Zelda

It's disturbing to me that even after the publication of this exhaustively researched book, people still prefer Scotty's version over Zelda's. What I understand is that F. Scott Fitzgerald was jealous of his more talented wife, stole from her diaries and published her words as his own, simultaneously having her committed to various mental institutions and making it worth the psychiatrists' while to keep her there. He tells her that her memories actually belong to him and she has no right to them, since he's the famous writer (and how much of that fame is based on her talent?) I hope the Me-Too movement wakes people up to this sort of abuse that was regularly perpetrated against women at least up into the 1960s.

The is the life of the enigmatic Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, a picture of the Jazz age, the original flapper. That is who we think she was and that is the way history portrays her. We see her in our minds zipping through Paris with her charming husband, Scott, and hobnobbing with the literary elite of the time, and she was all that, but so much less.

Before reading this, I was aware that Zelda had serious mental, nervous conditions and was institutionalized, but I did not grasp how much of her life was spent in that way, how little was spent in the other, carefree years of youth, and how much of her time was spent in complete exile from her husband. They do not paint and charming picture, they paint a troubled one. He is an alcoholic, she show more is a schizophrenic and both are romantics. Imagine what Gatsby would have learned if he had actually attained possession of Daisy...well, Scott Fitzgerald got his Daisy to keep and it was not pretty.

In the beginning of this account, I did not like Scott very much and I thought he contributed to Zelda's lack of center with his treatment of her. He lifted large sections of her letters and converted them word for word almost into his novels, he portrayed her mercilessly in his prose and bridled at the attempts she made to express herself and become a writer as well. He was afraid of her and contemptuous of her and yet he loved her in that way that we love things we cannot possess but cannot let go of. She answered his obsession with her own and they ate each other alive.

By the end, it is mostly Scott I feel for. His egoism and self-confidence have mostly flown and he has turned to his past so much that he has mined it of all its resources. He never deserted Zelda. He paid for her treatments and wrote her weekly letters and single-handedly raised their child. As exasperating as it must have been, he never filed for divorce or deserted her.

I never felt as if I knew Zelda. Perhaps she is a person one cannot really know. There is just too much about her that is not the norm, which is what makes her fascinating and also what makes her sad.

She was a misplaced Southern girl. That I could relate to. "down in Alabama all the good people ate biscuits for breakfast, which made them very beautiful and pleasant and happy, while up in Connecticut all the people at bacon and eggs and toast, which made them very cross and bored and miserable--especially if they happened to have been brought up on biscuits."

She felt herself falling apart, which must be much worse than falling apart without having any recognition: "You were going crazy and calling it genius--I was going to ruin and calling it anything that came to hand."

And, finally, she lost all control of her own life. A person who had been such a free-spirit and so artistic, to find themselves categorized and controlled and forced to be so 'normal' and ordinary must have been a thing of great pain. "It seems to me a kind of castration, but since I am powerless I suppose I will have to submit, though I am neithr young enough nor credulous enough to think that you can manufacture out of nothing something to replace the song that I had."

They were two very sad people, but at least they had the song at one time. Some people never do. show less

It sounds cliche, but this book was absolutely fascinating, even to a person who's not a big fan of non-fiction. Zelda was inspiring and tragic all at once. It also showed a completely different side of Fitzgerald, and made me think of The Great Gatsby in a completely different light. I could not believe Zelda actually muttered that famous "I hope she'll be a fool" line after the birth of her daughter, Scottie! And for some reason, I kept wondering if Tom could be a representation of Fitzgerald himself? The extent to which Fitzgerald went to secure "ownership" of their life for his own fictional use was astounding. I can't wait to go back and read his novels again with a more complete understanding of the biographical information behind it.

I thought this book was interesting, but way too long. I also wonder what a modern biography would make on the feminist implications of Zelda's mental illness. Perhaps if Zelda had been born 80 years later, she would have had a satisfying and fulfilling professional life and not have had so many issues dealing with a sexist world and husband. Her life was certainly a version of "the problem that has no name."

Specific issue with the ebook version of this book: it was published in 2013, back when publishers would just OCR a book and publish it as an ebook with zero additional editing. There are so many typos (in the regular text, not the quotes), bad formatting, and randomly italicized words that this book becomes hard to read at times.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is rightly heralded as the voice of his generation and his 'The Great Gatsby' is an essential entry on high school and college reading lists. In addition to his place as a man of American letters, he was friends with just about everyone else worth knowing from his time, from Ernest Hemingway to John dos Passos to Dorothy Parker to Edmund Wilson to Edna St. Vincent Millay and everyone in between. Part of his fascination is as a flame which burned too bright and was extinguished too early. To that extent, his legend is inextricably linked with his wife, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Many observers have been divided into two camps: Some, like Hemingway, insisting that Zelda's psychological instability kept Scott from living show more up to his literary promise and leading to his early demise. Others fall squarely into the Zelda camp, alleging Scott's alcoholism and insecurities fed into Zelda's illness and kept her from realizing her own considerable talent.

