Another analysis of the Zelda-and-Scott train wreck, this one
heavier on feminist psychology, lighter on quotidian detail. The
prolific Wagner-Martin (Sylvia Plath, 1999, etc.) doesn't offer
much that's new in her narration of one of the saddest stories of
the last century; for that, see Sally Cline's much more richly
detailed Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Life in Paradise (2003). The author
acknowledges that much of the Fitzgeralds' story can't be known
because both principals told self-serving versions of their
troubles; correspondence is missing, and even the remaining
documents (e.g., Scott's ledger) offer only dubious, unreliable
evidence. So Wagner-Martin's approach is to include
commentary-sometimes piquant, relevant, and enlightening, sometimes
not-by an assortment of psychologists and psycho-theorists, from
Jung to Jean Baker Miller to Marilyn Yalom to Jane Ussher. (An
annoyance: sometimes the quotations are unattributed in the text,
forcing the curious reader to search the endnotes for the source.)
From these folks we are supposed to learn more about how women are
affected by pregnancy, how the death of a parent can hurt, why
alcoholics drink, what schizophrenia really means. The technique is
generally obtrusive and unsuccessful. Wagner-Martin emphasizes
Zelda's early life as a cosseted child and a southern belle (she
was the unconventional teen-queen of Montgomery, Alabama) and
declares, a tad unfairly, that previous biographers have not
recognized the significance of these years. The author also
highlights Zelda's talents as a dancer-better than either her
husband or her critics have acknowledged-an artist, and a writer,
at one point waxing effusive about the "sonority" and "tonal
pattern" of her prose. And Wagner-Martin provides a good account of
the double narrative Scott and Zelda provided her doctors in May
1933, a bizarre and heart-wrenching confrontation that runs 114
pages in the typed version of the stenographer's record. When an
angry Scott calls her a third-rate writer and dancer, Zelda
replies, "You have told me that before." Adds very little to this
far more than twice-told tale. (11 b&w photos) (Kirkus Reviews)
Linda Wagner Martin's Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is a twenty first
century story. Using cultural and gender studies as contexts,
Wagner Martin brings new information to the story of the Alabama
judge's daughter who, at seventeen, met her husband to be, Scott
Fitzgerald. Swept away from her stable home life into Jazz Age New
York and Paris, Zelda eventually learned to be a writer and a
painter and she came close to being a ballerina. An evocative
portrayal of a talented woman's professional and emotional
conflicts, this study contains extensive notes and new photographs.
MARKET 1: Scholars and students of American literature; Women's
Studies; Modernism; Twentieth-Century Literature MARKET 2: General
reader
General
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