I’ve known many sexual predators. My contemporary sensibilities and my life experience tell me some things about them: that they prey upon the young and the weak; that they seek out healing professions; that they are the most charming people you meet; that they are often beloved by society, even famous, while their victims are often eminently dislikeable; that they seek escape in alcohol and drugs; that they conflate grooming with romance; that they lie to everyone, especially to themselves; that their most tortured victims lie close at hand; and that, above all else and as illustrated by the previous qualifications, they are opportunistic cowards. They create their own worlds, safe worlds, and plug people into them. Then they take advantage.

Look, I know everyone sees Diver as an autobiographical reflection of Scott to Zelda’s Nicole, and he would not have described Diver as a sexual predator; it’s an anachronism. But, you know, Dick Diver is a fucking sexual predator, and a great one. Fitzgerald managed to build a character that ticks so many boxes as a narcissistic exploiter, and I can’t see Dick in any other light. What we hear most about Dick is precisely how charming he is, and there’s something very special in that way that Fitzgerald allows his protagonists to be alive with such traits. It’s not just that Dick Diver charms the pants off of every other character in Tender is the Night, it’s that he has succeeded in charming the author with his "trick," of eliciting sympathies from an author who knows every one of his character’s sins. Ultimately this impacts the narration, in which we see significant tips of the hat to Dick’s rationalizations and resentments, his hatred of the people who surround and love him. Superficial reads of Fitzgerald (the kind I was guilty of a teenager, especially regarding Nick Carraway) might allow you to conclude that he normalizes the flaws of his characters, perhaps unintentionally. I don't think it matters. Whether by accident or intention, as reflection of his skill or his brokenness, this is his great strength as a writer, aside from his capacity for beautiful prose.

Underneath all of Dick’s charm, the charm that effuses and perhaps twists the narrative itself, is his incredible cowardice. To truly describe the “big stiff” that is Dick, you might turn to crass Australian sensibilities: Dick Diver is a modern medical marvel, all cock and no balls. Foiled by Tommy Barban and his massive testicles, the man who never backs down from a fight and clearly pursues what he wants in life, Dick just can’t seem to get it up. His romantic life depends on the young women he can charm into dependence, starting with the hot incest survivor whose attachment to him he turns into a lucrative marriage, and moving onto a number of girls who feel special in his gaze. His financial life is dependent on his wife, in spite of his solid career choice. His professional life isn’t much better; it relies on a friend he charmed long ago, someone who believes Dick to be brilliant and driven. And when he finally throws a punch, it’s in a drunken stupor over money, and he’s wrong and out of his depth, and it gets him beaten to a pulp. Dick’s a loser, and it just gets worse with time.

I feel for the characters surrounding Dick because I know them, have been some of them several times over. It is hard to see through charm, especially when you don’t want to. I relate deeply to Franz, who steadfastly defends Dick until his faults are undeniable, then proceeds to question just how "serious" Dick ever was. Nicole also realizes the depths of his problems, too, perhaps best evinced by the narration about Dick’s changing relationship to their kids (“it was only the closeness of Rosemary's exciting youth that prompted the impending effort — she had seen him draw the same inspiration from the new bodies of her children”). Rosemary, who Dick cannot relate to as a real person with real feelings and about whose possible human exploits he obsesses ("Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?"), eventually sees it, too. Maybe Dick doesn't quite make sense outside of his own little world. Maybe he's a bit limp, after all.

But I also relate to Dick. I make a poor predator, but I have been a fool confused about love and high on my own intellect, an egotistical prick just waiting for the world to give him his. I was raised by a man who expected me to charm others, a dick of a man who needed the unquestioning love of others and found ways, from time to time, to get it, bad parties and all. It never took, as I lacked the looks and the charisma, and, really, the will to manipulate. But what I did learn from the predators in my midst was the terrible lesson that life is lived by seizing opportunities instead of fighting like hell, the petty opportunism that drives Dick Diver forward. I waited a long, long time for life, turning my 20s into a terrible wasteland whose memory still haunts me. So, I might as well have been Dick: waiting for the right moment, unable to be honest with myself, unable to move forward on my own volition, constantly taking the easy route while convincing myself of my greatness. Completely miserable and completely satisfied with myself.

In the end, this doesn’t work, as it didn’t for Dick Diver. I know Hornell, New York, and have been there; it is a shithole now, and its decline had already begun at the time when the fictional Diver would have moved there. Nobody would want to end up in Hornell. It's the perfect place for a hard landing for someone who can't crawl out of his own bullshit, who loves his problems more than he loves life.

This is a great novel, I think the best of Fitzgerald, and one of the best novels I've read as an adult.

theteachesofleeches

theteachesofleeches