F. Scott Fitzgerald Books

Good, but ULTIMATE SACRIFICE the best book ever

While I thought this book was worthwhile in many respects, ULTIMATE SACRIFICE is simply the best book ever on the JFK assassination.Still, worth your time.

Vince Palamara-JFK/ Secret Service expert (History Channel, author of two books, in over 30 other author's books, etc.)
Pittsburgh, PA

BEST JFK ASSASSINATION BOOK: ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
BEST JFK SECRET SERVICE BOOK: SURVIVOR'S GUILT BY YOURS TRULY :)

This is a complex book but it reaps the clearest, most compelling conclusions as to who were responsible for the JFK assasination.

Reading the last third of the book is dizzying and alarming. The vertigo effect lingers long after you put it away.

Along with Carl Oglesby's "The Yankee Cowboy War" and Michael Piper Collins' "Final Judgment," this is the best book ever written on the JFK Assassination. It may also be the best book ever written on the way the American political process ACTUALLY works. It is certainly the most honest one.

Deep Politics should be required reading for undergraduates in all American college and university Political Science courses. If for no reason other than that, in the course of getting at the bottom of the assassination of JFK, Professor Scott did not hesitate to expand the context of American political life to those unacceptable areas that lay just beneath the American consciousness and at the bottom of the American political undercurrents.

Once one is guided through his process of expanding the context of understanding (or actually "over-understanding") the machinations of the American Political process (its corruption, deceptions, cover-ups, and other pretexts for explaining away its immorality), then the details of the assassination itself, are almost a foregone conclusions - little more than a logical afterthought.

All three authors focus on what is most important -- the big picture - leaving the details to be sorted out by those "eager beaver" researchers that seem so much to relish and are so obsessed with, the minutia such as "who was in the sixth floor window," and with what happen to Senator's Specter's now infamous "Magic bullet," etc. ad infinitum.

Oglesby eschews these nasty details and focuses on the economic war between the old money of the Northeast and the new money of the Southwest. In a reductionist socialist sort of way, he shows that the JFK assassination and Watergate were mere logical conclusions of this economic war. Collins, on the other hand, but like a radar (and like Jim Garrison before him), uses his own "crap detector" to separate the wheat from the shaft and divides the important from the inessential by forging ahead like a bulldog, even against charges of being anti-Semitic, to the only logical conclusion: that Myer Lansky was at the center of the planning of the JFK assassination. Scott, in his own inimical and professorial way, lays out a new political geography of the American political chessboard; one that is expanded to include what is both above and below the political waterline. He then shows that certain roles and circumstances when they cross the lines of morality, limit the men in them to only certain immoral squares on the chessboard.

It turns out that once the links connecting "organized crime" to "disorganized crime" (the criminal minds within the acknowledged and "so-called" legitimate American political process) there is little else that needs explanation. The moves on the American chessboard are all then pre-determined and predictable. It is checkmate for anyone who gets in their way as JFK did, and for the American people and the democratic process -- which they all claim to love so much.

By showing that these unholy connections not only exist but are in symbiotic alliance with each other, and trump the normal American political process, Scott not only exposes, but lays completely bare the underbelly of the utter hypocrisy and corruption of the American political process.

There is one example in the book, above all others, that best summarizes and punctuates the orgy of corruption that existed in the American political process at the time of the JFK assassination and that remains alive as a result of it.

It is the Pre-assassination party (or final coordination meeting, or whatever one wants to call it) called to order in Dallas by J. Edgar Hoover at Clint Murchinson's house on November 21, 1963, the eve of the assassination.

The attendees included, among others:

J. Edgar Hoover (Head of the FBI, next door neighbor of LBJ, racist and Jew hater, and friend of mobster Frank Costello), Clint Murchinson (Texan oil Baron, racist and Jew hater but still a business partner of Myer Lansky, and acknowledged Kennedy hater),
H.L. Hunt (financier of rabid right-wing fanatic causes, racist and Jew hater, Texas Oil Baron, and Kennedy Hater), John J. McCloy (Washington Lobbyist/Fixer and later to be appointed member of the Warren Commission investigating the JFK assassination), Allen Dulles (ex-head of the CIA, fired by JFK in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and soon to be appointee to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK), John Connally (ex-Secretary of the Navy, ex-Governor of Texas and close friend and confidant of LBJ), General Charles Cabell (Deputy Director of the CIA fired by JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and his brother Earle Cabell (the Mayor of Dallas at the time of the assassination), Richard Nixon (defeated by JFK for the U.S. Presidency, and avowed Kennedy hater), LBJ (the sitting Vice President who was days away from going to jail because of a whole series of scandals, and who would be sworn-in on Air Force One minutes after the assassination as JFK's successor)

Would someone please give me an innocent explanation for such a meeting in Dallas of all of these Kennedy haters on the eve before his assassination?

