In early 1921 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a pissed-off letter responding to a message he'd received from an old friend. We don't have the original but Fitzgerald's response makes clear why he was so angry... 1/10
and it will strike a chord with all those in the arts and humanities who are tired of being told that "real people... who create business and politics" don't care about arts and ideas. 2/10
"Your letter riled me to such an extent," Fitzgerald begins, "that I'm answering immediately. Who are all these 'real people' who 'create business and politics'? And of whose approval I should be so covetous? ... 3/10
"Do you mean grafters who keep sugar in their warehouses so that people have to go without, or the cheapjacks who by bribery and high-school sentiment manage to control elections? ... 4/10
"I can't pick up a paper here without finding that some of these 'real people' who will not be satisfied only with 'a brilliant mind' (I quote you) have just gone up to Sing Sing for a stay ... 5/10
"The Rousseaus, Marxes, Tolstoys -- men of thought, mind you, 'impractical' men, 'idealist,' have done more to decide the food *you* eat and the things *you* think and do ... 6/10
"than all the millions of Roosevelts and Rockefellers that strut for 20 years or so mouthing such phrases as 100% American (which means 99% village idiot), and die with a little pleasing flattery to the silly and cruel old God they've set up in their hearts." 7/10
For a better sense of what was meant by "100% American" at the time, here is a recruiting advertisement from 1922 that gives a clue. 8/10 
I write about all this at much greater length in my last two books, but have never been able to quote this letter in full, with that final demolition of the hypocrisy, cruelty, and narrow-mindedness of America's so-called leaders. 9/10
Hard to say what is happening right now that makes me think America's leaders continue to set up a silly and cruel old God in their hearts to flatter, but for some reason I was reminded of it today. 10/10
This thread also for everyone who thinks they just read a letter he wrote from 1920 when he was "quarantined in the South of France." In 1920 he was in New York, flu was gone, he hadn’t met Hemingway, and he was writing letters like this one, not like that one. 11/11
