick in a marvelous match played a hundred times over the fairways of his imagination. A match each detail of which he changed about untiringly. Sometimes he won with almost laughable ease. Sometimes he came up magnificently from behind again stepping from a Pierce arrow automobile. Like Mr. Mortimer Jones, he strolled frigidly into the lounge of the Sherry Island Golf Club. Or perhaps surrounded by an admiring crowd, he gave an exhibition of fancy diving from the springboard of the club raft. Among those who watched him in open mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer Jones. And one day it came to pass that Mr. Jones himself, and not his ghost, came up to Dexter with tears in his eyes and said that Dexter was the best caddy in the club and wouldn't he decide not to quit if Mr. Jones made it worth his while because every other caddy in the club lost one ball a hole for him regularly. No, sir, said Dexter decisively, I don't want to be a caddy anymore. Then, after a pause, I'm too old. You're not more than 14. Why the devil did you decide just this morning that you wanted to quit? You promised that next week you'd go over to the state tournament with me. I decided I was too old. Dexter handed in his A class badge, collected what money was due from his caddy master, and walked home to Black Bear Village. The best caddy I ever saw. Shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones over a drink that afternoon. Never lost a ball. Willing, intelligent, quiet, honest, grateful. The little girl who had done this was 11 beautifully ugly, as little girls are apt to be, who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted down at the corners when she smiled, and in heaven help us, in the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through her thin frame in a sort of glow. She had come eagerly out to the chorus at nine o'clock with a white linen nurse and five small new golf clubs in a white canvas bag, which the nurse was carrying when Dexter first saw her. She was standing by the caddy house, rather ill at ease in trying to conceal the fact by engaging her nurse in an obviously unnatural conversation, graced by startling, irrelevant grimaces from herself. Well, it's certainly a nice day, Hilda, Dexter heard her say. She drew down the corners of her mouth, smiled, and glanced furtively around, her eyes in transit, falling for an instant on Dexter, then to the nurse. Well, I guess there aren't very many people out here this morning, are there? The smile again. Radiant, blatantly artificial, convincing. I don't know what we're supposed to do now, said the nurse, looking nowhere in particular. Oh, that's all right. I'll fix it up. Dexter stood perfectly still, his mouth slightly ajar. He knew that if he moved forward a step, his stare would be in her line of vision. If he moved backward, he would lose his full view of her face. For a moment he had not realized how young she was. Now he remembered having seen her several times the year before in Bloomers. Suddenly, involuntarily, he laughed a short, abrupt laugh. Then, startled by himself, he turned and began to walk Quickly away, boy. Dexter stopped. Boy. Beyond question, he was addressed. Not only that, but he was treated to that absurd smile, that preposterous smile, the memory of which at least a dozen men were to carry into middle age. Boy, do you know where the golf teacher is? He's giving a lesson. Well, do you know where the caddy master is? He isn't here yet this morning. Oh. For a moment this baffled her. She stood alternately on her right and left foot. We'd like to get a caddy, said the nurse. Mrs. Mortimer Jones sent us out to play golf, and we don't know how without we get a caddy here. She was stopped by an ominous glance from Miss Jones, followed immediately by the smile. There aren't any caddies here except me, said dexter to the nurse. And I got to stay here and charge until the caddie master gets here. Oh. Ms. Jones. And arightnew now withdrew and at a proper distance from Dexter, became involved in a heated conversation which was concluded by miss Jones taking one of the clubs and hitting it on the ground with violence for further emphasis. She raised it again and was about to bring it down smartly upon the nurse's bosom when the nurse seized the club and twisted it from her hands. You damn little mean old thing. Cried Miss Jones wildly. Another argument ensued. Realizing that the elements of the comedy were implied in the scene, d. Dexter several times began to laugh, but each time restrained the laugh before it reached audibility. He could not resist the monstrous conviction that the little girl was justified in beating the nurse. The situation was resolved by the fortuitous appearance of the caddy master, who was appealed to immediately by the nurse. Miss Jones is to have a little caddy, and this one says he can't go. Mr. Kenna said I was to wait here till you came, said Dexter quickly. Well, he's here now. Miss jones smiled cheerfully at the caddie master. Then she dropped her bag and set off at a haughty mince toward the first tee. Well. The caddy master turned to Dexter. What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young ladies clubs. I don't think I'll go out today, said Dexter. You don't? I think I'll quit. The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite caddy, and the $30 a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet. It is not so simple as that either. As so frequently would be the case in the future. Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his winter dreams. Now, of course, the quality and the seasonability of these winter dreams varied, but the stuff of them remained. They persuaded Dexter several years later to pass up a business course at the state university. His father, prospering now, would have paid his way for the precarious advantage of attending an older and more famous university in the east, where he was bothered by his scanty funds. But do not get the impression, because his winter dreams happened to be concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was anything merely snobbish in the boy. He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people. He wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it. And sometimes he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in which life indulges. It is with one of those denials, and not with his career as a whole, that the story deals he made money. It was rather amazing. After college he went to the city from which Black Bear Lake draws its wealthy patrons. When he was only 23 and had been there not quite two years, there were already people who liked to say, now there's a boy. All about him. Rich men's sons were peddling bonds precariously or investing patrimonies precariously, or plodding through the two dozen volumes of the George Washington commercial course. But Dexter borrowed a thousand dollars on his college degree and his confident mouth and bought a partnership in a laundry. It was a small laundry when he went into it, but Dexter made a specialty of learning how the English washed fine woolen golf stockings without shrinking them. And within a year he was catering to the train that were knickerbockers. Men were insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his laundry, just as they had insisted on a caddy who could find golf balls. A little later he was doing their wives lingerie as well and running five branches in different parts of the city. Before he was 27, he owned the largest string of laundries in his section of the country. It was then that he sold out and went to New York. But the part of his story that concerns us goes back to the days when he was making his first big success. When he was 23, Mr. Hart, one of the gray haired men who liked to say now there's a boy, gave him a guest card to the Sherry Island Golf Club for a weekend. So he signed his name one day on the register and that afternoon played golf in a foursome with Mr. Hart, Mr. Sandwood, and Mr. T.A. hedrick. He did not consider it necessary to remark that he had once carried Mr. Hart's bag over the same links, and that he knew every trap and gully with his eyes shut. But he found himself glancing at the four caddies who trailed them, trying to catch a gleam or gesture that would remind him of himself, that would lessen the gap which lay between his present and his past. It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar impressions. One minute he had the sense of being a trespasser, in the next he was impressed by the tremendous superiority he felt toward Mr. T.A. hedrick, who was a bore and not even a good golfer anymore. Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart lost near the 15th green, an enormous thing happened. While they were searching the stiff grasses of the rough, there was a clear call of four from behind a hill in their rear, and as they all turned abruptly from their search, a bright new ball sliced abruptly over the hill and caught Mr. T.A. hedrick in the abdomen. By Gad. Cried Mr. T.A.

[Jack Wilson]

Hedrick.