Five stars

Peter Dale Scott tells us up front that his purpose is not to use the evidence to pinpoint the killer(s) but to illustrate deep politics. He mentions planting of evidence in various ways to paint Lee Harvey Oswald as part of a Communist conspiracy and as a lone-nut. Also discussed is the Oswald as double-agent idea, establishing a record of the mail-order purchases when guns were readily available locally and the difference between Marina Oswald's testimony and the official record. Scott also mentions the 100 names missing from an index of Jack Ruby's acquaintances. These names provided a negative template of organized crime and those with corrupt political backgrounds purposely deleted from official records. There are many other examples of suspicious activity cited. Hoover and the FBI figured prominently, though not alone in the fancy footwork and public relations (media) that made this at least temporarily satisfying to everyone that all was well as the killer was identified. Peter Dale Scott's investigation and writing is thorough, intelligent and thought provoking. By the way, at the time of writing this book, Scott named three senior FBI officials most likely to be Deep Throat and one of them was correct, as we have recently found out.

Yes, it is I, the secret and very evil member of the ultra-high-level underground trilateral elite squadron of suicide Amazon reviewers here to turn you away from the truth. For Peter Dale Scott has managed with this book to piece together what we have been trying to keep ultra-top-secret since the Middle Ages, and so now we must put out our black ops!

Man, the paranoia and narcissism in this country really shines with books like this and reviewers like these. Face it guys, you're all just craving SOMETHING EXTRA to fend off the horror of your own inevitable death. Seeing conspiracies is like seeing heaven -- it is a natural consequence of the human condition. But so is rape and genocide. So do your part to resist it!

What a picture. . .
I do get to see Hollywood in the late 1930s. More, though, I get to see Fitzgerald not, in free fall, but, not at his best. Yet, the pictures he is still able to create.
This is a picture from his short story, "Babylon Revisted," Fitzgerald's tale of a once-foolish, now-widowed father hoping to gain custody of his young daughter: "His first feeling (in remembrance of that "crazy spring") was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and pedaled (a drunk girlfriend) all over (town) between the small hours and dawn. In retrospect it was nightmare. . .How many weeks or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of utter irresponsibility?"
The man pedaling that tricycle, I would argue, is Pat Hobby. And these are his collected tales--seemingly unfinished--of dissipation.

Fitzgerald's early fiction often deals with the case of the young man who harbors elaborate and perhaps outlandish aspirations for success. In the Pat Hobby stories -- Fitzgerald's last published work -- we see depicted a 49-year-old man whose dreams have collided with a bleak reality. Years after his brief heyday as a well-paid film writer in the days of silent films, he is now quite simply a failure.

And yet Pat Hobby is a unique type of loser, one who sympathizes with the bosses and moguls rather than his fellow downtrodden peers at the bottom of the totem pole. Witness for example the startling scene in which Hobby, with righteous indignation, takes a lunch tray to attack an extra who had the audacity to sit at the VIP table in the studio canteen and refused to move. This scene offers a fascinating insight into Fitzgerald's own psychology, if one views Hobby as an alter ego for the author, while also raising broader questions about American culture.

"A Patriotic Short" is the story which best encapsulates these questions, as Hobby bitterly reflects on the contrast between his illustrious past, when he had a house with a swimming pool that was once admired by the President himself, and his current menial assignment editing a lame film script. Here, in just a few pages, Fitzgerald deftly weaves together the American obsessions with celebrity, the presidency, and of course the swimming pool, into a commentary on the idea of success itself.

Any mention of a swimming pool by Fitzgerald evokes the sad fate of Jay Gatsby. And though we might find Hobby a less sympathetic character than Gatsby, in many ways he represents the other side of the same debased coin. Both are tragic figures, equally unable to fulfill their dreams of glamour, and perhaps both equally the victims of the American ethos of success.

Of all Fitzgerald's works, these stories are most accessible, especially for those who saw the golden age of television. Of course, my approach to these short stories was from the height of "Gatsby," and the knowledge of the great film,"The Bad and the Beautiful," so I was taken by surprise with the charm, humor and the creative inspiration found in these Hollywood toss-offs. Not only are they insider truths but hung-over fantasies all at once. Groucho and Robert Cummings came to mind as I laughed out loud. Mel Brooks and Woody Allen should pay him dividends,as well as the TV studios who borrowed from his charming, off-beat take on the Hollywood system.

Most people know F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of the deans of the lost generation and an icon of the jazz-age. But toward the end of his life, in the late 1930's, Fitzgerald was also a writer for MGM studios, and these stories represent brilliantly and tragically this period of his life.

