When he was reading the beautiful Ginevra King's love letters to future novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jim West said, "I felt almost as if I was falling in love with her. Of course, it was an illusion — but I liked her a lot."
Other red-blooded males may very well have a similar experience when they read West's book, "The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King, His First Love."
West, a Penn State English professor and a scholar specializing in Fitzgerald's works, obtained a treasure trove of long love letters Ginevra wrote to Fitzgerald while still in her teens. "I had to get over feeling like a voyeur looking over the shoulder of a 16-year-old girl," West said by phone from his home in University Park, Pa. "You can sense a spark in the letters. I don't think she was affected, she was very natural, and letters is what they had in 1915. We have e-mail and cell phones."
West, who speaks with a gentle Southern accent, was born in Richmond, Va. Besides his awe of the works of Fitzgerald, he enjoys the work of Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe. "But Fitzgerald was a brilliant, articulate stylist and a keen observer of society and the human condition. He also wrote wonderful letters that are among the treasures of American literature. I've been working today with 11 letters recovered from his crack-up period. Five or six of them are quite good. He was also an excellent conversationalist, although there is only one recording of his voice — one of him reading Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale."
West thinks that in some strange way, Fitzgerald "wanted to crack up. The notion of a writer who uses himself hard and dies early always had an appeal to him, like Stephen Crane. In a way, his early death at the age of 44 was deliberate."
Ginevra destroyed Fitzgerald's letters to her after she got married, so his letters cannot be directly compared to hers. West is not unhappy about that. "It's a shame we don't have his letters, but if we did, his letters would dominate a book like the one I just wrote, whereas I turned the attention to her."
Ginevra's letters show her to have been a romantic, charming young woman. "I think she was from a social class where the cardinal rule was to keep a low profile. You should not be seen in the movies or seek celebrity in any way. She must have been able to see, too, that being known as the inspiration for Fitzgerald's literary heroines would put her in an unpleasant spotlight."
West recalls the huge press that accompanied the release of the 1974 movie, "The Great Gatsby," starring Robert Redford. "It dominated the public scene for months and months. Her granddaughters told me her second husband was not happy about any mention of Fitzgerald. So, partly, she kept quiet to keep peace in the family."
Part of the interest in West's book is the evidence it presents that Fitzgerald used Ginevra as inspiration for almost all his literary heroines, including Daisy Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby."
West believes that Fitzgerald also loved Zelda Sayre, who became his wife in a well-documented stormy relationship, "but you never forget your first love, especially when you never see her, and she remains forever 16 in your imagination. Fitzgerald was also cold-blooded enough to realize how useful her image was to him. He knew she had given him access to the world of the wealth."
The author doubts that Fitzgerald loved Sheila Graham, the columnist, who loved and supported him in his later self-destructive years, "but he was grateful to her and she did well by him. We wouldn't have as much as we do of his final work, 'The Last Tycoon,' had it not been for her efforts. Fitzgerald was considerably diminished and dispirited in his last couple of years."
In West's opinion, Fitzgerald was more gifted in writing the short story than he was with novels. "He wrote 160 short stories in the 20 years of his working life, so he had a lot of practice. He was an entertainer. He published in a magazine market that doesn't exist any more. Many people read Redbook or the Saturday Evening Post."
According to West, "Fitzgerald's writing gives the impression of having been done with great facility, as the birds sing. But his first drafts were often very pedestrian. He got that beautiful shimmer by revising and polishing."
Fortunately for all the work West has been doing, "Fitzgerald was a pack rat. He saved everything. There are lots of letters and manuscripts from his early life."
West is working on a volume of Fitzgerald's letters for publication, as well as an edition of his personal essays. He also plans to write a book on Fitzgerald as a professional author.
Has West ever written a novel of his own? "No. Many English professors have illusions that they can write fiction — but it is usually wooden and stiff. That's the way mine would be."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com