Fitzgerald and Hemingway, 1931–34

The two writers met only once during this period and rarely corresponded with each other. But they did not stop thinking about each other, as written communications to and from third-party friends and professionals made clear. Some of these were included in Volume V of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, which was published in 2020 and printed Ernest's letters from 1932 to mid-1934, with excellent notes summarizing his incoming mail as well. Others appeared in a variety of books devoted to the letters of both principals, and in collections from figures such as John Dos Passos.

Here is a chronological account of what each of these canonical writers thought about the other's life and work mid-career.

Maxwell Perkins, who edited them both, manifestly saw it as his obligation to keep them informed about each other. On May 21, 1931, for example, he wrote Fitzgerald that Ernest was still nursing the broken right arm he suffered in an automobile accident on the evening of November 1, 1930 as he started on the return trip to Florida after a long visit to Montana and Wyoming. It was a nasty fracture and took a long time to heal. Otherwise, though, he was in "grand shape," Max wrote Scott on May 12, 1931. Max had never seen "him better" than on his annual visit to join Ernest's deep-sea fishing companions, this time to the Dry Tortugas. After that Ernest sailed to Spain to do research on his bullfight book Death in the Afternoon and catch up on the intricacies of Spanish politics. Given his talent for getting hurt, Max added, he considered it "mighty likely" that Hemingway would "run into a bomb or something" in Spain. Ernest escaped injury this time, however. When he got back the Hemingways were planning to move into the handsome Key West house on 907 Whitehouse Street that Pauline's wealthy Uncle Gus bought as a present for her. She was supervising repairs on the house, had begun showing her pregnancy with son Gregory, and arranged to go to Kansas City for his birth in November.

In that same late autumn Scott was summoned to Hollywood from Montgomery, Alabama, where he and Zelda had found a house at 819 Felder Avenue to live in while she was recovering from schizophrenic episode. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Irving Thalberg hired him for six weeks at $1,200 a week to work on the film, Red-Headed Woman. Fitzgerald did not earn a screen credit, but returned to Alabama full of optimism. For the first time in two and a half years, he wrote Perkins in mid-January 1932, he was $6,000 ahead and ready to spend five months on the long-delayed Tender Is the Night, time enough to add 41,000 words and publish. "Don't tell Ernest or anyone—let them think what they want," he added. Max was the only one who "consistently felt faith in him anyhow." Scott's time estimate to complete his book was once more unduly optimistic, short at least a year. But there was another bonus from the Hollywood sojourn: it gave Fitzgerald the material out of which to fashion "Crazy Sunday," one of his very best stories.

While Scott was away, Zelda started writing an autobiographical novel of her own. This went unmentioned in the series of intimately loving letters to her husband, addressed to Goofo or D.O. (Dear One). One of them ended: "Darling, my own darling. The little mossy place on the back of your neck is the sweetest place and I can rub my nose in it like a pony in his feed bag when you come home and I'm very, very lucky." And another: "My love, my love, my love—I love you so. I want you home in my arms. I love you." But then her father died, and she "miss[ed] him terribly." She also suffered a recurrence of the nocturnal attacks of eczema and asthma that darkened her stay at Prangins in Switzerland the previous year, and these illnesses combined with psychological distress to...