[Ronald]

They ought to put some of these crazy women off the course. Is getting to be outrageous. A head and a voice came up together over the hill. Do you mind if we go through? You hit me in the stomach. Cried Mr. Hedrick wildly. Did I? The girl approached the group of men. I'm sorry I yelled. 4. Her glance fell casually on each of the men, then scanned the fairway for her balm. Did I bounce into the rough? It was impossible to determine whether this question was ingenious or malicious. In a moment, however, she left no doubt, for as her partner came up over the hill, she called cheerfully, here I am. I'd have gone on the grain, except that I hit something. As she stood her stance for a short, mashy shot, Dexter looked at her closely. She wore a blue gingham dress rimmed at throat and shoulders with a white edging that accentuated her tan. The quality of exaggeration, of thinness which had made her passionate eyes and downturning mouth absurd at 11, was gone. Now she was arrestingly beautiful. The color in her cheeks was centered like the color in a picture. It was not a high color, but a sort of fluctuating and feverish warmth, so shaded that it seemed at any moment it would recede and disappear. This color and the mobility of her mouth gave a continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate vitality, balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes. She swung her mashie impatiently and without interest, pitching the ball into a Sandpit on the other side of the green. With a quick, insincere smile and a careless thank you, she went on after it. That Judy Jones, remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee as they waited some moments for her to play on ahead. All she needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then to be married off to an old fashioned cavalry captain. My God, she's good looking, said Mr. Sandwood, who was just over 30. Good looking. Cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously. She always looks as if she wanted to be kissed, turning those big cow eyes on every calf in town. It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the maternal instinct. She'd play pretty good golf if she'd try, said Mr. Sandwood. She has no form, said Mr. Hedrick solemnly. She has a nice figure, said Mr. Sandwood. Better thank the Lord she doesn't drive a swifter bomb, said Mr. Hart, winking at Dexter. Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets and left the dry, rustling night of western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of the golf club, watched the even overlap of the waters and the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on his bathing suit and swam out to the farthest raft, where he stretched dripping on the wet canvas of the springboard. There was a fish jumping and a star shining, and the lights around the lake were gleaming. Over on a dark peninsula a piano was playing the songs of last summer and the summers before that, songs from Chin Chin and the Count of Luxembourg and the Chocolate Soldier. And because the sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed beautiful to Dexter, he lay perfectly quiet and listened. The tune the piano was playing at that moment had been gay and new five years before, when Dexter was a sophomore at college. They had played it at a prom once, when he could not afford the luxury of proms, and he had stood outside the gymnasium and listened. The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy, and it was with that ecstasy he viewed what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that for once he was magnificently attuned to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour he might never know again. A low, pale oblong detached itself suddenly from the darkness of the island, spitting forth the reverberate sound of a racing motor boat, two white Streamers of cleft water rolled themselves out beneath it, and almost immediately the boat was beside him, drowning out the hot tinkle of the piano and the drone of its spray. Dexter, raising himself on his arms, was aware of a figure standing at the wheel, of two dark eyes regarding him over the lengthening space of water. Then the boat had gone by and was sweeping in an immense, purposeless circle of spray, round and round in the middle of the lake. With equal eccentricity, I. One of the circles flattened out and headed back toward the raft. Who's that? She called, shutting off her motor. She was so near now that Dexter could see her bathing suit, which consisted apparently of pink rompers. The nose of the boat bumped the raft, and as the ladder tilted rakishly, he was precipitated toward her. With different degrees of interest they recognized each other. Aren't you one of the men we played through this afternoon? She demanded. He was. Well, do you know how to drive a motorboat? Because if you do, I wish you'd drive this one so I can ride on the surfboard behind. My name is Judy Jones. She favored him with an absurd smirk, rather what tried to be a smirk for twist her mouth as she might. It was not grotesque, it was merely beautiful. And I live in a house over there on the island, and in that house there's a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door, I drove out of the dock because he says I'm his ideal. There was a fish jumping and a star shining, and the lights around the lake were gleaming. Dexter sat beside Judy Jones, and she explained how her boat was driven. Then she was in the water, swimming to the floating surfboard with a sinuous crawl. Watching her was, without effort to the eye, watching a branch waving or a seagull flying. Her arms burned to butternut, moved sinuously among the dull platinum ripples, elbow appearing first, casting the forearm back with a cadence of falling water, then reaching out and down, stabbing a path ahead. They moved out into the lake. Turning, Dexter saw that she was kneeling on the low rear of the now uptilted surfboard. Go faster, she called. Fast as it'll go. Obediently he jammed the lever forward and the white spray mounted at the bow. When he looked around again, the girl was standing up on the rushing board, her arms spread wide, her eyes lifted toward the moon. It's awful cold. She shouted. What's your name? He told her. Well, why don't you come to dinner tomorrow night? His heart turned over like the flywheel of the boat, and for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life. Next evening, while he waited for her to come downstairs, Dexter peopled the soft, deep summer room and the sun porch that opened from it with the men who had already loved Judy Jones. He knew the sort of men they were, the men who, when he first went to college, had entered from the great prep schools with graceful clothes and the deep tan of healthy summers. He had seen that in one sense he was better than those men. He was newer and stronger, yet in acknowledging to himself that he wished his children to be more like them, he was admitting that he was but the rough, strong stuff from which they eternally sprang. When the time had come for him to wear good clothes, he had known who were the best tailors in America, and the best tailors in America had made him the suit he wore this evening. He had acquired that particular reserve, peculiar to his university, that set it off from other universities. He recognized the value to him of such a mannerism, and he had adopted it. He knew that to be careless in dress and manner required more confidence than to be careful. But carelessness was for his children. His mother's name had been Crimslick. She was a bohemian of the peasant class, and she had talked broken English to the end of her days. Her son must keep to the set patterns. At a little after seven, Judy Jones came downstairs. She wore a blue silk afternoon dress, and he was disappointed at first that she had not put on something more elaborate. This feeling was accentuated when, after a brief greeting, she went to the door of a butler's pantry and, pushing it open, called, you can serve dinner, Martha. He had rather expected that a butler would announce dinner and that there would be a cocktail. Then he put these thoughts behind him as they sat down side by side on a lounge and looked at each other. Father, Mother won't be here, she said thoughtfully. He remembered the last time he had seen her father, and he was glad the parents were not to be here tonight. They might wonder who he was. He had been born in Keble, a Minnesota village 50 miles farther north, and he always gave Keeble as his home instead of Black Bear Village. Country towns were well enough to come from, if they weren't inconveniently in sight and used as footstools by fashionable legs. They talked of his university, which she had visited frequently during the past two years, and of the nearby city, which supplied Sherry island with its patrons, and whether Dexter could return next day to his prospering laundries. During dinner she slipped into a moody depression, which gave Dexter a feeling of