Visit the Thai Restaurant
blends
atmospheric elegance with culina
Featuring the 15116We Drin k Cafe
E Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on their honeymoon. By his last years, wrote one biog-
rapher, "Fitzgerald had rejected the anti-Semitism endemic among middle-class
white Americans, which he had learned during his youth in St. Paul."
Fitzgerald And The Jews
Biographers point to The Last Tycoon
as an indication of a change of heart
in Fitzgerald's attitudes toward Jews.
In the author's own words, "He had
worked with Jews for too long to
believe the legend that they were small
with money."
Jeffrey Myers, author of Scott
Fitzgerald — A Biography (1994), listed
among the author's Jewish friends and
admirers George Jean Nathan, who
published his first stories; Gilbert
Seldes, whose review of The Great
Gatsby helped launch Fitzgerald's inter-
national fame; and authors Gertrude
Stein, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman,
Nathanael West and Budd Schulberg.
By his last years, Myers wrote,
"Fitzgerald had rejected the anti-
Semitism endemic among middle-class
white Americans, which he had
learned during his youth in St. Paul.
The radical transformation was clearly
reflected in his novels."
In The Beautiful and the Damned
(1921), the Jewish character Joseph
Bloeckman is a vulgar film company
executive who tries to seduce the hero's
wife with a screen test and promises of
a film career.
And, four years later, The Great
Gatsby features the villainous Meyer
Wolfsheim, a gangster who speaks
with a guttural Eastern European
accent, wears cufflinks made of human
molars and is implicated in fixing that
most American of all events, the
World Series.
In 1939-40, when he wrote The Last
Tycoon, Fitzgerald clearly modeled his
admirable hero, the Jewish Monroe
Stahr, on film producer Irving Thalberg,
whose films included Grand Hotel,
Mutiny on the Bounty and Camille.
In the novel, Stahr drives himself
mercilessly, despite suffering from a
debilitating heart condition. The char-
acter does favors for lower-level
employees and makes difficult, but
artistically valid, decisions, including
canceling the release of a poorly made
movie. Eventually, Stahr sacrifices
himself for the good of the studio.
In a Showtime interview, Kroll Ring,
now 83, said her main concern was that
the anguish that Fitzgerald felt during
his last years be seen in its true light.
"My memory harbors a gentle man
with a nearly collapsed dream whose
prevailing gift gave him the strength to
keep doing what he did best — to
write," she said.
"My belief is that you remember
this man for his writing, not his drink-
ing. His drinking came out of personal
torments that have to be understood
and put in perspective.
"But the writing stands on its own,
and writing was all that was ever
important to him." ❑
Last Call debuts 8 p.m. Saturday,
May 25, on the Showtime
Network.
Roy al Oak, Ml -1-307
(2+8) 28 3-0002
en: Mon — Thur. I lam - l O p m • Fri. 1 I am- 1 1 pm
Sat. 12pm-11 pm • „burl. 12-10pm
Lunch served '61 5pm Mon-fri
mile ey Woodward in The Northwood Shopping Center
•SCRUMPTIOUS
APPETIZERS
•DELECTABLE
HOT DINNERS
•FABULOUS
PARTY TRAYS
•TANTALIZING
DESSERTS
6646 TELEGRAPH • AT MAPLE • BLOOMFIELD PLAZ
•
GRAND OPENING
Thai Cuisine
EXCLUDES TAKEOUT
25226 Greenfield Rd.Oak Park, MI 48237
•
SALA
THAI
(248) 968-9495
Fax ( 248) 968-9405
Open Daily 11:00 am - 9:30 pm
Fri & Sat 11:00 am - 11:00 pm
Dinner Served: Mon-Fri after 3 pm
Saturday all day
•
I 1 Mile Rd.
0
'MI Pl..1 .....! )
and caffeine content kept him awake
enough to write.
Kroll ordered groceries, made sand-
wiches and appointments, fended off
unwelcome guests and listened while
her employer talked out his ideas. She
arranged with her furrier father,
Samuel Kr011, to convert a nearly new
coat of Graham's to a more youthful
style for Fitzgerald's teen-aged daugh-
ter, Scottie — at no charge.
Finally, it fell to Kroll to make
Fitzgerald's funeral arrangements in
December 1940, and to arrange publi-
cation of the unfinished The Last
Tycoon, with notes fleshed out by critic
Edmund Wilson.
5092.3 Woodward Ave.
*Q.< it.:31
10 Mile Rd.
10 OFF
WHOLE BILL!
•
Chinese Carry-Out Restaurant
Mon-Thurs, 11:00 am - 9:30 pm
Fri, 11:00 am - 10:00 pm
Sat & Sun, 4:00 pm - 9:30 pm
% OFF
Total Bill
with cotip.r ■
Expires 6/30/02
• Our speciality •
General Tso's Chicken
395 I Telegraph (NE corner of Long Lake Rd.) • Bloomfield Twp.
Don't have a menu? We'll fox one right over!
5/24
2002
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