Celebrating F. Scott Fitzgerald's Birthday in Asheville, NC

Every year in the week of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday, the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, opens his former lodgings to the public. Here are some pics I took on my visit last Saturday.

Fitzgerald stayed here in 1935 and ‘36, both for lengthy stays to visit Zelda when she was recovering in a nearby sanitarium—the same one where she later lost her life. These weren’t happy visits for Fitzgerald. He was always destitute, trying to write, and trying to avoid hard drinking. (To stay off liquor, Fitzgerald drank as many as thirty bottles of beer a day. People then had the notion that beer wasn’t really alcohol. The same assertion crops up in the works of Norman Maclean.)

I’d like to say I’m “proud” of my town’s connection to great writers, such as Thomas Wolfe, Fitzgerald, and Zelda Fitzgerald, but sadness and tragedy dogged all three while they were here that it doesn’t seem like much to celebrate.

James Ellroy: Adroit Motherf*cker

My buddy Neal Thompson interviews James Ellroy on the occasion of his new book, Perfidia.

I’ve been fascinated with Ellroy for years. Listen to the way the guy speaks. It’s almost as if he’s quoting his own blurbs, or speaking of himself in third person. I can’t imagine talking the same way about my work. I can’t imagine calling myself adroit.