uneasiness. Whatever petulance she uttered in her throaty voice worried him. Whatever she smiled at, at him, at a chicken liver, at nothing. It disturbed him that her smile could have no root in mirth or even in amusement. When the scarlet corners of her lips curved down, it was less a smile than an invitation to a kiss. Then, after dinner, she led him out on the dark sun porch and deliberately changed the atmosphere. Do you mind if I weep a little? She said. I'm afraid I'm boring you. He responded quickly. You're not. I like you, but I've just had a terrible afternoon. There was a man I cared about, and this afternoon he told me out of a clear sky that he was poor as a church mouse. He'd never even hinted it before. Does this sound horribly mundane? Perhaps he was afraid to tell you. Suppose he was, she answered. He didn't start right. You see, if I thought of him as poor, well, I've been mad about loads of poor men and fully intended to marry them all. But in this case I hadn't thought of him that way, and my interest in him wasn't strong enough to survive the shock. As if a girl calmly informed her fiance that she was a widow. He might not object to widows, but let's start right. She interrupted herself suddenly. Who are you, anyhow? For a moment Dexter hesitated. Then I'm nobody, he announced. My career is largely a matter of futures. Are you poor? No, he said frankly. I'm probably making more money than any man my age in the Northwest. I know that's an obnoxious remark, but you advise me to start right? There was a pause. Then she smiled and the corners of her mouth drooped, and an almost imperceptible sway brought her closer to him, looking up into his eyes. A lump rose in Dexter's throat, and he'd waited, breathless, for the experiment, facing the unpredictable compound that would form mysteriously from the elements of their lips. Then he saw she communicated her excitement to him lavishly, deeply, with kisses that were not a promise but a fulfillment. They roused in him not hunger demanding renewal, but surfeit that would demand more surfeit, kisses that were like charity, creating want by holding back nothing at all. It did not take him many hours to decide that he had wanted Judy Jones ever since he was a proud, desirous little boy. It began like that and continued with varying shades of intensity. On such a note, right up to the denouement, Dexter surrounded a part of himself to the most direct and unprincipled personality with which he had ever come in contact. Whatever Judy wanted, she went after with the full pressure of her charm. There was no divergence of method, no jockeying for position or premeditation of effects. There was a very little mental side to any of her affairs. She simply made men conscious to the highest degree of her physical loveliness. Dexter had no desire to change her. Her deficiencies were knit up with a passionate energy that transcended and justified them. When, as Judy's head lay against his shoulder that first night, she whispered, I don't know what's the matter with me. Last night I thought I was in love with the man, and tonight I think I'm in love with you. It seemed to him a beautiful and romantic thing to say. It was the exquisite excitability that, for the moment, he controlled and owned. But a week later, he was compelled to view the same quality in a different light. She took him in her roadster to a picnic supper, and after supper she disappeared. Likewise, in a roadster with another man. Dexter became enormously upset and was scarcely able to be decently civil to the other people present. When she assured him that she had not kissed the other man, he knew she was lying. Yet he was glad that she had taken the trouble to lie to him. He was, as he found before the summer ended, one of a varying dozen who circled about her. Each of them had at one time been favored above all others. About half of them still basked in the solace of occasional sentimental revivals. Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer. Judy made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without malice. Indeed, half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in what she did. When a new man came to town, everyone dropped out. Dates were automatically canceled. The helpless part of trying to do anything about it was that she did it all herself. She was not a girl who could be one in the kinetic sense. She was proof against cleverness. She was proof against charm. If any of these assailed her too strongly, she would immediately resolve the affair to a physical basis. And under the magic of her physical splendor, the strong as well as the brilliant played her game and not their own. She was entertained only by gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm. Perhaps from so much youthful love, so many youthful lovers. She had come in self defense, to nourish herself wholly from within, succeeding Dexter's first exhilaration came restlessness and dissatisfaction. The helpless ecstasy of losing himself in her was opiate rather than tonic. It was fortunate for his work during the winter that those moments of ecstasy came infrequently early in their acquaintance, it had seemed for a while that there was a deep and spontaneous mutual attraction. That first August, for example. Three days of long evenings on her dusky veranda, of strange wand kisses through the late afternoon and shadowy alcoves or behind protecting trellises of garden arbors. Of mornings when she was fresh as a dream and almost shy at meeting him at the clarity of the rising day. There was all the ecstasy of an engagement about it, sharpened by his realization that there was no engagement. It was during those three days that for the first time he had asked her to marry him. She said, maybe someday. She said, kiss me. She said, I'd like to marry you. She said, I love you. She said nothing. The three days were interrupted by the arrival of a New York man who visited at her house for half September. To Dexter's agony, the rumor engaged them. The man was the son of the president of a great trust company. But at the end of the month it was reported that Judy was yawning at a dance one night. She sat all evening in a motorboat with a local beau while the New Yorker searched the club for her frantically. She told the local beau that she was bored with her visitor and two days later he left. She was seen with him at the station and it was reported that he looked very mournful indeed. On this note, the summer ended. Dexter was 24, and he found himself increasingly in a position to do as he wished. He joined two clubs in the city and lived at one of them. Though he was by no means an integral part of the stag lines at these clubs he managed to be on hand and dances where Judy Jones was likely to appear. He could have gone out socially as much as he liked. He was an eligible young man now and popular with downtown fathers. His confessed devotion to Judy Jones had rather solidified his position. But he had no social aspirations and rather despised the dancing men who were always on tap for the Thursday or Saturday parties and who filled in at dinners with a younger married set. Already he was playing with the idea of going east to New York. He wanted to take Judy Jones with him. No disillusion as to the world in which she had grown up could cure his illusion as to her desirability. Remember that, for only in the light of it can what he did for her be understood. 18 months after he first met Judy Jones, he became engaged to another girl. Her name was Irene Shearer, and her father was one of the men who had always believed in Dexter. Irene was light haired and sweet and honorable and a little stout. And she had two suitors whom she pleasantly relinquished when Dexter formally asked her to marry him. Summer, fall, winter, spring. Another summer, another fall. So much he had given of his active life to the incorrigible lips of Judy Jones. She had treated him with interest, with encouragement, with malice, with indifference, with contempt. She had inflicted on him the innumerable little slights and indignities possible in such a case, as if in revenge for having ever cared for him at all. She had beckoned him and yawned at him and beckoned him again, and he had responded often with bitterness and narrowed eyes. She had brought him ecstatic happiness and intolerable agony of spirit. She had caused him untold inconvenience and not a little trouble. She had insulted him and she had written over him and she had played his interest in her against his interest in his work. For fun. She had done everything to him except to criticize him. This she had not done, it seemed to him, only because it might have sullied the utter indifference she manifested and sincerely felt toward him. When autumn had come and gone again, it occurred to him that he could not have Judy Jones. He had to beat this into his mind. But he convinced himself at last. He lay awake at night for a while and argued it over. He told himself the trouble and the pain she had caused him.