Milford's 1970 biography of Zelda manages to straddle the two camps. Their lives and their psyches were so intertwined that any biography of one seems perforce to be an analysis of the other. Milford handles both with sensitivity and clarity. Scholarship has taken us much further in the thirty plus years since this biography was published. Yet everything since owes a debt to Milford's work and original research. It is especially notable for the number of first hand interviews conducted with friends, family and contemporaries. I was amazed at her apparent complete access to Zelda's medical records - astonishing at least to eyes accustomed to this age of HIPAA and patient privacy. For these resources alone we would be indebted. For Milford's careful and incisive handling of these resources biographers ever since have been grateful.

There are more superficial handlings of Zelda's story and more up-to-date treatises. Nevertheless, this is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand Zelda Fitzgerald's artistry and role in her times. show less

It's hard to review "Zelda" without tying in my feelings about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald and their crazy, codependent relationship. But I can't find any fault in Nancy Milford's work, and for such a long biography to hold my interest all the way through is sort of amazing, so I'm giving it five stars.

I first learned about Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald a few years ago when I tried to read a couple of Scott Fitzgerald's books. I couldn't STAND the main characters in any of the books, and reading that they were semi-based on the Fitzgeralds in real life made me think these must be some of the most horrid people ever. I read asides about how rocky their relationship was but didn't know too much, but was a little interested in how the characters show more in the fictional worlds Scott created contrasted with the real people a lot of people compared them to. It wasn't really enough of an interest to do any footwork until I read Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" and read about his encounters with the Fitzgeralds. They sounded interesting and it spurred me to read "Zelda," which had been sitting on my bookshelf for about a year.

So I guess I should get to the actual review, sorry. Milford writes about Zelda's childhood briefly, but most of the book focuses on her life after she meets Scott, which has a lot to do with the fact that the latter part of her life is better documented, I'm sure. Milford is a skillful biographer and has a knack as far as keeping the reader interested in the story she's telling. This is not quite a biography of Scott, but it is hard not to tell his story while telling Zelda's, so you learn quite a bit about Scott along the way.

Zelda's story is so sad, at least I thought it was. She is not a sympathetic character all of the time -- sometimes she is downright unlikeable -- but I couldn't help but feel sorry for her as her husband stole pieces wholesale from her life to use in his writing, including writing from her journals and letters, and blamed her for almost everything bad that happened to him, professionally and sometimes personally. It seemed at times that he even blamed her for her own mental illness. Reading about Zelda's ups-and-downs and visits to mental health facilities was as sad as reading about her plaintive letters to Scott after their relationship fizzled for the last time, and her problems connecting with her daughter, Scottie.

"Zelda" is just a SAD book, so I can see why it wouldn't be for everybody. It does give great insight into the life of the couple behind the books I read, though (and surprise! I think I would dislike them as much in real life, in their heyday, as I did the characters in the books), and it gives a little window into how mental illness was handled seventy years ago or so. It's a fascinating look into a complicated life, if you can get past the melancholy inevitable end.

[BONUS! I have now learned I am crap at reviewing biographies. Yay?] show less

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald were international sensations during the Jazz age of the 20s. They traveled the world on a wave of excitement and romance. But beneath their carefree public personas lurked alcoholism, madness and tragedy.

Nancy Milford has done her homework. She draws from Zelda's scrapbooks and love letters; mines information from old friends; and even delves into both the Fitzgerald's writings, which were autobiographical stories masquerading as fiction.

The book is dark and brooding at times, and difficult to read as Zelda's life spirals out of control. Morose and intense, I found myself having to take frequent breaks to take a breath and recover. Milford portrays Scott Fizgerald as a man consumed by his writing, drinking show more to excess, and using his wife's words (from her diary and letters) as fodder for his novels. Disturbingly, many of Zelda's work was published under Scott's name. As a writer myself, I found this unforgivable.

In the end, I was overwhelmed with sympathy for Zelda. She was a highly intelligent, gifted woman who could not overcome the demons of schizophrenia which haunted her. Milford leaves the reader feeling exhausted by the tragedy of Zelda's life and death. The book is worth reading for the breadth and depth of the information provided; but it is hardly a "light" or enjoyable read. show less