Sweet Fury: The Night Was Not So Tender

“Cunning, ambitious, twisty and immersive, it seduces you into a story so compelling that you aren’t ready for the sucker punch of  its deeper truths.”—Chicago best selling author Rebecca Makkai, from the cover of Sweet Fury by Sash Bischoff.

In Sweet Fury, We meet Lila Crayne, an America’s sweetheart of a movie star who with her fiancé, the filmmaker Kurt Royall, is filming their adaption of Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. A twisty thriller plot with a deadly game of revenge that weaves in Fitzgerald’s body of work, it also is a critique of misogyny and a nod to Me Too.  

On a recent evening at American Writers Museum on Michigan Avenue, vibrant Chicagoan Liz Sharp introduced her niece and author Sash Bischoff with a toast of the evening’s signature cocktail the Fitzgerald, a salute to F. Scott Fitzgerald whose works play through Bischoff’s debut novel.

Loved this dialogue Sharp provided from a family text, and what she told the audience about Bischoff:

From sister Sally: “Just finished Sweet Fury and I said just that ‘Oh My God’ several times out loud as I read the last 75 pages! Who’s finished the book?  I need a group debrief.”

And Liz’s husband Jeff:“ Just finished 30 minutes ago. Holy smokes!”

What author wouldn’t want a holy smokes?  And this about Bischoff from Sharp:

“Sash grew up in California, and was a talented actress at a young age, winning the National Fine Arts Award for Acting.

“Fast forward to 2005 to the start of her college years at Princeton.  Sash was in Triangle Club-by the way, so was F. Scott Fitzgerald, Princeton Class of 1917.  She worked with famous authors Jeffrey Eugenides and Joyce Carol Oats, founded the Princeton Writer’s group and won Princeton’s Creative Writing Fiction Award.

“After graduating from Princeton in 2009, she moved to New York and worked as a director on and off Broadway, and toured nationally with several Broadway National Tours.  She is a playwright and has held residencies at numerous institutions including Ragdale in Lake Forest.”

Bischoff told Chicago author and DePaul Professor Kathleen Rooney who interviewed her at the American Writers Museum that she “went down the rabbit hole of Fitzgerald’s masterful works to be in conversation with his life” after she conceived the plot. She shared as well her path to publishing.

“I began acting at six and I knew even then that theater was my passion.  I did children’s theater in San Diego and films and TV in Los Angeles.  My mentor in high school said that I had directing talents. I chose Princeton primarily because it has one of the best writing programs in the country. I would come to learn that the fields of acting, directing and writing are fields that are transferable.”

In Sweet Fury, Bischoff’s writing skills shine.  Consider:

“…the stunning private deck which wrapped around the building’s length in a single satisfied grin. The very bones of the home seemed to throw open to the easy reach of piers below, to the glittering water with its buoyed, bobbing boats, to the early- morning joggers flitting by.”

Bishoff shared afterwards with Classic Chicago more abut Sweet Fury and Fitzgerald.

CCM: When did Fitzgerald first capture your attention?

SB: When I first read The Great Gatsby in high school, I loved it. Fitzgerald’s uncanny sensitivity, his lush lyricism, his ability to capture the romantic beauty of life with words alone – left me awestruck. Consider these lines by Fitzgerald:

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” 

“It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet of light volleying out into the soft black morning.” 

If those lines aren’t heartbreakingly beautiful, I don’t know what is. 

As I became deeply acquainted with Fitzgerald the writer and Fitzgerald the man, I began to understand his shortcomings. I take issue with the racist, classist, antisemitic, and sexist ideals in his books; of these, Sweet Fury attempts to address the misogyny in his writing. To be fair, Fitzgerald was writing a century ago; he was a product of his time. But does that mean we should give him a pass? Should we continue to revere him as the Great American Writer? Or should these failings be addressed? Sweet Fury is my attempt to do just this.

CCM: You connect the Me Too movement to your novel, tell us more.

SB: There are lots of books out there in conversation with #metoo, many of them revenge stories. In writing Sweet Fury, one of the most important things to me was to avoid telling a story that felt black and white. I wanted everything and everyone in Sweet Fury to live in the grey area, because that felt most true to my experience of life. The characters in this book aren’t strictly heroes or villains; they are all, to varying degrees, limited and flawed human beings. The title of the third and final section of Sweet Fury is a quote taken from Tender Is the Night: “We must all try to be good”.  I chose this title for many reasons, but one of them is that each and every one of these characters is, in his or her own way, trying to do the right thing.

I believe our country’s justice system is deeply flawed. I don’t know what adequate reparations for victims of sexual assault look like; perhaps they don’t exist. Men (because in this case, men are usually the perpetrators) continue to get away with it; and they continue to be promoted to positions of power and influence and respect. And because our society reveres fame and wealth, sometimes people who shouldn’t get a pass.

Sometimes, trapped within our culture’s pervasive sexism, a woman can also be guilty of condoning or even perpetuating this misogyny – perhaps in order to climb her way up the ladder, or protect her own tenuous position. Under the right circumstances, a woman might even be capable of committing atrocities just as terrible as those a man might commit – maybe even worse.