[Jack Wilson]

He.

[Ronald]

He enumerated her glaring deficiencies as a wife. Then he said to himself that he loved her, and after a while he fell asleep for a week, lest he imagined her husky voice over the telephone or her eyes opposite him. At lunch he worked hard and late, and at night he went to his office and plotted out his years. At the end of a week, he. He went to a dance and cut in on her once. For almost the first time since they had met. He did not ask her to sit out with him or tell her that she was lovely. It hurt him that she did not miss these things, that was all. He was not jealous when he saw that there was a new man tonight. He had been hardened against jealousy long before. He stayed late at the dance. He sat for an hour with Irene Shearer and talked about books and about music. He knew very little about either. But he was beginning to be master of his own time now, and he had rather priggish notions that he, the young and already fabulously successful Dexter Green, should know more about such things. That was in October, when he was 25. In January, Dexter and Irene became engaged. It was to be announced in June, and they were to be married three months later. The Minnesota winter prolonged itself interminably, and it was almost May when the winds came soft and the snow ran down into Black Bear Lake. At last, for the first time in over a year, Dexter was enjoying a certain tranquility of spirit. Judy Jones had been in Florida and afterward in Hot Springs, and somewhere she had been engaged, and somewhere she had broken it off. At first, when Dexter had definitely given her up, it had made him sad that people still linked them together and asked for news of her. But when he began to be placed at dinner next to Irene Scher, people didn't ask him about her anymore and they told him about her. He ceased to be an authority on her. May at last. Dexter walked the streets at night when the darkness was damp as rain, wondering that so soon, with so little done, so much of ecstasy had gone from him. May, one year back, had been marked by Judy's poignant, unforgivable, yet forgiven turbulence. It had been one of those rare times when he fancied she had grown to care for him. That old penny's worth of happiness he had spent for this bushel of content. He knew that Irene would be no more than a curtain spread behind him, a hand moving among gleaming teacups, a voice calling to children. Fire and loveliness were gone. The magic nights and the wonder of the varying hours and seasons. Slender lips downturning, dropping to his lips and bearing him up into a heaven of eyes. The thing was deep in him. He was too strong and alive for it to die lightly. In the middle of May, when the weather balanced for a few days on the thinned bridge that led to deep summer, he turned in one night at Irene's house. Their engagement was to be announced in a week. Now no one would be surprised at it, and tonight they would sit together on the lounge at the University Club and look on for an hour at the dancers. It gave him a sense of solidity to go with her. She was so sturdily popular, so intensely great. He mounted the steps of the brownstone and stepped inside. Irene, he called. Mrs. Scherer came out of the living room to meet him. Dexter, she said, irene's gone upstairs with a splitting headache. She wanted to go with you, but I made her go to bed. Nothing serious. I. Oh, no. She's going to play golf with you in the morning. You can spare her for just one night, can't you, Dexter? Her smile was kind. She and Dexter liked each other. In the living room he talked for a moment before he said good night. Returning to the University Club where he had rooms, he stood in the doorway for a moment and watched the dancers. He leaned against the doorpost, nodded at a man or two, yawned. Hello, darling. The familiar voice at his elbow startled him. Judy Jones had left a man and crossed the room to him. Judy Jones, a slender enamelled doll and cloth of gold. Gold in a band at her head, gold in two slipper points at her dress's hem. The fragile glow of her face seemed to blossom as she smiled at him. A breeze of warmth and light blew through the room. His hands in his pockets of his dinner jacket, tightened spasmodically. He was filled with a sudden excitement. When did you get back? He asked casually. Come here and I'll tell you about it. She turned and he followed her. She had been away. He could have wept at the wonder of her return. She had passed through enchanted streets, doing things that were like provocative music. All mysterious happenings, all fresh and quickening. Hopes had gone away with her. Come back with her now. She turned in the doorway. Have you a car here? If you haven't, I have. I have a coupe. And then with a rustle of golden cloth, he slammed the door into. So many cars. She had stepped like this, like that, her back against the leather sew, her elbow resting on the door, waiting. She would have been soiled long since, had there been anything to soil her except herself, but this was her own self. Outpouring with an effort, he forced himself to start the car and back into the street. This was nothing he must remember. She had done this before, and he had put her behind him as he would have crossed a bad account from his books. He drove slowly downtown. An affecting abstraction traversed the deserted streets of the business section, peopled here and there where a movie was giving out its crowd, or where consumptive or pugilistic youth lounged in front of pool halls. The clink of glasses and the slap of hands on the bars issued from the saloons, cloisters of glazed glass and dirty yellow light. She was watching him closely, and the silence was embarrassing. Yet in this crisis he could find no casual word with which to profane the hour. At a convenient turning he began to zigzag back toward the University Club. Have you missed me? She asked suddenly. Everybody missed you. He wondered if she knew of Irene Scher. She had been back only a day. Her absence had been almost contemporaneous with his engagement. What a remark. Judy laughed sadly, without sadness. She looked at him searchingly. He became absorbed in the dashboard. You're handsomer than you used to be, she said thoughtfully. Dexter, you have the most rememberable eyes. He could have laughed at this, but he did not laugh. It was the sort of thing that was said to sophomores, yet it stabbed at him. I'm awfully tired of everything, darling. She called everyone darling, endowing the endearment with careless individual camaraderie. I wish you'd marry me. The directness of this confused him. He should have told her now that he was going to marry another girl, but he could not tell her. He could as easily have sworn that he had never loved her. I think we'd get along, she continued on the same note. Unless probably you've forgotten me and fallen in love with another girl. Her confidence was obviously enormous. She had said, in effect, that she found such a thing impossible to believe, that if it were true, he had merely committed a childish indiscretion, and probably to show off, she would forgive him, because it was not a matter of any moment but rather something to be brushed aside lightly. Of course you could never love anyone but me, she continued. I like the way you love me. Oh, Dexter, have you forgotten last year? No, I haven't forgotten. Neither have I. Was she sincerely moved, or was she carried along by the way for her own acting? I wish we could be like that again, she said, and he forced himself to answer, I don't think we can. I suppose not. I hear you're giving Irene Scher a violent rush. There was not the faintest emphasis on the name, yet Dexter was suddenly ashamed. Oh, take me home. Cried Judy suddenly. I don't want to go back to that idiotic dance with those children. Then, as he turned up the street that led to the residence district, Judy began to cry quietly to herself. He had never seen her cry before. A dark street lightened. The dwellings of the rich loomed up around them. He stopped his coop in front of the great white bulk of the Mortimer Jones's house, somnolent, gorgeous, drenched with the splendor of the damp moonlight. Its solidarity startled him. The strong walls, the steel of the girders, the breath and beam and pomp of it were there only to bring out the contrast with a young beauty beside him. It was sturdy, to accentuate her slightness, as if to show what a breeze could be generated by a butterfly's wing. He sat perfectly quiet, his nerves in wild clamor, afraid that if he Moved, he would find her irresistibly in his arms. Two tears had rolled down her wet face and trembled on her upper lip. I'm more beautiful than anyone else, she said brokenly. Why can't I be happy? Her moist eyes tore at his stability. Her mouth turned slowly downward with an exquisite sadness. I'd like to marry you if you'll have me, Dexter. I suppose you think I'm not worth having, but I'll be so beautiful for you, Dexter. A million phrases of anger, pride, passion, hatred, tenderness bought on his lips. Then a perfect wave of emotion washed over him, carrying off with it a sentiment of wisdom, of convention, of doubt, of honor. This was his girl who was speaking his own, his beautiful, his pride. Won't you come in? He heard her draw in her breaths sharply, waiting. All right. His voice was trembling. I'll come in. It was strange that neither when it was over nor the long time afterward did he regret that night. Looking at it from the perspective of 10 years, the fact that Judy's flare for him endured just one month seemed of little importance. Nor did it matter that by his yielding he subjected himself to a deeper agony in the end and gave serious hurt to Iron Shearer and to Irene's parents who had befriended him. There was nothing sufficiently pictorial about Irene's grief to stamp itself on his mind. Dexter was, at bottom hard minded. The attitude of the city on his action was of no importance to him, not because he was going to leave the city, but because any outside attitude on the situation seems superficial. He was completely indifferent to public opinion, nor, when he had seen that it was of no use, that he did not possess in himself the power to move fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he bear any malice toward her. He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving. But he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness, even the ultimate falsity of the grounds upon which Judy terminated the engagement. That she did not want to take him away from Irene. Judy, who had wanted nothing else, did not revolt him. He was beyond any revulsion or any amusement. He went east in February with the intention of selling out his laundries and settling in New York. But the war came to America in March and changed his plans. He returned to the west, handed over the management of the business to his partner, and went into the first Officers training camp in late April. He was one of those young thousands who who greeted the war with a certain amount of relief, welcoming the liberation from webs of tangled emotion. This story is not his biography, remember, Although things creep into it which have nothing to do with those dreams he had when he was young. We are almost done with them and with him now. There is only one more incident to be related here, and it happens seven years farther on. It took place in New York, where he had done well, so well that there were no barriers too high for him. He was 32 years old, and except for one flying trip immediately after the war, he had not been west in seven years. A man named Devlin from Detroit came into his office to see him in a business way, and then and there this incident occurred and closed out, so to speak, this particular side of his life. So you're from the Middle west, said the man Devlin, with careless curiosity. That's funny. I thought men like you were probably born and raised on Wall Street. You know. Wife of one of my best friends in Detroit. Came from your city. I was an usher at the wedding. Dexter waited with no apprehension of what was coming. Judy Sims, said Devlin, with no particular interest. Judy Jones. She was once. Yes, I knew her. A dull impatience spread over him. He had heard, of course, that she was married. Perhaps deliberately, he had heard no more. Awfully nice girl, brooded Devlin meaninglessly. I'm sort of sorry for her. Why? Something in Dexter was alert, receptive at once. Oh, Ludsims had gone to pieces in a way. I don't mean he ill uses her, but he drinks and runs around. Doesn't she run around? No, she stays at home with her kids. Oh, she's a little too old for him, said Devlin. Too old? Cried Dexter. Why, man, she's only 27. He was possessed with a wild notion of rushing out into the streets and taking a train to Detroit. He rose to his feet spasmodically. I guess you're busy, devlin apologized quickly. I didn't realize. No, I'm not busy, said Dexter, steadying his voice. I'm not busy at all. Not busy at all. Did you say she was 27? No, I said she was 27. Yes, you did, agreed Devlin dryly. Go on, then, go on. What do you mean about Judy Jones? Devlin looked at him helplessly. Well, that's. I told you all there is to it. He treats her like the devil. Oh, they're not going to get divorced or anything. When he's particularly outrageous, she forgives him. In fact, I'm inclined to think she loves him. She was a pretty girl when she first came to Detroit. A pretty Girl. The phrase struck Dexter as ludicrous. Isn't she a pretty girl anymore? Oh, she's all right. Look here, said Dexter, sitting down suddenly. I don't understand. You say she was a pretty girl and now she's all right. I don't understand what you mean. Judy Jones wasn't a pretty girl at all. She was a great beauty. Why, I knew her. I knew her. She was. Devlin laughed pleasantly. I'm not trying to start a row, he said. I think Judy's a nice girl and I like her. I can't understand how a man like Lidsim would fall madly in love with her, but he did. Then he added, most of the women like her. He looked closely at Devlin, the thinking wildly that there must be a reason for this, some insensitivity in the man or some private malice. Lots of women fade just like that. Devlin snapped his fingers. You must have seen it happen. Perhaps I've forgotten how pretty she was at her wedding. I've seen her so many times since then. You see, she has nice eyes. A sort of dullness settled down upon dexterity. For the first time in his life he felt like getting very drunk. He knew that he was laughing loudly at something Devlin had said, but he did not know what it was or why it was funny. When in a few minutes Devlin went, he lay down on his lounge and looked out the window at the New York skyline into which the sun was sinking in dull, lovely shades of pink and gold. He had thought that, having nothing else to lose, he was invulnerable at last, but he knew that he had just lost something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones and seen her fade away before his eyes. The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him in a sort of panic. He pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry island and the moonlit veranda and gingham on the golf links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck soft down and her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world. They had existed and they existed no longer. For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face, but they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, but he could not care, for he had gone away and he could never go back anymore. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down and There was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life where his winter dreams had flourished. Long ago he said long ago there was something in me but now that thing is gone now that thing is gone that thing is gone I cannot cry I cannot care that thing will come back no more.

