Review: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

I finished reading Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald in the early morning hours before I went to sleep.  when I woke a few hours later, I felt a heavy sadness because I realized the book was over and I would no longer be in Zelda's world and also, sadness because her life had turned out to be so miserable. Even though I knew the outcome, as I read the book, I kept hoping things would somehow get better, that someday she'd have the life she wanted. But as we all know, that didn't happen. 

Being a feminist, I've always been very much Team Zelda.  My fascination with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald began when I was in high school.  After reading and loving The Great Gatsby, I  read Tender is the Night, which is presumably largely autobiographical.  When I read it the first time, it seemed like a beautiful, but tragic love story.  When I read it again, as an adult, after having learned more about life in general, and in particular, the actual lives of Zelda and Scott, it seemed merely tragic.  Dick Diver was cruel to his wife, Nicole.  I despised the character as well as Scott, thinking how absurd he was to think he was writing a sympathetic character when in fact he was confessing to the horrible way he'd treated his wife and their marriage. 
I liked the way this book was written. As the title states, it's a novel, not an biography. The writer has taken liberties to create events as they may have happened, based on her research.  I thought it worked well. The Zelda of this novel sounds and behaves very much the way I have always imagined Zelda to be. 

This book does a great job of drawing us into the world of the Fitzgeralds - the success and the failures, the parties and the fights, but most of all the unrequited desire both Scott and Zelda felt to have something more. They were never satisfied with life, they always wanted something other than what they had - more love, more money, more acclaim, more friends, more booze. Scott wanted a beautiful, independent-minded wife, only to resent her independence and desire to establish a career of her own.  Zelda wanted a successful husband to take her away from her life in Alabama, only to resent being known as nothing more than the wife of a famous man.

The strongest theme of the book though is Zelda's struggle to create her own life, something independent of her husband. She wanted to be a dancer, a painter, a writer, something other than Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Every time she tried, every time she always succeeded, something got in the way - her husband or her health.  She admired feminists and other women who lived their own lives, but she was never brave enough to try and do as they'd done. 

By telling this story in Zelda's words, readers are able to feel as if they are directly involved in this world, they see the glamour, as well as experience the emptiness of that glamour.  It was never quite as fabulous as it seemed.  To the rest of the world, they were the "golden couple" and they worked at maintaining that facade, even as they fell apart at home.  While other marriages ended, they struggled to keep theirs intact because despite in all, they always believed they loved each other.  By hearing these stories told by Zelda, readers have a better understanding as to what they went through - true or not - and no one will ever know exactly what happened between the - it provides an interesting story.

I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone who has any interest in Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and would like to learn more about Zelda's story.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

A while back, during a drive to and from Austin, I listened to the audio book, The Paris Wife, about Hemingway's wife in Paris.  That sparked my interest in Hemingway.  After I finished The Paris Wife, I went to Half Price Books and bought a copy of A Moveable Feast, with the intention of reading it right away.  But I got distracted and the book remained on the floor next to the couch for the next two months.

Then I recently started hearing about the new Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris, and I kept hearing about how bits of the dialogue were taken from Hemingway's Moveable Feast.  I figured before I watched the movie, maybe I should read the book (though I've been told the movie is completely enjoyable without having read Moveable Feast.) 

Today, I wanted to spend some time out in the sun reading, so I decided to pick up this book off the floor where it has sat since I went out that night and bought it -- so much for having to have it right then.

I've only read one other book by Hemingway, that being A Farewell to Arms.  I love that book, but a lot of people I know do not enjoy Hemingway's work.  But I have to say, I like Moveable Feast quite a bit.

The writing is very sparse, very to the point, which I know is what some of the complaints are with regard to Hemingway's writing.  But it works so well with these stories.

These are his memories of his days in Paris, as a young writer, before he became well known or successful.  (Same time period covered in the book The Paris Wife which is why I initially had wanted to read it.)  In the preface he explains that the stories could very well be fiction.  (They're being written about 40 years after the events happened.)  During the time period this story covers, he was very young and ambitious and very poor.  He was newly married, with a baby.  He spent his days in cafes, working on his writing.  He spent his evenings drinking with other famous writers and artists - the Lost Generation.

