Art, Passion, Success & Jazz . . .

 If I evaluated the level of my success in enumerable sales of physical items alone, I, with a multitude of others, could easily and realistically be deemed failures.  But there is so much more to life.  Viewing my own objectively, I am happy to report that I do not view it as such.  Upon the realization many years ago that my own art could reasonably and truly entertain my own self with a sufficient level of emotional content and technical ability was to attain a certain, albeit modest, level of success in and of itself.  That, combined with the good fortune and personal contentment my personal life has awarded me, give me the distinct impression and definite opinion that, with all modesty and humility, I am a success.   Unfortunately, others have not experienced the favorable circumstances nor made the necessary choices to enable themselves to feel quite the same way. . . 

In 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered a third and final heart attack, and died believing his work forgotten. In the last year of his life, he wrote his daughter, "I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked back—but said at the end of The Great Gatsby: I've found my line—from now on this comes first. This is my immediate duty - without this I am nothing." By his own admission, Fitzgerald viewed himself as a failure, and only 25,000 copies were sold at the time of his death. His obituary in The New York Times mentioned Gatsby as evidence of great potential that was never reached. However, a strong appreciation for the book had developed in underground circles; future writers Edward Newhouse and Budd Schulberg were deeply affected by it and John O'Hara showed the book's influence. The republication of Gatsby in Edmund Wilson's edition of The Last Tycoon in 1941 produced an outburst of comment, with the general consensus expressing the sentiment that the book was an enduring work of fiction.

By 1930, Scott was an alcoholic and Zelda had suffered the first of her multiple breakdowns, fighting her way back to sanity over 15 months in a Swiss clinic. After Zelda’s release in September 1931, the couple and Scottie, then 10, returned to the United States, but five months later, Zelda fell apart again. When Fitzgerald wrote to H. L. Mencken for advice, the latter suggested the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, at that time the nation’s premier institution for the treatment of the mentally ill. Phipps director Adolf Meyer advocated a scientific approach to psychiatry but believed that psychogenetic factors, not physical disease, caused most mental illness. He thought that people became mentally ill “by actually living in ways that put their mind and entire organism and its activity in jeopardy.” The Fitzgeralds— whose marriage Meyer diagnosed as a “folie a deux”— seemed a living embodiment of his theories, which perhaps explains why they both detested him.  (thanks to both http://www.baltimorestyle.com/index.php/style/baltimore/baltimore_f_scott_fitzgerald_in_baltimore/#sthash.cD1aikhO.dpuf and http://www.wikipedia.com)

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