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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy April 5, 2006: ‘The
alma mater he never left’ “As for past issues of PAW are they not indeed a potter’s field?” wrote three indignant former Nassau Lit editors in the April 13, 1956 issue. As one who has spent the past four years digging around in that very not-so-hallowed ground, I must object (making me an indignant former PAW editor). Take the March 9, 1956, issue on F. Scott Fitzgerald ’17 that so upset the Lit-erati: inimitable editor John Davies ’41 pulled together “Three Original Essays Which Explore the Complex Relationship between Princeton’s Most Distinguished Author and the Alma Mater He Never Left.” Admittedly, Davies was stretching the definition of “original” a bit, given that the first essay, by Fitzgerald’s daughter, was lifted from a 1942 Nassau Lit (which was the cause of the three editors’ ire; Davies described the piece as having been “buried” in the magazine, while the editors protested that in fact it had been a centerpiece of the issue). Original or no, the three pieces particularly the first two work wonderfully together to illuminate two different sides of a complex man. (The third essay, written by Davies himself, is an entertaining look at Fitzgerald’s obsession with Princeton football.) Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan’s tribute lovingly explores her father’s intellectual passion, quoting him at length about his love for poetry. “Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside of you,” Fitzgerald wrote to her in a letter, “or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations. The Grecian Urn is unbearably beautiful with every syllable as inevitable as the notes in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or it’s just something you don’t understand. … I suppose I’ve read it a hundred times. About the tenth time I began to know what it is about, and caught the chime in it and the exquisite inner mechanics. … For awhile after you quit Keats, all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.” Though she acknowledges his love of campus life, especially football as a young girl, at one game, she accidentally swallowed a safety pin, and when she screamed the fact to her father, he responded calmly, “Daughter, I don’t care if you’ve swallowed a sewing machine. Pepper Constable has the ball” she also says that he “hardly ever went to Reunions, and he constantly deplored the club system.” She also quotes him in another letter: “Though I loved Princeton I sometimes felt that it was a by-water, that its snobby institutions were easy to beat and to despise and that unless I were a natural steeplechaser or a society groom I’d have to find my own private intellectual and emotional life. … I got nothing out of my first two years in the last I got my passionate love for poetry and historical perspective and ideas that in general (however superficially) that carried me full swing into my career.” It is jarring, then, to read the bald opening of Henry Dan Piper ’39’s essay: “During Scott Fitzgerald’s first three years at Princeton (that is, until he flunked out of the Class of 1917 mid-way in junior year), he devoted most of his talent and energy to establishing himself securely in the campus social hierarchy. By the beginning of Junior year his goal of becoming a Big Man on Campus seemed within easy reach.” Piper goes on to analyze Fitzgerald’s career at Princeton as a whole, concluding that the academic side of his tenure there was less than significant. “In spite of his recognized creative ability,” Piper writes, “no lasting fruitful connection ever seems to have been established between this talent and his studies. In fact, one of his English professors maintained until his death that Scott Fitzgerald was quite incapable of writing a book as good as The Great Gatsby; that, in fact, he had stolen the manuscript from another more talented student who always got better English grades than Fitzgerald!” The issue received great attention from alumni beyond the irritated Nassau Lit editors. Wrote one of Fitzgerald’s classmates, ”I do wish to congratulate you for the Fitzgerald number of the Weekly and assure you that regardless of how annoying, exasperating, or frustrating Scott was at times he was never dull, and I was very fond of him.” Incidentally, of course, Fitzgerald died with an
issue of PAW in his hand. Need we say more?
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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