Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications

Much as this book delights me, it is not what it seems. The subtitle of "fifty great dedications and their stories..." is particularly misleading. What we get are fifty short biographical essays about emotionally resonant stories of authors and their dedicatees. "To my spouse" is not a "great dedication" even if the author spells out the name in full or abbreviates it to initials, and most of the dedications featured here amount to little more than this. By and large, the dedications have been chosen for the merits of the stories behind them. Sometimes, the dedications themselves are truly great and, by choosing to present her selection in chronological order, the author opens with one of the very best: Jane Austen's sarcastic show more dedication of Emma to the Prince Regent. The telling of the story of this dedication is presented in a slightly breathless romantic style redolent of a high school essay but it is essentially accurate and appears to be in keeping with the delicate mannered style of the book's cover design.

As we read on through the essays, the writing becomes more purple, with a variety of literary tics ('commonalities' is a particularly unusual word that appears with uncommon frequency) and a prurience that moves this more towards gossip than to history. Indeed, in the manner of the high school essay, some of the research is superficial (and the acknowledgment of the use of Wikipedia as a source for nearly every essay is touchingly honest but reinforces the recurrent academic point that encyclopedias are starting points not sources). Much of what is said about Victorian England and its Queen in the piece about Adam Bede is false, for example.

It would be easy to mistake my enthusiasm for this book for a kind of mockery. I do not think that it is "so bad that it's good". I enjoyed it for the author's enthusiasm; for the deep love of human stories and fiction that informs these outpourings. The writing may be de trop in places but it is heartfelt and celebratory. For all its historical and literary faults, the book is charming but you may not appreciate it if you are the kind of reader who abhors red-top journalism or adolescent girls. show less

Here's the thing about this book: it's a great concept, but the author does not deliver a great book.

First, the subtitle claims that the book will cover "literature's most intriguing dedications", but what it really covers are generic dedications from some of literature's greatest authors. But that's not really the story either because often the book containing the dedication isn't even mentioned, leaving us with simply a four or five page biography of the author and dedicatee.

Second, the author's writing style starts off mediocre and devolves over the course of the book. Every single chapter uses a sick amount of foreshadowing, which is a crutch used by hack writers (it is also a personal peeve of mine). Toward the end of the book the show more author basically gives up and has the junior high student down the block finish writing the damn thing. show less

Like many of us, I am guilty of breezing over the dedications in the front of most books. I try to remember to pay attention to them, because it seems like a matter of respect to the author. For Ms. Wagman-Geller, a dedication is not just an item of interest, but a passion and a mystery. Thus Once Again to Zelda was born.

This book is very clearly a labor of love for Wagman-Geller, a high school history and English teacher in San Fransisco. She says in her introduction that she is fascinated by the stories behind author's dedications, and for some time has been tracking down exactly who all of these names are, and why they are so important. For her book, Wagman-Geller picked fifty dedications, each arranged in chronological order, from show more Frankenstein to To Kill a Mockingbird to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Each chapter is in essence a mini-biography of the author and how they are related to the subject of their dedication. For the most part, these biographies are stories of marriage, abandonment, loss, and love; each the tale of an extraordinary, or at least unusual, life. Most of the dedications seem to be picked for their poignancy and not the strange quality of the dedication itself, though a few stand out as unique, such as Jacqueline Susann's book dedicated to her poodle, or Ayn Rand's to both her husband and her lover. Though I knew very little about most of the featured works, and have perhaps read only ten or twelve of them, most of the lives were interesting enough to keep me reading, just a little amazed of the variety and vibrancy of the human conditon.

Wagman-Geller does a very acceptable job of telling the author's stories. It's clear that these were the favorites of her 'dedication detection' hobby, and she presents them with a certain wit and pazazz that keeps them enjoyable. It is in many ways an amateur work in the purest sense: done for the love of the thing, not the necessity, no offense intended. Though, looking through the bibliography, I'm reminded of my days writing high school essays, as the vast majority of the works cited came from the internet (including a few references from Wikipidia. You don't see that every day). I may have had some English teachers who would raise an eyebrow to this, but perhaps it is just a reminder that we live in a new age, where much of the best information is digital.

Besides skipping the dedications, I am also guilty of forgetting that authors are more than just the sum of their works. They are human beings, with their own stories and pains. Without these, they would have nothing to write about. Once Again to Zelda reminds us that behind every great work of literature, there is a person with a typewriter, and behind them are all the parents, siblings, lovers, and friends who got them there. show less

Marlene Wagman-Geller's Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications (Perigree/Penguin, 2008) is a series of forty-nine short essays (most under five pages or so) providing "the rest of the story" about modern book dedications (I say modern because she begins with Mary Shelley's dedication in Frankenstein, and only the first seven of the essays pertain to books published in the 19th century, while nine cover books published in the first few years of the current century).

It's an interesting concept, but since this is obviously a selection of dedications, it's easy to quibble with the choices the author chose. Many of those covered are hardly intriguing in any meaningful sense of the term (some are, but show more the vast majority of dedications to spouses and lovers are fairly conventional, even if the relationships themselves might have been anything but).

While this book could have stood for another round of editing, for very quick, rather formulaic introductions to various works of literature and those to whom they're dedicated, it will do fine (particularly if your interests run to modern literature). If you are expecting more, you may be disappointed.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/10/book-review-once-again-to-zelda.html show less

Pretty much the title says it all here. Wagman-Geller actually reads the dedications in the books she reads (I usually glaze over them) and wants to know the stories behind them. This book is a collection of those stories for some of the most well-known books.

I really enjoyed this. I learned all sorts of things I didn't know before and some of the stories behind the dedications read like soap operas. However, some of the stories were definitely not intriguing (like most of the dedica...more Pretty much the title says it all here. Wagman-Geller actually reads the dedications in the books she reads (I usually glaze over them) and wants to know the stories behind them. This book is a collection of those stories for some of the most show more well-known books.

I really enjoyed this. I learned all sorts of things I didn't know before and some of the stories behind the dedications read like soap operas. However, some of the stories were definitely not intriguing (like most of the dedications to spouses, unless the spouse has an extraordinary background). Each story is only a few pages long, so the book reads very fast. Nothing stellar about the writing here. I was a bit disappointed in one thing. In the prologue, Wagman-Geller directs you to the website if you are interested in other dedications, which I was. However, when I went to the website, there was no new info there. So that was a letdown. Otherwise, this was quite an enjoyable read. show less

This is essentially a gossip collection of great authors. As long as that's all you're looking for, enjoy in the voyeuristic smuttiness of it all. But read this book with a very critical eye; of 50 entries, only 11 don't cite Wikipedia as a source (and Lewis Carroll's entry was ONLY credited to Wikipedia). That's fine for gossip, but I'd like something a little more solid for my information.

The idea behind this book is a great one, and it is pretty well summed up in the title. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t live up to its promise. It is one of the most gracelessly-written books I’ve ever read. This book should have been an entertaining backstory banquet, but unfortunately it is more like an unappealing pile of remedial high school English papers.