October 2008: F Scot Fitzgerald: Tender Is The Night

[Libra]

I find in book 2 it brings together the story of Dick and Nicole for a better understanding of their relationship.Dick seems he got himself in a mess taking on a marriage with a patient from the clinic,he loves her but it seems he has sacrificed his ideas and freedoms to keep Nicole happy.

Nicole on the other hand I find sometimes manipulates him ,but it could be her psychosis.

I enjoyed this exert from the book 2:

"Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves.Now,human respect-you don't call a man a coward or a liar lightly,but if you spend your life sparing people's feelings and feeding their vanity,you get so you can't distinguish what should be respected in them."

 

[silverseason]

Libra and I seem to be the principal commentators on this book. I miss the discussions we had on some of the others.

I finished Tender Is the Night and am left unsatisfied and a bit puzzled. I can't find the center, that is, who or what the novel is about. We start out with Rosemary and inhabit her consciousness for a while. Then she is pushed aside and we seem to be following Dick's story - with detours now and then for others. Then, near the end, it is suddenly mostly Nicole. So maybe it's the story of a marriage.

Not quite a marriage, as their union never really seemed real to me. I am left with the image of a pinball game. Dick and Nicole crashed into each other, then ricocheted off others but always came back into contact until, finally, he was knocked completely out of the game.

One critic seemed to think it showed Nicole growing up, taking control of her life. If so, it's a poor control.

 

[Libra]

Libra and I seem to be the principal commentators on this book. I miss the discussions we had on some of the others..

They gave up too easily on it,Book 1 was torture,but after that I personally got into it.

I finished Tender Is the Night and am left unsatisfied and a bit puzzled. I can't find the center, that is, who or what the novel is about. We start out with Rosemary and inhabit her consciousness for a while. Then she is pushed aside and we seem to be following Dick's story - with detours now and then for others. Then, near the end, it is suddenly mostly Nicole. So maybe it's the story of a marriage..

I also thought the story was going to be about Rosemary,but that went off into the wind,More of the demise of a marriage through the years,nd getting married for the wrong reasons,yes,Dick might have loved her but I think it was more being her protector.

Not quite a marriage, as their union never really seemed real to me. I am left with the image of a pinball game. Dick and Nicole crashed into each other, then ricocheted off others but always came back into contact until, finally, he was knocked completely out of the game..

I agree

One critic seemed to think it showed Nicole growing up, taking control of her life. If so, it's a poor control.

Someone in the book mentioned (I think it was Mary,not sure) that Nicole is manipulating Dick,did you find that? Also,I found her sister annoying and their power over him with their money.

I didn't see any growing up,I saw that Nicole didn't like Dick anymore because "he wasn't like before".

Dick felt trapped so they seperated amicably I find, but Dick's life went downhill from there.

 

[foldingtablesm]

Libra and I seem to be the principal commentators on this book. I miss the discussions we had on some of the others.

I finished Tender Is the Night and am left unsatisfied and a bit puzzled. I can't find the center, that is, who or what the novel is about. We start out with Rosemary and inhabit her consciousness for a while. Then she is pushed aside and we seem to be following Dick's story - with detours now and then for others. Then, near the end, it is suddenly mostly Nicole. So maybe it's the story of a marriage.

Not quite a marriage, as their union never really seemed real to me. I am left with the image of a pinball game. Dick and Nicole crashed into each other, then ricocheted off others but always came back into contact until, finally, he was knocked completely out of the game.

One critic seemed to think it showed Nicole growing up, taking control of her life. If so, it's a poor control.

i wouldn't say it's necessarily about nicole growing up, taking control. It's more about how one person can become strong by destroying another. Ironically it is the psychoanalyst that takes the fall, being triumphed by his wife. His psychoanalytics prove to have no control over her, and through cheating on him, she gains power and strength over him.

 

[loured]

ok

I read it a few years ago but I have it in my bookcase and I can leaf through it to remember, I'd like us to discuss it, I like Fitzgerald's books in general and I know this one is the closest to his biography and to Keats.
Do you know there are rumours that Zelda, his wife, wrote or at least had an important contribution to most of Fitzgerald's novels? And I think she wrote a novel herself, Save me the Waltz.