[Jack Wilson]

Foreign okay, we're back. So, Mike, do you remember reading Winter Dreams when you were back, when you were 18 or 19 and besotted with F. Scott Fitzgerald? You remember what your take was back then?

[Mike Palindrome]

I. I do remember, just not the. The main character not getting the girl. I think that's that. And it's such a strange story. I. I did not remember the way it reaches that point, the. The object of desire. I mean, I remember this like he was a golf caddy and you. He was from Minnesota. And I guess a lot of his, you know, Fitzgerald's characters, you know, they're so associated with. So much associated with the east coast, but there's a lot of Midwest in him, in his writing, too.

[Jack Wilson]

There's a lot of Midwest. And he had based this. I mean, he wrote it when he was 26, so he was on the east coast, but he had based this on this affair, I guess you'd say, that he had with Genevra King, who was a Chicago heiress from a banking family. And I looked up her a little bit, and she was one of what was called the Big Four Debutantes, which was a name that these four young women gave themselves for being the four most desirable socialites. And they even had rings inscribed with Big Four. And they were all filthy rich. They were. They were known for their beauty. And the newspapers picked up on it and started carrying their exploits in, I guess, the equivalent of tabloids. And they lived in the north suburbs in Lake Forest, and their lives were filled with polo and tennis and country clubs and private schools. And she and Fitzgerald met, and they had kind of this. They met at a sledding party, and then they met and. And for a couple of years they had this romance. And they say that he couldn't think about her years later without tears coming to his eyes. But she ultimately had rejected him. And his quote was, with the most supreme boredom and indifference. But also, her father apparently said to Fitzgerald, poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls.

[Mike Palindrome]

Oof.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

Low blow.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. So let's start kind of at the beginning. There's a bunch of meet cutes here. I Would say, you know, we see Judy when she's 11 and then we see her later. They keep kind of running into each other in these. I'm going to call them meet cutes because I think we're supposed to find them kind of endearing and everything. But what do you make of those? And do you like Judy Jones as the story opens up here, I really.

[Mike Palindrome]

Want to like her.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

And I. I think when we see that she's flawed and I think Fitzgerald is great at the way he does this, you don't dislike her. You see that she's flawed, but you still kind of expect there to be happiness somehow.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

I think that's if it's Gerald's ability to keep the reader optimistic about a relationship is.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Right.

[Mike Palindrome]

I'm always. I'm always admiring that because she is kind of annoying. I mean, she. Yeah, right. And it's harmless until it breaks up his engagement, which.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

You know, you talk about meet cutes. There's a rush. There's a rushing about in this story, not only with the meet cutes, but also with the bad news. And yeah, it does feel a little bit like it was like almost an accordion. Like he thought this story could be a novel and then it came back to being a story and they could be another, like a series of books. Like it just goes back and forth for me. Yeah. It's a very strange structure.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, it is. And he's called it kind of a prototype of the Gatsby story.

[Mike Palindrome]

I never heard that.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. He lifted some passages that he originally had in this story and then he used it for like Gatsby's take on her house and Daisy's house and things like that. But it is. You're right. I feel like I kind of have a problem with Fitzgerald and it's something that always kind of nagged at me. And it's why I felt like I outgrew Fitzgerald is because I got tired of this. And it's when there are these romances with these young women and it feels like the main character and Fitzgerald himself are in love with the spoiled brat who does not appeal to me at all. And it just feels like the narrator is kind of standing there elbowing us and saying, isn't that adorable? Isn't that hilarious? And I'm thinking, no, it's not. When she's swinging the golf club at the nurse and Dexter can barely suppress his laughter, I'm on the side of the nurse like this, you know, like, who does this 11 year old think she is. But what you just said made me rethink something because it is true that, you know, Dexter gets to grow and he immediately finds success and he gets rich and he's kind of transcending his Midwestern limitations and all of that. And you kind of think that. That Judy's going to do the same, that she's going to be this spoiled little rich girl, but then she's going to learn the true meaning of life or she's going to find a side of her that's charitable or, you know, something like that. And Fitzgerald doesn't go there. He kind of instead makes it about, well, she's headed for this kind of tragic end because she's getting by on beauty and charm. And that's. That's not going to last forever. And that's what's going to be kind of the tragedy of her is that she'll get to a point where she's not the front page of the newspapers anymore and people are just kind of talking about her as yesterday's news.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah. I wonder if the story reads differently if you're not a heterosexual male. I. For large parts of this story, I'm under Judy Jones's spell. I confess. I mean, and it reminded me a little bit of, you know, I befriended somebody years ago and she was kind of telling me about her mother and how attractive her mother was. And she said something like, you know, it's good that she's so striking looking because she's batshit crazy. That's what I thought of as I was reading about Judy Jones. Like, you know, people come alive when they're rounder.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

And, you know, she like, flares up and she's, she's. She's like pyrotechnic. But when you try to imagine the day to day with her, it's hard.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And Dexter gets that. He knows. And even when he gives in and he hurts Irene, he basically just sees it as well. That's unfortunate. But it was inevitable because I had to do it for that month with Judy Jones, even though I knew who. Who she was and that it could never last. And I agree. I really don't like her when she's 11. And I don't find much out of that meeting where she hits the golf ball and kind of says, even though the guy gets hit in the stomach, she says, I would have been on the green if I hadn't hit something. And it's supposed to be all this kind of charm, and I don't really feel it. But that meeting where she's on the boat. And the writing there is so gorgeous, and the scene is so beautiful. And I am kind of swept away at that point, too, where I can see where he's falling in love with her, but also just falling in love with the feeling of being around her and the feeling that he gets from this. This energy that she has that means.

