Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Frances Kroll Ring

In 1939, F. Scott Fitzgerald was in Hollywood, in failing health, trying to work—write for the movies, sell some stories—and to continue to be the mainstay and anchor for his family, paying Zelda’s substantial hospital bills, educating Scottie and remaining, through letters, a protective and anxious father. The magazines were no longer clamoring for his stories; his books had nearly disappeared from the bookstores. The fame, money and high times of the early years seemed to have evaporated. Fortune had not deserted him entirely, however—Frances Kroll applied for the position as Fitzgerald’s secretary. Young and a little shy, but nevertheless level-headed, intelligent, practical, versatile and resilient, Miss Kroll played a vital role during the last quiet but difficult twenty months of Fitzgerald’s life. They worked at home where she typed from his handwritten pages, ordered groceries, made appointments and listened while he talked out ideas. Finally, it fell to her to make his funeral arrangements and deal with the modest belongings. Nearly a lifetime later, Frances Kroll Ring gives us both the youthful experience of Fitzgerald, and her mature vision of it. This frankly admiring and respectful memoir of the extraordinary writer creates a uniquely domestic picture. We see an admirable and talented man carrying on with dignity, purpose and commitment against a tide of troubles and disappointments.

Genres: Memoir, Biography

147 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1985

Reviews

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I am re-reading this book given to me by one of my favorite professors, Dr. Stewart, after my senior seminar with him on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dr. Stewart knew Frances Kroll Ring and asked her to autograph it to me. I feel like I have a link to F. Scott Fitzgerald in my hands when I am reading it. I treasure my memories of that long ago class and am re-reading it in memory of Dr. Stewart who passed away two years ago in 2013, and Frances Kroll Ring who recently passed away at the age of 99 on June 29, 2015.

Frances Kroll Ring was in her early twenties when she took the position with Fitzgerald as his personal secretary and she was with him for the last 20 months of his life. This brief (155 pages) charming memoir is so personal and filled with small day to day reminiscences that I felt like I was with Frances Kroll Ring and Fitzgerald in the last year and a half before his very early death at age 44.

The closing lines of The Great Gatsby especially resonate with me at this moment, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." - Were there ever more apt and beautiful words to close a novel.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frances Kroll entered F. Scott Fitzgerald's life in his final 20 months. She typed and re-typed his manuscripts, Pat Hobby stories, and some screenplays. She paid his bills, kept him on schedule, fixed simple meals, and pretty much kept him healthy as possible. It was the kind of care he deserved many years before he actually got it.

Frances was in her early twenties, and had just moved to California from the Bronx with her parents and two brothers. She came from a tight knit, Jewish family that wasn't "too" religious. She waited on Fitzgerald hand and foot, and marveled at his consummate skill and devotion to his art. She says he never wanted to be anything but a writer. He tried maintaining his relationship with his daughter Scottie, though he went as long as 14 months without seeing her in the final years. He was a postal father. FSF vacationed with Zelda in Cuba in the spring of 1939, and that is the last time he ever saw her. Sheila Graham was the main interest in his final months. His main writing challenge in his final days was the completion of his last novel, The Last Tycoon, which he never did finish. He also wrote all of the Pat Hobby Stories in those days. Making ends meet was a constant challenge, but Frances rose to the occasion.

She got to know Fitzgerald in a way that I feel few people did in his lifetime. They had a tender relationship, and I feel that I would have liked Frances a lot. Her twenty months with FSF would stay with her the rest of her life, as interest in Fitzgerald started to grow within five years of his death. Frances Kroll Ring would be in demand for years by those people that wanted to know what FSF was really like.

[Cindy Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

For any F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, this book is a treat. It is wonderful to actually hear insights from someone who actually knew him and spent almost everyday with him during the last year and a half of his life. Francis Kroll Ring served as FSF's secretary while he was hard at work on "The Last Tycoon", and she shares some touching anecdotes about his personality that I have not encountered in other books. For example, he would have her read poetry by Shelley and Keats out loud, and the beauty of the poetry would bring him to tears. When he went to MGM's studios to work on scripts, he would show up with a briefcase full of Coca-Cola to keep himself going for the day. The book is filled with these types of tidbits which give you insight into who he was as person. You have probably read several biographies about FSF, but this one is unique enough to add it to your to be read list.

