F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Midwest

Piles of books about novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his oeuvre continue to tumble off the presses. In the vast majority of these releases, the Midwest continues to occupy a position at the edge of the story rather than at its core. At worst, prominent midwestern writers such as Sherwood Anderson or Sinclair Lewis, according to English professor Robert McParland in his recent study of The Great Gatsby, find T. S. Eliot's "wasteland in the American Midwest" (2–3); while at best, other writers, such as Fitzgerald himself, serve the Heartland up as an anecdote for the excitement and unconventionality of the coasts, a kind of "solid ground" (46), as Maureen Corrigan notes in her recent take on Gatsby. Although born in and heavily influenced by the Midwest, F. Scott Fitzgerald is clearly no regionalist, as McParland, Corrigan, and the four other authors reviewed here indicate in their books.

At first glance, the subtitle of Sarah Churchwell's Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby may seem a bit contradictory for a book that links the creation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal work with a 1922 double murder in New Jersey. Halfway through her treatise, however, Churchwell explains that in early English to invent meant to come upon or discover rather than to fabricate (thus giving us inventory). Consequently, the subtitle makes etymological sense and eventually comparative sense as Churchwell deftly builds her case, something New Jersey officials failed to do when a church rector and one of his choir singers were found shot in the head near an abandoned farmhouse just up the road from Fitzgerald's alma mater.

Churchwell cleverly organizes her book according to the outline of Gatsby Fitzgerald left in his copy of André Malraux's Man's Hope, published in 1938. In it, Fitzgerald provides hints about the background for the various episodes in the novel. For example, beside Chapter I is written "Glamour of Rumsies + Hitchcocks." Churchwell carefully explains these references. Tom Hitchcock Jr., for example, was "a war hero who had been awarded the Croix de Guerre and the most famous polo player in America" (36), a serious contender for Tom Buchanan's inspiration.

Although focused on New Jersey and Great Neck, Long Island, there are enough nuggets to satisfy those interested in the Midwest's influence on Fitzgerald's most famous novel. In fact, the book starts in St. Paul with Fitzgerald's September 1922 promise to Harold Ober that he would soon be sending "Winter Dreams," what the author would later call a "sort of 1st draft of the Gatsby idea." There are also several references to James J. Hill, the St. Paul railroad tycoon who is lionized near the end of Gatsby, and the Kalmans, St. Paul friends and benefactors of both Scott and Zelda.

Churchwell does miss some more or less trivial Midwest connections. For example, in her discussion of Max Gerlach's possible role as a model for Gatsby, she ignores the letter Fitzgerald wrote to Pittsburgher John Jamieson about Gatsby being "some forgotten farm type of Minnesota that I have known." Additionally, in re-telling Bob Kerr's story set in 1907 about the yacht in Sheepshead Bay that inspired the story about Dan Cody, Church-well...