Heart of the Matter v. Tender is the Night

Cafe Society
1

I have both The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald sitting here. Which one should I read?

2

I though this was a Don Henley vs. Jackson Browne thread.

Haven’t read the Greene so can’t really say…

3

I thought the same as Archive Guy.

I say the Graham Greene. Fitzgerald fiddled around with Tender for nine years before publishing it, and it shows.

4

I’d read whichever author I hadn’t read before. All things being equal, I’d go with Greene.

5

I thought the same as Archive Guy and Nonsuch. I’m always in the mood for Don Henley. And right now I have two earworms mixing it up in my head, TYVM, 2.5.

6

Haven’t read the Greene, but I’ve studied TENDER closely and, yes, it’s a trainwreck with some good characters and powerful passages (Fitzgerald was a brilliant writer of prose, if inconsistent, but a murky tactician–he paints himself into all sorts of corners and leaves footprints on the paint getting out). He’s written a 1930s CHINATOWN, but he couldn’t be nearly as explicit about the incest as Towne could in the 1970s, so you end up scratching your head a lot. Go with the Greene, and report back.