[Mark Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frances Kroll was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s secretary from April of 1939 until his death on December 21, 1940. Kroll was 22 years old when she met Fitzgerald, and she collected her reminiscences of Fitzgerald in a 1985 memoir, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald. By then her name was Frances Kroll Ring, and she was approaching 70 years old. She still had 30 more years to live, as she passed away in 2015 at the age of 99, the last living link who had significant first-hand knowledge of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Kroll was born and raised in New York City until the end of 1938, when her father made the decision to move the family to Los Angeles. Kroll’s father was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States. The Krolls were a Jewish family, and Fitzgerald never tired of quizzing Frances about Judaism. According to Kroll, Fitzgerald was stung by criticism that his character of Meyer Wolfshiem in The Great Gatsby was an anti-Semitic caricature. Scott maintained that Wolfshiem’s background didn’t really have anything to do with the character. Kroll writes that Fitzgerald’s point of view was that “Wolfshiem was a character whose behavior fulfilled a function in the story and had nothing to do with race or religion. He was a gangster who happened to be Jewish.” (p.47) Wolfshiem was based, at least partially, on the real-life Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein, who was widely suspected of fixing the 1919 World Series, as Wolfshiem is alleged to have done in Gatsby. Meyer Wolfshiem is also the subject of one of my favorite footnotes by Matthew J. Bruccoli in the 1990’s edition of Gatsby that I read in high school. When Nick Carraway is attempting to contact Wolfsheim, he visits the offices of the “Swastika Holding Company.” Bruccoli’s footnote gives us the useful information: “Not an indication that Wolfshiem is a Nazi. Indeed, he is a Jew.” (p.214) Fitzgerald’s use of the word swastika pre-dated its adoption as a Nazi symbol, and that may have been the first time I learned that the swastika symbol had a whole history before the Nazis.

During the time that Kroll worked for Fitzgerald, he was working on a novel about Hollywood. Eventually published as The Last Tycoon, the novel’s hero was movie executive Monroe Stahr. Stahr was Jewish, as was Irving Thalberg, the producer that Stahr was modeled on. Because The Last Tycoon was unfinished at Fitzgerald’s death, we don’t know how large a role Stahr’s Judaism would have played in the novel. However, I can’t help but suspect that the fact that Frances Kroll was Jewish was an influence on Fitzgerald choosing to make Stahr Jewish. Fitzgerald always drew inspiration from any material that was close at hand, and he and Kroll were working together very closely during the time he was planning and writing the novel.

Fortunately for posterity, Kroll quickly realized that Fitzgerald was a brilliant writer, and she tolerated his eccentricities. Although she didn’t keep a journal or a diary during their time together, she kept many of the notes they wrote back and forth to each other, some of which are reproduced in the book.

Kroll had a deep affection for Fitzgerald, and it shows through every page of her book. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not a perfect person, by any means, but Kroll captures that which was most entrancing and beguiling about him. Fitzgerald’s enthusiasm comes alive as he was working on a screenplay of his own short story “Babylon Revisited.” It’s one of the most vivid scenes in the book, as Kroll writes: “Scott was the writer, the actor, the director. And it was a one-man show…as he paced, he talked, gave directions, grew animated, intense, sad, nervous.” (p.97) As Kroll typed his revisions, Fitzgerald hovered over her shoulder, and she shooed him away. “With exaggerated apology, he would move over to the window, smoke a cigarette, stare into space and talk about women of beauty…he was incurably romantic, forever reaching for an elusive fragment of love, forever conjuring up illusions.” (p.98-9) Isn’t that exactly how you’d picture F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Fitzgerald would then call producer Lester Cowan and read the screenplay to him. “Scott, looking like a matinee idol who had seen better days, would give such a touching portrayal that Cowan would dissolve in tears at the other end of the line and Scott would cry at his end.” (p.99) Kroll also informs us that the poetry of Keats moved Fitzgerald to tears. (p.34)

Kroll is astute about Fitzgerald’s feelings and attitudes and she provides Fitzgerald devotees with sharp analysis about his political views: “Politically, Scott thought of himself as a liberal. He had voted for Roosevelt twice, but he was a passive, theoretical liberal, not an active one.” (p.71) Before his death, Scott voted for Roosevelt once more.

Fitzgerald’s relationship with Ernest Hemingway is sometimes referenced, and Fitzgerald felt that Hemingway “had to prove himself to himself” by his dangerous actions. (p.72) Another time, Fitzgerald went out for dinner with Frances and her younger brother Morton, an aspiring writer. The conversation drifted towards Hemingway, and Scott “called him a poseur who was trying to prove his manliness by going off to Spain and Africa in pursuit of adventure. He was running dry and had to search out experience just to have something to write about.” (p.101) I’d say that Scott was right. Morton Kroll came away from that meeting with a great deal of respect for Fitzgerald: “Scott had treated him like a young writer and had talked to him about Hemingway. He would never forget it.” (p.102)