Most of all though, it's the story of Paris.  His writing details the streets he walks, the restaurants and parks he visits.  Having been to Paris a few times and being very much in love with the city, I enjoyed remembering these locations and visualizing them as the stories unfolded.  This was after the war, when Paris was rebuilding and people could live there, and live well, for very little money.  He emphasizes that he didn't make much money on his writing as a reporter, but they still had a place to live, money for bread and good wine and time for fun.  They could afford to travel and gamble.  They hiked and skied and they enjoyed their life despite being rather poor financially.

In the end, it was success and the money that came with it that destroyed the happy world of Paris in which he and his wife lived.  "I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her," he writes of his first wife, forty something years after he fell in love with someone else. 

There are so many beautiful lines in this book.  Had I not been lying outside in the sun reading, I would have been obnoxiously underlining passages.  From his descriptions of his own writing process, I get the impression he did a lot of self editing, which is probably the result of what is considered his stark prose.  But it's beautiful in this context.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in writing, because he writes quite a bit about what it took to become a writer, or anyone interested in Paris and especially to anyone interested in the so-called Lost Generation of Paris in the 20s.  This book is full of mentions of people such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.

And on the subject of Fitzgerald, the story about him and Hemingway taking a trip to a from Lyon would make a hilarious movie.  Why hasn't that been done yet?  Hemingway gets on the train, thinking Fitzgerald is on it, only to have the train leave without Fitzgerald.  They finally meet up in Lyon, and go to retrieve the Fitzgerald's car, which has had the top removed because, "Zelda doesn't like tops on cars."  They have to keep stopping because it keeps raining on them, and then Fitzgerald decides he's dying of a fever and expects Ernest to take care of him.  Then he's upset because he's never spent a night away from his wife (except, as Ernest can't help noticing, he wasn't with her the night before because the two of them were in Lyon together.)  Very funny.

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain

Put Paris in the title, and I'm automatically interested.  Set the story during the twenties, the Jazz Age/Lost Generation, and feature characters such as Scott and Zelda, Gertrude and Alice and Ernest Hemingway and yeah, it's being added to the "to be read" list.  I'm fascinated by that time period.

This story cut to the top of my "to be read" list when I needed an audiobook for my drive to Austin.  So many hours in the car, have to try to be productive with my time.  So I checked out a few audiobooks that have been on my ever growing "to be read" list.  I was so happy to see this available, as the book is fairly new and there is usually a long waiting list for new books. 

I really enjoyed this story.  Easily passed the time during the drive, and I barely noticed as I sat in a huge traffic snare on the way home.  (I believe it took about an hour and a half to move less than ten miles.) 

I admit I don't know a lot about Hemingway.  Of his work, I've only read a few short stories and A Farewell to Arms - which I consider one of my favorite books.  But most people are familiar with the idea of Hemingway, "a man's man", a fighter and hunter, served in the war and traveled around the world.  This is the story of his early twenties, while living in Paris, as told through the eyes of his wife.
Hadley is the "Paris wife," the first of four wives he would eventually have.  She was the one who was with him before he became known as one of the greatest writers of his generation.  She was with him when all he had was his dreams and ideas, when they lived in a small apartment above a dance hall in Paris because it was all they could afford. 

Hadley's 29 when she meets the handsome 21 year old Ernest Hemingway.  Already he's a character, well known among his group of friends as being something of a ladies man.  Hadley's friends try to warn her away from him, but she falls hard for this man.  Even at 21, he possessed the qualities that turned him into the myth that the world would eventually know.  He was passionate and strong.  Hadley had lived a sheltered life, she'd been devastated by the suicide of her father and the death of her sister.  Her attempt at attending college had been short-lived.  She lived with her mother and cared for her until she died.  Hemingway represented everything that was missing from Hadley's life.  Despite being younger than her, he'd already seen much of the world, having served in the war and been wounded.  He'd already been in love and had his heart broken.  He was ready to take on the world, while Hadley was still hesitate to enter a world outside of her home.