[Mike Palindrome]

That so it's well. So well structured. We see her at different stages of her life. I think that the. In part two, there's. There's a great description of her. It says the color in her cheeks was centered like the color in a picture. It was not a high color, but a sort of fluctuating and feverish warmth. So shaded that it seemed at any moment it would recede and disappear. That's great. You know, you. It is just the way Fitzgerald. You can imagine Fitzgerald falling in love with her repeatedly. It's not like a first time. It's just like each time you fell in love with her.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right. Each time he sees her, each time he hears her on the phone. And there's also that. There's also that description in two. It's right after the passage that you read where it says. And it talks about her, the continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate vitality. And then it says, balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Which is that sadness. I mean, when he had a collection of short stories, it was called all the Sad Young Men. This is certainly one of them here. Okay, so I've got a quiz for you. Fitzgerald once said there were two basic stories of all times. I'm going to give you five choices. Tell me which two stories he chose.

[Mike Palindrome]

Okay.

[Jack Wilson]

Number one, Cinderella. Two, the Three Little Pigs. Three, Jack the Giant Killer. Four, the Ugly Duckling. And five, the Emperor has no Clothes.

[Mike Palindrome]

Well, ugly Duckling, definitely. And I guess I'll do Cinderella.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, you got one out of two. It was. Cinderella was one, and the other was Jack the Giant Killer.

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, that's surprising.

[Jack Wilson]

And then he said, well, here's what gave me so much insight into Fitzgerald. I sort of. I cracked the code of my feeling about him because he said, cinderella, inject the giant killer. And then he said, the Charm of women and the courage of men. And I thought that is what bothers me about the way these stories are sort of set up, is that I don't think of those two as being kind of the overwhelming values. Those aren't the two stories I would have chosen for the stories that I find interesting and to pair them together. Then you have all of these men who are desperate to win the heart of the woman. But it's the charm of women that doesn't give them much agency other than to just be charming. But the big thing is, where's the courage? He doesn't. I mean, it sounds like a Hemingway idea, right? That Jack the Giant Killer. You send the characters into battle or you have them fighting bulls or something. But he's. I mean, here it's not courage so much as ambition or success. You know, I don't feel like he's. He's setting up his guy to be courageous. He's setting him up to be. To maybe learn something about the world or about himself or about love. But there isn't really courage here. And that's why I feel like when there's a beautiful moment after that motorboat meeting where they go out to dinner and. And they go out to that sun porch, and she says, do you mind if I weep a little? And I think, oh, this is where we're really going to see her. This is going to be something really interesting here. But then she explains that it's because she liked a man who turned out to be poor, which. That's why she's going to cry. She's thinking how sad that is that she liked him. She really liked him. But it turns out that he's poor. And that's where I kind of lose sympathy for her again. And I feel like Fitzgerald thinks, well, this is the problem, is I can never be really rich. He's listening to Geneva King's father saying, a poor boy shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl. And I feel like if Hemingway were there, he would say, why don't you hate these people? Why don't you see that you're. Your talent or your ambition, your whatever. You want to be a writer. You want to be successful at business. Like Dexter, he's the richest Midwesterner of his age. He makes more money than anyone his age. But he's so overwhelmed by inherited wealth that he seems to let it affect him and his sense of himself. He doesn't have to take a backseat to these people.

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, I guess maybe it's back to my comment about escapism. You don't want some kind of intrusion into the strange principles and emotions of the rich. You want this crazy moment where she's crying because this guy is poor and it didn't work out. I mean, there's this line that's in that same section. He says, kisses that were not a Promise, but a fulfillment they aroused in him not hunger, demanding renewal, but surfeit that would demand more surfeit. And it's like. It's just. You're among people who are a bit shameless in the things they desire so openly and their detachment from real problems.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. When she breaks the two of them up, she knows that by getting him to succumb that she knows exactly what she's doing. And then there's a line where she says something like, well, I wouldn't want to keep you from.

[Mike Palindrome]

Is it Irene?

[Jack Wilson]

I wouldn't want to keep you from Irene? And he says this from her, who never wanted anything, but he sees through her. He knows that she's selfish and that she's reckless and she doesn't care who gets destroyed in the aftermath. Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, she remains flawed to the very end. And there's still this nostalgia and regret that he didn't end up with this flawed person.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And what do you think of the ending? Because it would be a very different ending if we followed her. And I think if. I mean, part of this is Fitzgerald was 26, imagining Dexter as 32. So he's kind of already looking ahead to the future. And maybe this would be different if he had written it at 45 or something, if he was still alive then. But he. You know, Geneva King, she lived a long life and she got married, I think, a couple of times, and she ended up running some charities. And, you know, it would be kind of interesting to see the ending from her point of view of, well, now she's settling in, she's having kids, she's doing whatever. But instead we get this thing from Dexter, which I find really fascinating, the way this ending is structured. We don't get that final meeting between the two of them where Dexter has things to say or things to get off his chest or has new realizations about himself after he sees her. It's all in his dialogue where he is hearing that other people are finding her not so beautiful and not so charming and that the bloom is kind of faded from the rose here. And he gets so angry. And the way the editor of my book, Matthew Broccoli, the famous Fitzgerald editor and biographer, says. He says he grieves for the loss of his capacity to grieve, which I kind of agree with, but I don't think fully captures it. So what did you make of the ending?

[Mike Palindrome]

I think it had to be this way. There's just no way he could end up with Judy. I do think it's a strange structure, like that. That section six begins with this line. We are almost done with them and with him now, which just kind of woke me up, like from the dream, the winter dream. This is not now here's the reality. And, you know, it's. No, I was thinking the story sort of glides away on ice skates. That's the ending. You know, no Hollywood studio would accept this ending.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right. They'd say, wait, you're going to do this with. You're going to introduce some new characters and we're going to be talking to them and that's going to be the ending of the story.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, but I like that ending. I like that ending because there's a feeling that he somehow who remembers the best of her, and it'll never change. I feel like she's intact. She remains intact even though she's aged. And this guy doesn't think that she's such a great prize anymore. He still does.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And I think where I differ a little bit from Matthew Brucoli is where he says he grieves for the loss of his capacity to grieve. I think it's more that he's. He's grieving the end of those days where he could feel this way towards someone. He's grieving the loss of youth. He's grieving that beauty ends. And it kind of made me think of how everybody says there are no songs that really resonate with you, like the pop songs from when you were 17 and 18 and 16. Those are the. Those are the songs that are going to be with you forever and that are going to mean the most to you. And it's Romeo and Juliet, love. When you're that age instead of the age of in your 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s, there's a different way of responding to the world when you're young and Fitzgerald is. Or he's having Dexter really mourn the loss of that. And it kind of reminded me of how when people will make a big thing about Michael Jordan not being the best basketball player of all time and they'll be citing stats from someone else. And I can feel myself getting a little angry. I really should not care as much as I do, but it's because I watched him when I was that age and it was so magical and important to me. And I just that think, no, you don't understand. He was it. He was everything. And it's like that with the music you feel or the people you know or the things you do. And it's remarkable to me that Fitzgerald, at only the age of 26, was already kind of sensing this as, no, this is going to be maybe because he loved being young so much that he could feel like, well, what are we going to do? What are Zelda and I going to do when this is over? And when we're. How could we ever be happy once we lose this early success and our physical beauty?