Kroll and Fitzgerald’s relationship never turned romantic, save for a drunken pass that Scott made one evening and Kroll wisely deflected. Scott was instantly ashamed and promised her it would never happen again. He kept his promise. Kroll obviously had a deep, friendly affection for Fitzgerald, and she writes that “Most ‘boys’ seemed a bit dull after a day with Scott.” (p.80) She also writes movingly of his late-night phone calls to her. She would take the phone into the bathroom, so as not to disturb her family and listen to him share his insecurities with her. (p.116)

After Fitzgerald’s sudden death from a heart attack on December 21, 1940, many of the mundane tasks of settling his estate fell to Kroll, including the selection of a coffin. If F. Scott Fitzgerald could somehow read Against the Current, I think he would be most impressed by Kroll’s devotion to him and his writing.

[Bob Wake · Rating 4 out of 5]

My 2002 review of Frances Kroll Ring’s memoir, Against the Current, and the Showtime film adaptation, Last Call:

Last Call is an elegiac dramatization of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final days writing The Last Tycoon, the unfinished Hollywood novel he hoped would restore his reputation. Fitzgerald’s spectacular Jazz Age fame and subsequent slide into alcoholism and obscurity are the stuff of well-trod literary folklore. The end is as familiar as a melancholy bedtime story: On December 21, 1940, the 44-year-old writer suffered a fatal heart attack in the home of his companion and lover, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. The chronology covered in this Showtime Original is roughly similar to that of Graham’s autobiography, Beloved Infidel, which became a soapy 1959 film starring Deborah Kerr as Graham and a laughably miscast Gregory Peck as Fitzgerald. However, Last Call has found a surprisingly fresh angle from which to approach its subject. Writer-director Henry Bromell’s script is based on an unpretentious 1985 memoir, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald, written by Frances Kroll Ring, who was Fitzgerald’s personal secretary during the last twenty months of his life. Best of all, Last Call boasts a first-rate performance by Jeremy Irons as the dissipated novelist.

Irons’ lanky frame and chiseled face don’t readily call to mind the doughy lost soul we know from Fitzgerald’s late-career photographs. Nevertheless, he beautifully evokes the “sensual fatigue”—in the apt phrase of biographer Arthur Mizener—that infused the writer’s world on and off the page. Irons flattens out his own British accent in deference to Fitzgerald’s Minnesota upbringing, while retaining a hint of the aristocratic posturing that seemed part of the author’s personality. (Recordings of Fitzgerald’s voice bear an uncanny resemblance to the elocutionary fastidiousness of British-born actor Claude Rains.) Last Call is fully attuned to its central character’s enormous contradictions. Despite ill-health, crippling self-doubts, cycles of binge boozing and drying out, Fitzgerald miraculously succeeded in pulling himself together and writing something that even in its incomplete form is recognized today as a classic American novel. Jeremy Irons brings an almost spiritual luminance to the portrait of a burnt-out writer rediscovering and flexing his creative powers.

Frances Kroll Ring’s brief 150-page memoir is so low-key and self-effacing that it’s not inherently dramatic. Henry Bromell’s script for Last Call consequently resorts to embellishments, some more credible than others. At times, the narrative recalls Akiva Goldsman’s controversial screenplay for last year’s Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, which was “inspired” by a biography of mathematician John Nash. Where Goldsman invented from whole cloth a delusional parallel universe to represent John Nash’s schizophrenia, Bromell fashions for Fitzgerald a late-night series of alcohol-fueled hallucinations involving the writer’s wife Zelda, played here by Sissy Spacek in the passive-aggressive mode she perfected for In the Bedroom. The scenes never quite jell, in part because Spacek is being asked to portray a symbolic projection of Fitzgerald’s inner demons rather than a flesh-and-blood Zelda, who was confined to a mental hospital in North Carolina during the time Fitzgerald was working in Hollywood.

