AFTER THE GOOD GAY TIMES

by Tony Buttitta ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1974

Or as subtitled -- ""Asheville, Summer of '35- A Season with F. Scott Fitzgerald"" when no longer tender were the nights -- Zelda was being hospitalized, Scott was anesthetizing himself with liquor and sleeping pills -- but sometimes he came into Tony Buttitta's bookshop (actually his wife's) during this time when Tony was attempting to make it as a writer (ending up as a press agent) and was jotting down whatever Fitzgerald said in whatever book Tony was reading, catalogued here. Fitzgerald apparently had a ""talent for intimacy"" and a need to confide what little was happening -- namely a love affair with the Bovaryish Rosemary (affirmed elsewhere); and his occasional visits to Lottie, a rather classy whore who subsequently read Gatsby three times and corroborated what Hemingway said about Fitzgerald's endowment and puissance and only gave him the shock of his life (not the rash he thought might be syphilis) at the end of their acquaintance when she revealed she was touched with the tarbrush. Addenda at best, making capital in nickels and dimes of that chance ""intimacy"" -- floating table scraps from that other inexhaustible moveable feast.

Pub Date: June 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION