Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“When I was young and foolish I used to think F Scott Fitzgerald and Nabokov were the only people who understood love. Now I think they are the only people who don’t.”

Tender Is The Night was written nine years after Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, The Great Gatsby, which would eventually define Fitzgerald forever in the literary world. I can understand the trepidation of having to follow his major work and it is evident in the amount of re-writes and controversies that now surrounds Tender Is The Night.

Truthfully, it feels a lot like The Great Gatsby. Their are commonalities to Fitzgerald’s writing and themes that span his career; the jazz age, the great war, expats in Europe, heavy drinking and unattainable love. It makes sense that him and Hemingway were friends, they had a hell of a lot in common.

The story centers around the protagonist Dick Diver, a dashing, young psychiatrist striving to make a name for himself in the medical world. His plans are turned upside down when he falls in love and marries the mentally unstable, Nicole Warren. The novel plays out throughout Europe, in upper class hotels and seasonal homes.

Much of the subject matter from Tender Is The Night is pulled directly from the Fitzgeralds life. It is the story of the demise of Dick Diver and the rise of Nicole like that of Zelda and Scott.

When I was young and foolish I used to think F Scott Fitzgerald and Nabokov were the only people who understood love. Now I think they are the only people who don’t. Fitzgerald and his protagonists confuse love and infatuation. I suppose I do to and maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed F Scott.

Unattainable love was the driving force behind Fitzgeralds entire life. The hopeless romantic who could never appease the fleeting siren. One major difference in the Great Gatsby, is that you are able to witness Daisy Buchanan’s flaws. Nicole Warren seems worth throwing your life away for. If you have ever loved a sad girl you will know exactly what i’m talking about.

“I like the saddest girls the world has ever seen” - Rick Reid

Tender Is The Night has it’s flaws. The first section of the book seems misplaced. Apparently Fitzgerald requested it be changed after it had been approved for publishing but he was overruled. It seems like an obvious mistake. This unfortunately means it takes longer than necessary to engage with the characters and it feels like you enter the story midway through (which, I suppose you do)

The real beauty of Tender Is The Night is Fitzgeralds eloquent wordplay, his whimsical prose and his beautiful metaphors. There is a reason he was considered by many to be the greatest American writer. For this reason, Tender Is The Night is a great read. Despite it’s flaws, it is still beautifully written. I will leave you with the following quote.

“Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulders; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the Nice Carnival Song, an echo of last year’s vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her. In a hundred hours she had come to posses all the world’s dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony”.

Keep Reading,

Tanner James

I have a fantasy that I can go there a fool, a child, and come back a country singer. After all, that’s where the legends got their starts. I feel like Hank William’s ghost is waiting on every street corner, for ever lost soul with a dream. Dolly Parton is waiting in every gas station to give you a kiss on the cheek and tell you not to give up.

Every writer struggles, it is the nature of the profession. Every human being struggles, writers just acknowledge it. When you write, you just feel it more. I respect the notion of paying your dues, cutting your teeth and waiting your turn. I understand the concept of respect. Without pain you can’t feel beauty. Music is a pilgramige of love and it requires self-sacrifice and a dismisal of many material items. A leap of faith.

Maybe this is part of the reason I want to go. It’s my pilgramige. 

The plan is to drive my old car down to Nashville alone. Leave my job, my phone and my comfort all at home and try something. Spend some time roaming the streets, seeing the sites, meeting people and having an adventure. I want to play open mic nights and busk on the street. I want to drink at dive bars and go to church on Sundays. I want to head down to Memphis for a few days, tell everyone I learnt to play the blues in Memphis for my entire career, a white lie for stage banter.

Going anywhere by yourself is frightening, If anyone says otherwise they are a liar. I know I will experience great waves of lonliness. I will call the girl I think I love from a payphone and pour my heart out over a drunk, long-distance line. But I will write songs, I will learn other people’s songs, I will become better acquainted with my guitar, I will talk to strangers and tell my stories. I will perservere. I will come back broken, or, better than I have ever been.

Kids these days are cowards. My father told me in a not-so-poetic way, ‘that myself and my friends were drunks posing as musicians’. That line haunts me. He was right in many ways. I feel like we go to school and then work safe jobs, we practice on weeknights and get drunk and perform on weekends. Trust funds fund punk rock today. I am okay with being a drunk, I just don’t want to be a coward.