Newly married, they have plans to move to Rome, but then Hemingway is told Paris is the place to be - that's where all the writers and the artists are living now.  So they move to Paris and become friends with Ezra Pound and his wife, and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.  In the beginning though, this is simply the story of a couple in the early stages of marriage, still learning about each other and getting used to their living arrangements, as Ernest is trying to establish himself as a writer.  Unlike Ernest, Hadley doesn't have any grand ambitions.  She wants a simple life, she wants a happy home and to please her husband.  As depicted in this book, she is a sharp contrast to the other women in their social circle.  This was a time in which the women in Paris were seeking their independence, trying to become equal partners with the men in their lives, selecting their own careers and interests.  Also this was a time in which couples were openly and boldly redefining long-held ideas about relationships.  Hadley's own desires seemed old-fashioned and out of place and as some of her friends commented, "Very American."

As someone who can't relate to the yearning to have a simple life and family, I had trouble relating to Hadley.  She seemed much too dependent on her husband, and weak.  She allowed him to make all the decisions about their life together.  I couldn't help but cringe when she describes him keeping track of her menstrual cycle in a notebook.  She's a 31 year old woman at the time, allowing her 22 year old husband to tell her when and how to use birth control.  She seems content to hand over all of her autonomy, without question, and does so because she loves her husband so much.

As Hemingway becomes more successful and more involved in their circle of friends, he begins to feel entitled to live as the others do.  Suddenly his wife isn't enough for him.  Why can't he do like his friends and have a girl on the side?  Everyone else is doing it.  And so he begins an affair with one of Hadley's friends.  An affair which Hadley tolerates, even allowing this woman into their home and into their bed in one especially horrible instance.  She seems to do this because she feels she has no other choice, she loves her husband so much and after years of doing as he wants, doesn't seem to know how to do otherwise.

Considering that Hemingway's future relationships didn't work out too well, I have to wonder if maybe a better way of loving him might have been to exert some force, to take back some control and issue a few demands.  Maybe Hadley could have saved her marriage as well as her husband.  But that wasn't the kind of person she was.  So instead, she agreed to a divorce so he could marry his mistress.

I don't know how accurate the story is.  I don't know that it matters.  Some reviews I've read of the book say it's too romantic and sentimental.  But isn't that sort of fitting with the story of Hemingway?  Shouldn't a story about him and those who loved him be a bit extreme?  I wasn't looking for a dry, textbook version of their story.  With this book, I got exactly what I was hoping for, a romantic story about two people very much in love with each other who did their best to make things work, but ultimately failed.  But more than that, this novel painted a picture of a time period that I revisit as often as possible through literature and film, a Paris filled with artists and intellectuals, people trying to change the world or create their own brand new world, using their words and art.  The story is written in such a way that readers become easily immersed in the Roaring Twenties of Paris, the words recreating the energy that much have existed within that atmosphere, ideas drifting in and out of cafes and salons. 

And now I'm off to find a copy of Moveable Feast to read about Ernest's version of this time period.

Finished: March 18, 2011

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I read this book back in high school because I love Gatsby and I was haunted by the title. So beautiful. And the story that it told was as beautiful as the title.

I decided to re-read it though because while I could say that I loved the story, the prose -- as expected from Fitzgerald -- paints such a captivating pictures of a tragic love affair and Paris and the French Riveria -- I was fairly certain that I was too young to fully understand what all was happening in the story.

So I read the book again. It was as beautiful and tragic as I remember. A doctor falls in love with a mental patient. He seems to be the only person capable of saving her. But he does too well in caring for her -- at least that would be his assessment. After years of marriage and two children, Nicole becomes well -- as well an anyone else at least. And seeing that she is no longer dependent on him, her husband Dick Diver begins to lose interest. Instead he's drawn to young actress, attracted by her youth and her need. Dick doesn't want to be in love, he doesn't want a healthy partner, he wants someone dependent on him. He wants to be the hero, his lover's salvation. He has no use for a healthy Nicole. Therin lies the tragedy.

The story is about their love affair, their marriage and then subsequent disintegration of their relationship. While that could be a story told a million times, one which happens in at least half of all relationships, it's Fitzgerald's prose that makes this story worth reading. This is the kind of writing that makes you ache and you feel their lives falling apart, watch them begin to go their different directions and realize their love was never love at all.

Finished reading: April 20, 2008 (second time)