“I am not here to talk about symbolism,” says the author.

“Well then,” says his rival, “can we talk about what you hope to achieve?”

“Nothing.”

The other man laughs. “Nothing. Well, old man, I’ve read thousands of your pages and sometimes I think you’ve achieved just that.”

“Good for you,” says the first author. He is not amused.

“But then I start to think of the symbols—”

“Symbols. Good, then, look at the symbols. Analyze the hell out of them. Be a critic. Leave me out of it.”

“Well, man, you work them in so flawlessly that sometimes it seems your stories are as boring as they read.”

“I shit symbols. I extrude them from my life and they fall onto the page as solid, hard words. I don’t make them. If you are at home trying to create shit consciously, you’re in the wrong business.”

“You’re a charming man, Mr. Hemingway. Removed from your work you might not be worth speaking to.”

“And you are a sad little people-pleasing prick, Scotty. You and your work are about equally charming.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Fitzgerald.

“It means nothing.”

“You’re all about nothing, then, aren’t you?”

“I am all about my work. Something you might stand to learn. I am not about symbols, or about plotting out developments and this and that into tidy little punch line endings. I don’t package my goods. I am not selling to the mass market.”

“So you’re saying you don’t admit to influences?”

“I influence myself.”

“What about Stein?”

“Stein is a brilliant woman who has influenced my use of language immensely.”

“All right, then you like Stein—”

“The woman is a cunt. I like the way she writes.”

“Is she now?”

“She may be. She may not be. It doesn’t matter.” Hemingway elevates his forearm and drops his wrist. His hand hangs in the air. “What are your two stories? ‘The charms of women and the bravery of men?’”

“Yes,” says Fitzgerald. “Glad you’re paying attention. You might learn something.”

“If this world is that simple, either you have not yet lived or you should die now.”

At this, Fitzgerald laughs. “Seriously, man? You are calling me simple? If your words were any—”

“Words, words. Simple words. If you can’t see the mosaic in my simple words, you don’t deserve to know better.”

“Of course I see it. But I do wish you would get over yourself. You are really becoming a parody of yourself. Have a little fun with it. You’re losing your audience.”

“I do not have an audience. My writing does.”

“All right, but what about location? Clearly you place importance on it.”

“It’s arbitrary.”

“How can you say that? It’s as important as the battle between the sexes!”

“The latter is less arbitrary.”

“What about the rivers you write about? The wilderness?”

“What about it?”

“It’s important—no, imperative to the story. North or South. Midwest. Europe—it all matters. Look at Willa Cather—”

“She has made something important of location. She has been to France. She could write about France.”

“Perhaps she could, but she captures the essence of the prairie in her writing. You must agree.”

“Perhaps. But that’s not what I’m writing—”

“So your locations are arbitrary? Entirely useless?”

“No; they are useful, but only for context. And then you can take anything out of context and not lose the essence of the people.”

“Hills Like White Elephants?”

“Could be the Hollywood Hills.”

“But the manner—”

“Displaces human beings. That’s all that matters as far as location.”

“Big Two-Hearted River then—”

“Of course the setting matters. I’m not saying it doesn’t. I’m saying the exact geographic location is arbitrary if you tap into the essence of the scene. A man in a river in Michigan could just as easily be a man in a river in Avignon or Amsterdam. He can commune the same way in any of those places. He can be affected, meditate—”

“But places resonate with people.”

“Places change. The meanings of places change. Conversations, interactions with environments—they can be the same over space and time. My conscientious readers will get the full meaning of my work in a hundred years just as well as they do now. Possibly better, if they are smarter than people are now. Something tells me they won’t be.”

“I write to my generation.”

“Your words define the time we live in, Scotty. My words defy time.”

“Your words, like mine,” says Fitzgerald, gaining a serious tone, “are the cumulative effect of those who came before us . I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of Oscar Wilde. I want to do the sultry heavens of Conrad, the rolled-gold sundowns and crazy-quilt skies of Hitchens and Kipling, as well as the pastel dawns and twilights of Chesterton.”

“Ah,” says Hemingway, nodding. “I see.”

“What is it that you see? I can tell already that it will be an image I can add to my list.”

“I see that you are schizophrenic and you have chosen poor role models. What is it that Joyce says about Tennyson? A rhymester. Wilde must be descended from that vile man.”

“Joyce, then, let’s add him to the list.”

“Your lists are boring. Don’t try to be other people, Scott. Be yourself. Or maybe you’re not good enough—”

“I would take your resentment personally, old boy, if you didn’t hold everyone in this world in as low regard.”

“Your vernacular is ornate and grotesquely beautiful in a contorted Harry Lauder’s walking stick kind of way. It is an overgrown, twisted spectacle. Spectacles are only for show. When your fanatics are wooed by your words, calling them magic, what that means is that you have mastered the craft of illusion, not the art of sublime truth. You crawl across the landscape on your hands and knees worshipping the leaves that fall across your back. You draw out the wind as if it were laughing in play with the things it moves and moves through. I examine the space that the wind occupies in the universe. Bodies are landmarks, but the space is what interests me. The space is honest. Earth is overwhelming on your knees, but in blank space it is simple, comprehensible and utterly enigmatic. The space between actions and words is what interests me. It is honest. I can be decorative, too, if I must to prove that I can, and then I must stop if I am to keep myself from vomiting. I have read Oscar Wilde, and I have read Fitzgerald. There are moments in between your words that are sublime, but mostly you just make me laugh.”

A silence slips between the two men’s words. Finally, Fitzgerald breaks the silence. “You are right, Ernest. We should all be like you. The importance of being…”

“Bah.”

“You’re a sort of distillation of all those who have come before you. I mean, one has to credit Joyce and Woolf in part for your interior monologues, though they are distinctly your own. But even you will admit we needed them to pave the way for your perfection.”

“Yes,” answers Hemingway.

“But there is little joy in reading your work. Fiction is made of conflict, but all our readers are not like us. Some need a little leavening. They’re not all drunks. Can’t you make us laugh?”

Hemingway does not answer. Instead he takes a drink.

“You are always at war. I can’t be your rival. I’ll admit it: You win. Your words are greater, cumulatively. They lodge themselves in your readers like shrapnel. Your words are at war with the world, even when they transcend it. They are like war: Unforgettable. One doesn’t remember one’s laughter often, but one never forgets suffering. I suffer when I read your work, and I remember it. If I didn’t know you, I’d suspect you were brilliant, and I’d suspect you must have two big hearts—one shot dead in the war and one so insulated by protective fat that no one will ever reach through to it. I am a simple entertainer.”

“This is sick. You’re as transparent as one of the women in your stories. Don’t be coy. That might charm Missus Wilde, but it just sickens me. You know you will be remembered. We’ve agreed that you have done brilliant things, and that when the man drops dead from cirrhosis of the liver you will be remembered for your words and not just your crazy bitch of a wife. But you have also sold out—to magazines and even…screenwriting, Scott, for God’s sake. Your women are charming, playful. Your men are brave. Hollywood suits you.”

“Everything there is a façade.”

“An ice palace. But the ice melts. And when it melts, what’s left? There’s a story in that. If it’s done right.”

Quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Bruccoli, M. and Baughman, J.S. (Eds.). Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press; 2003.