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, I mean, Winter Dreams is. I mean, going back to the title, there's this illusion, of course, but there's also this reality of the seasons and time that is wrapped in with the title. The story feels like it has a longer life than the story itself.

[Jack Wilson]

Mm. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It. And there's that one point where he sort of says he thought about her for a. A fall, a spring, a summer, another fall, a winter, and yet another spring or something. And you just feel like you feel the seasons passing and you feel the stretch of time and think, yeah, I guess that is kind of a long time to basically be jerked around by somebody. In retrospect, to him, it feels like, well, I kind of donated all those seasons to just this. What I knew was going to be an unrequited love.

[Mike Palindrome]

It's yet another unhappy relationship and a series of unhappy relationships in Fitzgerald's literature.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Well, we haven't talked much about the pros. Was this. I think the pros here is why I can never really quit Fitzgerald. It's. Every time I come back to it, I think this is just so. This gives me so much pleasure to read these sentences.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, I think it's. There's. There's so many instances I underlined, and then I noticed stuff that I had underlined back in 1990. I mean, it's. He really knows how to shift from dialogue to description. I think it's such a simple technique for him that you never feel like he's overdoing it one or the other.

[Jack Wilson]

And he'll use things like where he talks about those old gray haired men who like to say, now there's a boy. And he's. You can hear the men saying that and you know, exactly who they are and exactly how that fits into Dexter's world of kind of striving and trying to, you know, be a teacher's pet kind of. Kind of kid. But also just the way that the gray haired men who feel like, you know, that they have some kind of right to pronounce who's going to be the next leaders of the next generation and so on. But he gets all of that just from saying, you Know they. That they'll say, now there's a boy. Just four words.

[Mike Palindrome]

And there are moments where I just feel like he could have just gone on and on and I would have been with him. Like, you know, they're on 126 in my edition, it says, when a new man came to town, everyone dropped out, dates were automatically canceled. And that goes into this paragraph about her. And it goes, you know, a couple of choice lines here. She was not a girl who could be one in the kinetic sense. She was proof against cleverness. She was proof against charm. And then later it says the same paragraph. She was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm. And you just get. You get the sense of. Like, she's a goddess.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, she is commanding a room.

[Jack Wilson]

It's. He. He gets very psychologically astute. You know, He. He. He not only can describe the moonlight and. And the water and things like that, and has some nice descriptions of. Of Minnesota, the winter closing, like the snapping down shut, like the white lid of a box, things like that, but he also can really kind of nail this. Especially these types, Dexter and Judy, they feel like people he really studied and really knew.

[Mike Palindrome]

Well, yeah, it made me want to reread Tender is the Night.

[Jack Wilson]

Actually, I was going to say, yeah, this is Dick and Nicole. This is Daisy and Gatsby. This is a pair that accompanied Fitzgerald through so many of his works.

[Mike Palindrome]

Though Nicole is one of the few characters, I think, that actually improves her station from the beginning to the end of the novel of her story.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Yeah. I mean, I kind of wish these other characters had room to do that. You know that if you take as your two main stories the courage of men, that gives them something to do, the charm of women. It just doesn't give them anything to do other than lose their charm, which.

[Mike Palindrome]

When it happens, there's a tinge of sadness. We never feel. I don't know with Fitzgerald. We never feel vindicated, like, oh, you deserve that. I don't know. I feel sad for them. I feel sad for the divers.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right. And then the very end where he's. I mean, it's quite a. Where he says, long ago, long ago there was something in me. But now that thing is gone. Now the thing is go. That thing is gone. I cannot cry, I cannot care. That thing will come back no more. It feels like. I mean, I immediately went back to see. Was this in Saturday Evening Post. It doesn't seem like the kind of story that they would want to lay on their readers. So it was in Metropolitan Magazine. So I went down this rabbit hole on Metropolitan Magazine. It was this magazine in, obviously published out of New York, as you'd expect. It had stories by Edna Ferber and Fitzgerald and Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad and Jack London and all of these other great authors. It was in circulation from 1895 to 1925. And here's another pop quiz for you. Who served as an editor for the magazine from 1914 to 1919? Your choices are Edith Wharton, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Roosevelt, or W.E.B. du Bois.

[Mike Palindrome]

Wow.

[Jack Wilson]

Who was the first Edith Wharton?

[Mike Palindrome]

I'm going to say her.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. No, it was former United States President Theodore Roosevelt.

[Mike Palindrome]

Wow.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

I have even more respect for him now.

[Jack Wilson]

After he was president, he went and edited Metropolitan magazine. And then this gets even crazier. After it had been published for about 30 years, it was purchased by this guy named Bernard McFadden. Bernard is B E R N A R R, who was a bodybuilder. And he had been born Bernard McFadden, but he changed his name to Bernard because he thought it was more manly, like the sound of a lion's roar. And this guy was one of those guys. You'd see him in the back of comic books when we were little, kicking sand in somebody's face or something. He had that kind of body. And he. He believed that eating grapes could cure cancer, but you had to eat the seeds and the leaves and the vines. And he tried to start a religion at one point named Cosmitarianism that he said would enable him to live to be 150. And he wrote all of these books. He wrote, like, 50 books or something. And the titles of these books are all things like Physical Training, the Milk Diet, Strength From Eating, the Miracle of Milk, the Strenuous Lover Making Old Bodies, Young Physical Culture for Babies. And maybe his bestseller was Virile Powers of Superb Manhood. And then I noticed that he wrote a book called Strong Eyes. And later he wrote one called Strengthening the Eyes. So anyway, so this guy buys Metropolitan Magazine, which has been publishing F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joseph Conrad and all of these classic writers. And he renamed the magazine for Metropolitan. He renamed it McFadden's Fiction Lovers Magazine. And then this publication, which was 30 years old, went out of business in 10 months.

[Mike Palindrome]

Geez.

[Jack Wilson]

So that's a little bit about Metropolitan and Bernard McFadden. Okay, so was there anything we haven't discussed that you wanted to mention? Either things that you liked or didn't like about the story?

[Mike Palindrome]

No, I was just thinking I'd reread some more Fitzgerald. It got me remembering some of the other stories. And another one I highly recommend is Diamond As Big as the Ritz.

[Jack Wilson]

Diamond As Big as the Ritz. Well, maybe that's one we should do in a future episode or.

[Mike Palindrome]

Such a great story for those who haven't read it. I don't want to give it away.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. And there's also the Offshore Pirate was always a favorite of mine. And the Rich Boy. We haven't done Benjamin Button either.

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Which would be one we could do. And I wanted to ask you this. So we had a guest. I guess several guests have talked about things like this that have told us that good fiction, it makes you think and makes you feel. And does Fitzgerald. Would you say he engages your intellect or your emotions, or does he combine both?