Bromell has better luck transforming Frances Kroll Ring’s modest secretarial reminiscences into a coming-of-age story of unrequited love. It helps tremendously that twentysomething Frances is played with great charm by Neve Campbell. The real-life Frances states flatly in her book that she had “compassion rather than passion” for F. Scott Fitzgerald. Last Call, by contrast, fabricates a soulful liplock in a parked car and makes the moment all but inevitable. The Frances Kroll of the film adaptation—unlike the business-minded amanuensis in her memoir—is an aspiring fiction writer anxious to glean wisdom from her employer. The memoir records no kiss, soulful or otherwise, merely a spurned out-of-character “grab” from a playfully drunk Fitzgerald. But it’s easy to forgive Last Call for romanticizing its source material. (It’s less easy to forgive the movie’s curious substitution of Pepsi-Cola in place of Fitzgerald’s well-documented on-the-wagon preference for Coca-Cola.) Jeremy Irons and Neve Campbell are splendid sparing partners. Their characters convey a multitude of veiled emotions. And like protagonists in an elegant Fitzgerald tale, they nourish one another in unexpected and profound ways.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe, fervent Fitzgeraldite that I am, that's it's taken me so long to read this brief memoir. Frances Kroll was Fitzgerald's secretary for the last 20 months of his life. Fondly, she recalls his struggles (in vain)to complete the novel intended to restore his reputation, "The Last Tycoon". Kroll was well acquainted with his quotidian woes concerning work, drink, health, and ongoing worries/expenses for Zelda and daughter Scottie. His last months, working mainly in bed, rising only to pace the floor, are a far cry from the glamor of his Jazz Age youth. Kroll hadn't been born yet during Scott's salad days, but she conveys a touching portrait of an artist fearing oblivion.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lively, heartfelt tribute to F. Scott Fitzgerald by the young woman who was his secretary at the end of his life. Gives us a nice portrait of a proud and elegant writer trying his best to recapture his reputation, despite his demons and failing health.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went on an F Scott in Hollywood binge, and this is a must read for that kind of thing. Written by his 20-something at the time secretary, who assisted him for the last 20 months of his life, as he wrote "The Last Tycoon". It is in a smaller format, and short, and filled with facsimiles of notes and letters and lists she kept through the decades. So it is a quick read.
Written 45 years after the fact, memories were held fast by the constant questions from PhD students and members of the academic "Fitzgerald industry" she dealt with over the time. Some of the most enjoyable parts of the book are her, and biographer A. Scott Berg's (he provided an Introduction), comments about that group of individuals, and Sheila Graham's constant rewriting about their life together.
Luckily she did put this to paper when she did, F Scott's daughter, Scotty (who, of course, plays an important part in the book) died just a year afterwards from cancer. It appears there was some correspondence between the two regarding dates, feelings, and impressions while she was writing it.
She is gentle with "Bunny" Wilson. Obviously not happy with the end product of his edited version of the unfinished novel - but also aware of the difficulties, given that the ending was just a large sheaf of notes.
Be aware that "The Great Gatsby" was published in 1925, and his next novel was "Tender Is the Night" in 1934. While he still was getting short stories published, he was a somewhat forgotten author. In 1939-40 his books were out of print!
After he died, and "Tycoon" was published, and paper for book publishing was again available after the War, Fitzgerald's reputation, and the academic industry attached to it, took off.
A nice, simple memoir. I am glad to have read it, and glad that she wrote it.
In 2002 it was turned into the movie, "Last Call" with Jeremy Irons as Fitzgerald, Sissy Spacek as Zelda Fitzgerald, and Neve Campbell as Frances Kroll.
Even with a 2005 reprint, the book is hard to find at a reasonable price. My thanks to my local PL, who got me a copy from our U of WY Coe LIbrary through ILL.
4 out of 5.

[Anne Hendricks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frances Kroll Ring was the last secretary and personal assistant to F. Scott before his death in the early 1940s. She is not only an excellent record keeper, historian, trusted friend to Zelda, Ms. Graham, and Scottie, she was the person to get The Last Tycoon to the publishers to complete AND she helped prepare for the funeral.

What a great friend Scott received from a secretarial agency. My takeaway is this: Scott had demons - but he was beginning to overcome them and was putting everything into The Last Tycoon. At the same time, he was giving a young woman her destiny.

Thank you, Frances Kroll Ring, for such a great read - and thank you for the movie too. I saw the movie first and then, tracked down a copy of the book. What a great read!

[mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

After watching a movie with Jeremy Iron portraying the feeble Scott Fitzgerald at the end of his life who hires a typist of his final book the Last Tycoon, I had to read the typist's own version of the story the movie was based on, lovely and well written, I advise anyone who loves FSF, to see the movie and read this book. The movie is named Last Call and stars Neve Campbell as Frances Kroll Ringer and Jeremy Irons as F.Scott Fitzgerald. He is a tortured soul but a gentle man who has many quirks but a genius with words. She is budding writer who is stimulated by his intelligence and prose. Lovely story

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet, simple little book that shows us a side of Fitzgerald we may not have seen before. I just wish there were more of it. I had seen the movie "Last Call," but did not even realize this book existed until I stumbled across it in the thrift shop about a week ago. What a treasure.

[Pollypollack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at FSF's final attempt to heal and write in Los Angeles, ending with his death. Short but interesting, with a photo of him I had never seen before,standing in his yard there, that says so much.

[Marlies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gentle and charming reminiscence