Newsletter

Say What?
September 23, 2009

Rather Sweet
October 15th, 4:00 to 7:00


Rebecca Rather will be here signing her fabulous new cookbook, Pastry Queen Parties: Entertaining Friends and Family, Texas Style. WE will be THE first store to have her signing her new book! If you can’t make it to the signing, Rebecca can sign one (or a bunch) and we will hold it for you, or ship it to you. Pre-order by calling us at (830) 997-1535 or e-mail info@berkmanbooks.com. Ummmm, can’t wait.

Book Marketing Workshop
October 22nd, 6:30 – 8:00

Local author and expert book seller George Arnold will be here for a workshop for writers who want to be published and published authors who want to sell more of their books. Seating is limited to 15 and there is a $30.00 registration fee. George’s book BestSeller: Must-Read Author’s Guide to Successfully Selling Your Books is included. Call the store to register (997-1535) or e-mail http://info@berkmanbooks.com

The Sale Continues! All books are 30% off with a $50 minimum.

Shop our ebay store! Auction and "buy it now" items are available.
http://stores.shop.ebay.com/berkman-books

New Arrivals

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first ed., reset, 1951

The Experience of Art Twentieth century Chinese paintings from the Shuisongshi Shanfang collection, Hugh Moss, 1983

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition, modern library, 1938

Here We Go Again by Charles Whitfield Dickey, signed, first ed., 1951

Nimitz by E.B. Potter, signed by the author and Ladybird Johnson at the Nimitz dedication, November 11, 1983

Works of Shakespeare, 20 vol. limited ed., set

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult, first ed. 1994


Hiding on the Shelf

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein, 2nd ed., 1965 book club box set with The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King

Caesar’s Commentary’s on the Gallic War by Charles Anthon, 1840

Abraham Lincoln, the Man of the People by Norman Hapgood, 1903

The Great Kahn, by Dong Sung Kim, first ed., 1969

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone, signed first ed., 1961


Literary Birthday - F. Scott Fitzgerald

American short-story writer and novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald was known for his depictions of the Jazz Age (the 1920s). With the glamorous Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald embarked on a life of parties and money spending, which he depicted in such novels as The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and The Great Gatsby (1925), a story of the loss of romantic illusions and an ironic comment on the connection between love and money. The work is widely considered Fitzgerald's finest.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St Paul, Minnesota of mixed Southern and Irish descent. He was given three names after the writer of The Star Spangled Banner, to whom he was distantly related. In 1913 Fitzgerald entered Princeton University. He left his studies in 1917 because of his poor academic records, and took up a commission in the US Army. His experiences during World War I were more peaceful than Hemingway's - he never saw action and even did not go to France.

Demobilized in 1919, Fitzgerald worked briefly in New York for an advertising agency. His first story, 'Babes in the Wood,' was published in The Smart Set. The turning point in his life was when he met Zelda Sayre, herself an aspiring writer, and married her in 1920. In the same year appeared Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise originally entitled 'The Romantic Egoist', which he had started while in the army. Its hero, Armory Blaine, studies in Princeton, serves in WW I in France. At the end of the story he finds that his own self-centeredness has been the cause of his unhappiness. The book gained success and gave Fitzgerald entrée to literary magazines, such as Scribner's and The Saturday Evening Post, which published his stories, among them 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.'

The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald's second novel, depicted Anthony Patch, who spends his grandfather's money in drinking, and in the end of the novel is declined with his wife both physically and spiritually. The work was less well received and in 1924 Fitzgerald moved to Europe. There he associated with such writers as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway.

During the next five years the Fitzgerald's traveled between Europe and America several times. To support his amusement-park life style with Zelda, he frequently interrupted his work on his novels to write short stories and brought high fees from the popular magazines. Fitzgerald's stormy relationship with Zelda Sayre (1900-48) is told in his novel The Crack Up (1945). For a few months in 1927, and then again in 1931 and 1932, Fitzgerald worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter. Between Tender is the Night, and The Crack Up Fitzgerald wrote little. In the middle thirties he was not the young man, who lived enchanted life.

Fitzgerald's alcoholism and Zelda's mental breakdown attracted wide publicity in the 1930s. He returned to Hollywood in 1937, where he met Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist, with whom he lived for the rest of his life. Fitzgerald worked on various screenplays, but completed only one, ‘Three Comrades’ (1938), before he was fired because of his drinking. In a letter to his daughter from Hollywood in 1938 he revealed the "what I am doing here is the last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and better".

In 1939 Fitzgerald began a novel about Hollywood, The Last Tycoon, loosely based on the life of Irving Thalberg. Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, in Hollywood, in Graham's apartment, before the book was finished. Zelda Sayre died in a hospital fire in 1948. Their unhappy circumstances, alcoholic, decadent life-style was basis Fitzgerald's novel Tender is the Night, which he revised repeatedly. His tortuous marriage was commented upon by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast (1964). In Tender is the Night a brilliant psychiatrist, Dick Diver, falls in love with a rich, beautiful mental patient, Nicole Warren. He marries her, and loses his idealism and potential for a great career, but Nicole, having battened on Dick's strength and love for ten years, emerges victorious.

Fitzgerald died in 1940 at the age of 44. That year, all of his books sold a total of 72 copies, with royalties of $13. Today, The Great Gatsby, alone, sells nearly 300,000 copies a year. (Source: Litweb.com)

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Say what?
Lucy and David