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, probably both, but more emotions. I think you really start thinking about the way you've behaved in not exactly similar situations, but it triggers something. Reading him.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Mike Palindrome]

You think about the decisions you made or didn't make. There's a lot of, like, didn't make in him.

[Jack Wilson]

A lot of regrets, a lot of. Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

Couldn't Dexter make you almost feel like Dexter didn't make, you know, make it as obvious as he should have with Judy.

[Jack Wilson]

Mm.

[Mike Palindrome]

And maybe that's just me personally reading that into Fitzgerald and, you know.

[Jack Wilson]

But, like, the part where she says, don't you remember last year? I wish you would marry me. Why don't you marry me? And he just thinks, like, he's sort of thrilled by her saying it, but at the same time, he thinks, no, she doesn't really mean this. This isn't who she really is. But, like, he could. Why not say that to her? You know, why not say, like, well, you know, I'm probably like a lot of other men who think that you're. You're wonderful and amazing, except we can't imagine that you would ever settle down with someone like me and be happy for very long. Like, why didn't you know? There's the courage of men. Why don't you have the courage to say what's on your mind?

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah. I mean, it's. There's an aspect of his behavior that belongs to his age, and there's an aspect of his behavior that comes out in, like, a movable feast. He has a real strong sense of propriety and not being judged poorly by strangers even, and not wanting to risk making a bad decision. And so, yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, it seems like there was A part of him. And it's kind of beautifully inserted into this story where he clearly has an inferiority complex for his background. And in this his mother is a bohemian named Krimlich. And he says that he's from Kibal, which is at least sort of respectable because people can't see, see it like Black Bear Village. And he has that great line of it's Black Bear Village is inconveniently in sight and used as a footstool by fashionable legs. But you know, it does seem like Fitzgerald was kind of cowed by that. And these fathers who are kind of tyrannical clearly made him feel. I think Zelda's father did the same. He was like a. A kind of domineering judge. And I think they kind of made him feel self conscious about who he was. Probably that his background, probably that he drank too much and that he was spending too much money and you know, just that kind of thing. And he seems to have really internalized that so that he doesn't seem like he's. He seems like he has to talk himself into it. He admires and falls in love easily, but he doesn't feel like it's going to work out for him and that he's somebody who's doomed to kind of observe the decline and maybe not ever really be happy.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, I mean, I think did he not make enough of a play or did women just once they saw the full. Fitzgerald thought it's a nice dalliance, almost like the way a man might view a woman back then. Like he's a dalliance but not worth a full on relationship.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's why he felt that way. Or maybe his feeling that way is why they picked up on it and it was a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, poor F. Scott.

[Jack Wilson]

There was a lot of unhappiness there. But he did leave us a lot of joyous material too. The prose is always joyous, even if the characters are not. Okay, well, let's leave things there. Mike Palindrome, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Mike Palindrome]

Thanks, Jack.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Finally today, Lev Grossman was here to discuss his novel Bright Sword. A while ago, after he and I discussed all things Arthur, King Arthur, that is, I asked Lev this special question. Okay. Joining me now is best selling novelist Lev Grossman, author of the Bright Sword, a retelling of the world of King Arthur. Lev, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Lev Grossman]

Oh, that's a terrible question. It's an absolutely terrible question. And it assumes. I suppose it assumes that I'll know what my last book is. I will be reading it knowing that I have no more life left to me. This is a.

[Jack Wilson]

It's a.

[Lev Grossman]

It's a. It's a dark vision of the future that I'm. That I'm imagining. And the truth is, I think I've already given it away, because the last book I would read, it would be Waiting for Godot, which I admit is a bit of a fudge, because it's a play. Yeah, it is a play. But I would read the script, which I. Which I own. I remember that as the first work of literature that I ever experienced where I felt as though nobody was lying to me. I felt as though somebody was finally leveling with me and speaking the truth. And it was such a profound, transformative feeling. It's such an incredibly human play. It really is a kind of anthem for those whom all hope has deserted. And I suppose all hope will have deserted me when I'm reading my last book. I think there'll be some. Some consolation in it. Or I can only hope so.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting you say that, because my experience with Waiting for Godot. I read it in college, and the professor had talked about how popular it had been in prisons. My first instinct was that that just couldn't be. That prisoners would be the last people in the world who would want to read a book like that. Because, you know, because of all the waiting. But then I sort of came to realize, and it was really an epiphany for me about literature, that, no, no, this is. You know, literature isn't just to give you a story that will make you feel good. It can feel good to feel like someone else has recognized the truth or someone else is something you can identify with. Even if that would be painful. But if you're in pain, it feels good to know you're not alone.

[Lev Grossman]

I saw that play performed when I was a teenager. And like many teenagers, I was a very dramatic teenager. And I had many dark thoughts. I'm sure I was coping with some form of clinical depression at that time. And it seemed inconceivable to me that anybody had experienced the kind of suffering that I myself was experiencing. And unbelievably, I was seen by somebody, whoever this Samuel Beckett was. I realized that it wasn't just me. Somebody saw me and recognized me and acknowledged that what I was going through was real. And that was astounding. And the solace that it offered me was. I just can't put words to it. It really saved me.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And then you closed the book and passed to the other side, and Sam Beckett is there. And the two of you kind of chuckle that. Who knew? We made it after all.

[Lev Grossman]

Yeah, I saw that play. And Beckett was still alive at that time. And my father, who was a very literary chap himself, happened to be friendly with a guy named Richard Howard, who was one of Beckett's translators. And I remember Richard Howard coming to our house for dinner and him saying to me, well, look, I'm actually finding a Paris in a couple of days, and I'm going to see Beckett. Is there anything you want me to tell him? And I remember I had nothing. I absolutely froze. And I couldn't think of anything that could possibly be worthy of uttering to Samuel Beckett. And so, possibly appropriately, I remained silent. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. So probably the same thing will happen when I pass the other side and see him in the afterlife. And I have a feeling he'll understand.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I hope that Richard Howard, instead of just ignoring that moment and saying, I guess he had nothing, I hope that he told Samuel Beckett, you know, I asked a teenager if he had anything to say to you, and he had nothing. I think. I think Beckett would have approved.

[Lev Grossman]

Beckett placed a high value on silence.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, exactly.

[Lev Grossman]

I like to think that that conversation happened the way you described it.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, Lev Grossman, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Lev Grossman]

I've had a great time.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. My thanks to listener Ronald to produce for his email, to producer Emma for reading Winter Dreams for us, and to Mike Palindrome for helping us work through the story. And to Lev Grossman for that cameo appearance at the end. Waiting for Godot. Off to a great start, aren't we? This year, 2025. Next week, the action continues. Pow and ker. Pow. We travel back to the late 19th and early 20th century and Edith Maude Eaton, who wrote under. Who wrote about the Chinese American experience under the pen name Sway Sinfar. And we'll hear about women behind the Women behind the Little Review in Chicago. And soon enough, we'll have the librarians who turned spies and the husband and wife team who spent the pandemic diving into the ocean that is Herman Melville. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.

[Ronald]

What role do books play in shaping who we are? Find out on the Five Books, the brand new podcast hosted by me, Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Each week I sit down with acclaimed Jewish authors to discuss the top five books that have shaped them. Hear from notable guests like Booker Prize finalist here L. Van der Vowden, and literary influencer Zibby Owens as we delve deep into what it means to live as a Jewish American today. Join me and listen to the Five Books wherever you get your podcasts.