“I feel that The Great Gatsby is the most together, the most surgically artistic effort of a novelist who was more exciting when he was not trying to contain the hot, maudlin, meandering mess of his own talent. (For the record, I also sense something phony about Gatsby’s very phoniness — for me the only convincing poor person Fitzgerald wrote was one who lost his fortune, not one who made it.  Fitzgerald’s poor people were like his black people or his Jews–all characteristics, no character.)” Modern Library Revue: #28 Tender is the Night by Lydia Kiesling
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“I feel that The Great Gatsby is the most together, the most surgically artistic effort of a novelist who was more exciting when he was not trying to contain the hot, maudlin, meandering mess of his own talent. (For the record, I also sense something phony about Gatsby’s very phoniness — for me the only convincing poor person Fitzgerald wrote was one who lost his fortune, not one who made it.  Fitzgerald’s poor people were like his black people or his Jews–all characteristics, no character.)”

Modern Library Revue: #28 Tender is the Night by Lydia Kiesling

“I used to feel that the novel output of Fitzgerald was like the literary version of the Myers Briggs test: whichever one a person favored was some fundamental indicator of his or her personality.  Roughly it followed that ordinary and banal people liked The Great Gatsby, snotty, effete types liked This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned was for the discerning and unconventional (I’ll let you guess in which camp I numbered myself).  Tender is the Night was sort of an unknown quantity, preferred by dramatic people, maybe, or people who take pills.” Modern Library Revue: #28 Tender is the Night by Lydia Kiesling
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“I used to feel that the novel output of Fitzgerald was like the literary version of the Myers Briggs test: whichever one a person favored was some fundamental indicator of his or her personality.  Roughly it followed that ordinary and banal people liked The Great Gatsby, snotty, effete types liked This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned was for the discerning and unconventional (I’ll let you guess in which camp I numbered myself).  Tender is the Night was sort of an unknown quantity, preferred by dramatic people, maybe, or people who take pills.”

Modern Library Revue: #28 Tender is the Night by Lydia Kiesling