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A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

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Thursday, August 4, 2011

More thoughts on characters in Tender is the Night: Is Dick Diver the model of Don Draper?

As notes in the edition I'm reading (Malcolm Cowley, ed.) of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night," the last section 50 pages or so, is largely from, maybe entirely from, Nicole's point of view (still 3rd person, though) - so if we had for some reason seen Dick Diver as some kind of glamorous hero for the first 280 pages of the novel, now we even more clearly see him for what he is, an (occasionally charming) drunk and bully. Toward the end of the novel, he returns to his clinic where a young man withdraws from treatment, his somewhat idiotic father outraged that he smelled alcohol on Diver's breath - to his credit, after hesitation, Diver confesses this to his business partner. This leads to some serious discussion, and Diver agrees to leave the practice. Don't worry, though! The Divers have even more money than at the outset, thanks to fabulous investments of Nicole's wealth, so now they continue to tour Europe with an entourage of servants. Again to his credit, Dick for the first time takes an interest in the children. Presumably, he's trying to work, too, but there's no evidence of that. We do see him as a mean and nasty drunk - in a visit to the newly remarried Mary North (now a fake countess of some sort) and on a jaunt to a yacht of some wealthy American. He repeatedly insults and bullies people weaker than he is, and Nicole can do nothing but cringe. She's warned about his drinking, but she's no angel herself. I'm not sure whether her mental illness will play any further role in this story - it never developed into a plot element as much as I thought it would or remembered (perhaps I'd interposed Zelda Fitzgerald too much on the plot of this novel). Does anyone else think that Don Draper of Mad Men is closely modeled Dick Diver? Would anyone doubt that John Hamm and January Jones could play the lead in the movie if it were filmed today?

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