CCM: How has your experience as a theater director helped with your writing?

SB: One of the reasons I shifted from acting to directing was that I loved directing’s much broader scope. As an actor, you are one piece of a puzzle; as a director, your job is to put all the pieces of that puzzle together. Writing a novel is another form of storytelling, in which I get to build the characters, the story, and the whole world of the book myself. Directing theater gave me, among other things, an intimate understanding of pacing and tension, of motive and action and conflict, of theatricality and drama and stakes; and those skills helped me immensely as I taught myself how to write a suspenseful thriller.

Without telling tales out of school, I will say I’ve witnessed and been subjected to prejudice as both an actor and a director. It’s common knowledge that for female actors in theater and film, there’s an emphasis on being young, beautiful, small, and thin. This was very much my experience as an actor. The constant judgment of my physical appearance was a major source of anxiety and insecurity, and it’s one of the reasons I ultimately chose to leave acting behind. When it came to directing, I found that the old boys club is still alive and well in the theater world. There are, thank goodness, a handful of women who’ve made their way to the top. Some of them are wonderfully supportive of other women; others have a reputation for going out of their way to do just the opposite, likely to protect their hard-won gains. As a director, I became very good at shapeshifting, transforming myself in order to get ahead. In Sweet Fury, I push this idea to its breaking point, exploring the dangers and consequences of such gamesmanship.”

CCM:  If you could ask Scott and Zelda any questions, what would they be?  Where would you like to sit down with them to ask these questions?

SB: There’s so much speculation and mystery around Scott and Zelda’s relationship. I would love to talk candidly with each of them, to understand as much as I could the inner workings of their marriage – and I would love to have that conversation in their home in the French Riviera, which was Scott’s inspiration for Tender Is the Night. I’d ask: 

How did Zelda feel about Scott’s appropriation of her language and ideas in his own works? How did their rocky marriage contribute to her multiple breakdowns? How did Scott hold Zelda responsible for his failings as a writer? Despite the disintegration of their marriage, how did their love for one another persist until their respective deaths?

CCM: What are you working on right now and are you enjoying the current book tour?

SB: I’m having so much fun on my book tour! It’s a whirlwind, and can be a bit overwhelming and exhausting at times, but getting to connect with people who have read or want to read Sweet Fury makes it all worthwhile. It’s the greatest reward for having spent so many years on my own, toiling away on this book.

I’m currently working on another book that will be published by Simon & Schuster. It’s set on an island off the northeastern coast of America, spans multiple generations, and treats the island as a microcosm of our country as its community grapples with the climate crisis. It is also, in some ways, a modern feminist adaptation of a Greek tragedy.

CCM: Would you give a bit of advice for someone who writing their first novel?

SB: Here are a bunch of cliched truisms, all of which I believe in deeply:

Like anything, the more you practice, the better you’ll get. If you can, write every day. If you can’t, write as often as possible.

Read constantly. Choose your books well. And read books on writing. As someone who used to write without knowing where the story was going, I am now a staunch convert to bullet-proof, detailed outlining. Some say it hampers your creativity; I couldn’t disagree more. For me, it’s the scaffolding that acts like a jungle gym on which I can play freely. The creative possibilities are endless.

Be ruthless with yourself, tireless in pushing yourself to be better. Your writing can always be better. Keep taking yourself to task, and don’t get precious with what you’ve written. Find at least one smart reader you really, really trust; and when they give feedback, listen to them.

Like many writers, I received countless rejections, countless times I was told in so many words that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t have what it takes to be a published author. But deep inside me, I thought — I hoped — that maybe I did. Don’t allow anyone to convince you to give up, if this is what you truly want in your heart of hearts.

And lastly, get rid of as many adverbs as possible. It’s a dumb rule… but it really is true.”

CCM: You mentioned on the book cover that you live with lots of pets, tell me about your animals.

SB: I have six pets – in a tiny one-bedroom apartment! I’ve always said that, if I didn’t have a career as a writer or director, I would want a career working with animals. In some ways, I’m more passionate about animals than anything else in my life. I have a bleeding heart when it comes to them, and truly want to rescue every animal in need; I hope, one day, to found and run a sanctuary. But for now, my husband has told me that six is the limit for our 650 square foot space… and I grumpily must concede he has a point.

My six pets – two dogs and four cats – are all rescues. They are, from oldest to youngest, Bojangles (goldendoodle), Barley (goldendoodle), Twix and Peanut (tabby brothers), and Goose and Caboose (sister and brother). When I write, I usually have four or five gathered around me in a sleepy sort of seance. Twix is on my lap, Goose is on my desk purring and stepping on the keyboard, Peanut drapes himself across the back of my shoulders while I type (very bad for my posture, but too adorable to resist), and Barley is sprawled belly-up at my feet. Sometimes Bojangles is there right beside him, but often he’s with my husband, to whom he’s eternally devoted. Caboose is my one semi-feral cat, so he, er, tends to do his own thing… which is usually cavorting with the other cats, and avoiding the human enemy at all cost!