I can’t remember hearing Neil Young or Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan ever talk about the times they waited around, worked safe jobs, got drunk on weekends and then made it as legendary musicians. I can’t remember anyone great talking this way. I think that’s what my father was trying to tell me.

So here I am. Working a safe job, having a beer...on a weekend, writing this to you. Praying that I will follow through with my plan to take my pilgrimage, my journey to Nashville. I am afraid, but I am more afraid of being a coward. I am more afraid of writing this post and not following through.

So if I call you on the telephone don’t be alarmed, I’m just drunk and lonely in a town I’ve never met.

-Tanner James

Whatever I listen to comes out eventually. Influences rub off and become part of how I write, therefore influences are important and will craft my music for better or for worse.

For example, I love Paul Simon and have no problem with the odd Paul Simon influence playing a part of my future repertoire. Then again, I like the band The Get Up Kids but I have absolutely no interest in sounding like a 90’s emo band. Your taste in music prevails eventually. It’s like that magical High Fidelity line.... “It’s what you like, not what you are like. Books, films, music...these things matter”.

2. Exercise a certain amount of blind faith.

I have a million reasons why I shouldn’t do something. I am plagued with fear and anxiety and I can self-sabotage anything I do if I don’t be careful. Sometimes you need to have a little faith and just stick with it. Trust your skills and believe in your abilities. There are enough people trying to hold you back, you don’t need to do it to yourself.

3. Apply a third-person view and analyze what you are doing

Trying to imagine how others see your live show or your music or any part of your overall product is a good way to analyze what you are doing and find ways to make it better. 

4. Divide your time and energy carefully

Your time is your greatest asset and it is a finite resource. I used to agree to join side projects all the time but found they would always cave after awhile. I would take on too much and manage my time poorly. I try to put my heart into one thing now and apply my time appropriately. 

5. Don’t let others intimidate you, let them inspire you

Talented local and regional artists used to frighten me. Now they inspire me to get better and make me a better artist. Finding pain in other people’s success is a sign of insecurity.  

 Have you ever read the book or seen the film High Fidelity? If you haven’t, I suggest you take a personal development day tomorrow and indulge yourself. To sum it up in one sentence; the protagonist, Rob Gordan, tries to find answers as to why the women of his life always end up leaving, all the while, obsessing over pop music and learning life lessons as he proceeds through his reveleation.

I would like to lie to you and tell you this record is more than that. I would like to tell you it’s a concept album about human virtue or the ideologies of love and art, but it’s not. It’s a simple character study that ended up teaching me more about myself than anything.

Every song is about a girl. For better or worse. Some were lovers, some were friends, some were neither. I guess you could say what ties them together is that they were all influential and I felt I needed to talk about our story.

I don’t know how to talk about my feelings so I write songs. One morning I made a list of names. I wrote about these names without a filter or without an agenda and then I put simple melodies behind the words and gave them a vehicle. The entire process took over three years to complete.

I worked with a producer and we selected songs from my oversized list. We whittled them down and meticuously edited to abide by the laws of pop music.

To be honest, it was more about the words than the music. The words were the message and music was my most accessible medium.

When I sang the songs in the studio I relieved every story. Once they were complete it felt like the stories were over. They didn’t haunt me anymore. They no longer belonged to me.

I recorded this album for me and I’m happy that I did. It now seems self-indulgent and petty to dedicate an entire album to personal failure. This just means that the process was a success. I needed to share these stories.

I think my next record will be about human rights, nautre and beauty in strange places. I may ride my bike across Canada to tour it.

I spent the better part of the fall and early winter holed up in a jam space I rented in Calgary. My band of five years had broken up and I was learning how to go from playing indie rock to folk. It was a lonely process. I was used to being surrounded by constant companions and going at it on your own can be awkward at first. I put in my time and it was a humbling experience. As spring comes closer I will be coming out of my hibernation. I have shows slated in B.C., Alberta and Sask in March and April. I can’t wait to show you what’s been brewing.

-Tanner

My first band, the Nix Dicksons, played our farewell show this past weekend. It was five years of ups and downs and I'm grateful for every second of it. It was a strange feeling saying goodbye. Five years, hundreds of shows, even more bottles of wine; it was a hell of a ride. 200 friends crammed into the Palomino in Calgary and we threw the best funeral party we could. Onwards and upwards. Thanks for the ride.

-Tanner

-Tanner