A review by sdibartola
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4.0
There is a point midway through “Tender is the Night” when Dick Diver is having tea with Baby Warren (Nicole’s sister) in Zurich and she questions his motives for wanting to marry Nicole: “It isn’t we think you’re an adventurer. We don’t know who you are.” It seems a turning point for Diver, and he decides that the danger Nicole’s schizophrenia poses to their happiness is less important than the advantages of her family’s wealth. It turns out to be a disastrous decision. Dick was widely acknowledged to be a brilliant young psychiatrist with a skill for writing works that rendered European advances in the emerging field accessible to American physicians. Ultimately, he gives up any aspirations he previously had for serious medical research, instead using Nicole’s family money to finance a private clinic in Zurich with his colleague Franz Gregorovius and to pursue a dissolute lifestyle with wealthy American and European friends.
Set in the decade after World War I, the story unfolds primarily in Europe – the French Riviera, Zurich, and Rome. The book actually starts in the middle of the story (on the beach in the French Riviera where the idle rich pass their time and Dick and Nicole Diver meet Rosemary Hoyt, an 18-year old actress who has just completed her first movie, “Daddy’s Girl”). Rosemary is infatuated with Dick and although he flirts with her, their relationship is not consummated until 4 years later (in the third part of the book). The middle of the book relates the early part of Dick’s career when he had just completed his medical training and meets the schizophrenic patient Nicole whom he eventually marries. In the final third of the book, Rosemary is now 22 years old and an established American film star. Dick has become dissatisfied with his wealthy but frivolous lifestyle with Nicole and laments that he has abandoned his serious scientific work. At this point in the story, Dick’s disillusionment with his marriage and hopeless infatuation with Rosemary lead him into a downward alcoholic spiral punctuated by mean-spirited attacks on those around him, and eventually into a drunken brawl with the Italian police that lands him in jail in Rome. At the end of the novel, he is living alone as a marginally successful rural doctor in upstate New York.
Fitzgerald worked on the novel for 9 years after completing “The Great Gatsby.” When published in 1934, it was neither a critical nor commercial success. It is a highly autobiographical work in that Fitzgerald’s own wife Zelda (like Nicole Diver) suffered from schizophrenia while Fitzgerald viewed himself as a great but failed author (as Dick Diver was portrayed as a brilliant but failed psychiatrist). The novel was out of print when Fitzgerald died in 1940, but today is ranked #28 in the Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.” As detailed in an article by Calvin Tompkins in the New Yorker (July 28, 1962), Fitzgerald started out using his wealthy friends, Gerald and Sara Murphy as models for the main characters (the dedication of the book is “To Gerald and Sara – Many fêtes”) but somewhere along the line Dick and Nicole Diver morphed into Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Overall, “Tender is the Night” is the sad but engaging story of a brilliant doctor who chooses the convenience of a wealthy marriage to a beautiful (but mentally ill) young woman over a more ascetic and academic career in clinical psychiatry.
Set in the decade after World War I, the story unfolds primarily in Europe – the French Riviera, Zurich, and Rome. The book actually starts in the middle of the story (on the beach in the French Riviera where the idle rich pass their time and Dick and Nicole Diver meet Rosemary Hoyt, an 18-year old actress who has just completed her first movie, “Daddy’s Girl”). Rosemary is infatuated with Dick and although he flirts with her, their relationship is not consummated until 4 years later (in the third part of the book). The middle of the book relates the early part of Dick’s career when he had just completed his medical training and meets the schizophrenic patient Nicole whom he eventually marries. In the final third of the book, Rosemary is now 22 years old and an established American film star. Dick has become dissatisfied with his wealthy but frivolous lifestyle with Nicole and laments that he has abandoned his serious scientific work. At this point in the story, Dick’s disillusionment with his marriage and hopeless infatuation with Rosemary lead him into a downward alcoholic spiral punctuated by mean-spirited attacks on those around him, and eventually into a drunken brawl with the Italian police that lands him in jail in Rome. At the end of the novel, he is living alone as a marginally successful rural doctor in upstate New York.
Fitzgerald worked on the novel for 9 years after completing “The Great Gatsby.” When published in 1934, it was neither a critical nor commercial success. It is a highly autobiographical work in that Fitzgerald’s own wife Zelda (like Nicole Diver) suffered from schizophrenia while Fitzgerald viewed himself as a great but failed author (as Dick Diver was portrayed as a brilliant but failed psychiatrist). The novel was out of print when Fitzgerald died in 1940, but today is ranked #28 in the Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.” As detailed in an article by Calvin Tompkins in the New Yorker (July 28, 1962), Fitzgerald started out using his wealthy friends, Gerald and Sara Murphy as models for the main characters (the dedication of the book is “To Gerald and Sara – Many fêtes”) but somewhere along the line Dick and Nicole Diver morphed into Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Overall, “Tender is the Night” is the sad but engaging story of a brilliant doctor who chooses the convenience of a wealthy marriage to a beautiful (but mentally ill) young woman over a more ascetic and academic career in clinical psychiatry.