Through the eyes of Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby, Hollywood hack writer, we see a different side of golden age tinseltown, where an extraordinary number of talented writers and artists migrated to in the 1930's and 40's, only to butt their heads against militant mediocrity and the "studio system." As an archetype, Pat Hobby stands in for them brilliantly.

Also recommended: What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg, The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, and The Player by Michael Tolkin.

The Brilliant Pat Hobby Stories are just as the title says, brillliant. I have never red a collection of stories as this. The wit of Mr. Fitzgerald is astonishing as he captures ones attention and then ends the story with a dramatic twist that will leave one rolling on the floor.

I have read nothing like these stories and I know that I will never read anything like them again. When my brother convinced me to read these stories I was, at first, a little skeptical about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had heard my brother rant and rave about him before but now I understand why he was ranting and raving about him so.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection of Pat Hobby Short stories. I am now excited to pick up the next F. Scott Fitzgerald Book that my brother will let me borrow.

Lesser known work by FItzgerald is powerful and amazingly relevant in 2007.

Fitzgerald and Wilson are two writers who mean a lot to me. (Tender Is the Night and To the Finland Station being among my favorite books.) I have to confess that I was expecting more from this collection of Fitzgerald essays, letters and journals. The selection is thin, and there is no clear line for why some pieces were chosen and others were not. It seems to me that there would be room on the market for a more comprehensive collection of the non-fiction prose and letters.

The Crack-Up was originally published in book form while Fitzgerald was still alive, which may explain the somewhat odd selection. The obituaries collected at the end were added after his death for the 1945 edition.

Even with the flaws, The Crack-Up is still worth taking the time to read. Particularly if you are a fan of Fitzgerald, the bitter thought-provoking autobiographical essays provide a nice counterpoint to the exuberance of the novels. Aside from the title essay, "My Lost City" is particularly nice.

Fitzgerald arranged fragments of his writing notebooks into a series of conceptual categories for publication in this volume. These fragments serve as a very nice reminder just how good of a writer he really was. The combination of skilled turn of phrase and careful eye for detail is a powerful one. The journal section could serve as a very good lesson in observation for would-be writers of today.

Wilson himself notes that the letters included represent "merely a handful that happened to be easily obtainable". The most interesting letters are those written to his daughter and some of the letters that he received after the publication of the Great Gatsby. It is fascinating to read the reactions of Stein, Wharton and Eliot.

Time for a new edition of (at least) the collected letters?

"This is too real and there ain't no escape" -- Nick Lowe, "Cracking Up"


I carried F. Scott Fitzgerald's THE CRACK-UP around with me for almost ten years before I got around to reading it last month. It was one of those books that I felt I was literarily required to read, what with my affection for all things Fitzgerald -- especially Gatsby. Once I got into the book, I found parts of it fairly impenetrable, which must have been Fitzgerald's state of mind while writing some of the material, a posthumous hodgepodge of uncollected pieces, samplings of notebooks, and unpublished letters (both from and to the author).

An excellent companion piece to the book is the PBS American Masters documentary, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: WINTER DREAMS, which draws heavily from THE CRACK-UP. The film, in its quest to simulate the elegance that its subject so desperately tried (and failed) to attain, unfortunately breezes over some key points in the writer's life; but the DVD is well worth checking out (literally, either from your local library or Netflix). (PBS's website makes up for some of these omissions with a nifty timeline that puts all of Fitzgerald's accomplishments into context with the tragic goings-on in his life. It also offers some additional footage that does not appear in the film, most notably interviews with E.L. Doctorow and Budd Schulberg, who wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront and who, as a young screenwriter, was rewritten by Fitzgerald.)

Originally written as three essays for Esquire in 1936, "The Crack-Up" was Fitzgerald's bearing of his soul, his confession, his mea culpa to the world at large for letting them -- and himself -- down. It begins: "Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again."

The literary world at large found such brash honesty unseemly, and Ernest Hemingway especially was disdainful of his friend's candor. But just as "The Crack-Up" essays unnecessarily confirmed that Hemingway was indeed a bastard, they also demonstrated that Fitzgerald could still write.

One of the most poignant and telling passages in THE CRACK-UP anthology appears in Fitzgerald's 1932 essay about New York, "My Lost City." Returning a couple of years after the stock market crash of 1929 ("I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives," he writes, "but there was certainly to be a second act to New York's boom days"), Fitzgerald found a new skyline awaiting him. The Empire State Building, all 103 floors and 1,454 feet, had risen out of the dust of the Big Crash. Fitzgerald "went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood -- everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits -- from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground."

Perhaps at that moment Fitzgerald discovered he had his limits, too, and that they were already in his past. One wonders how many times in the eight tortured years he had left, dealing with the insanity of Zelda and Hollywood, book sales all but evaporating, he looked back on that moment atop the Empire State Building and wished he had jumped.

(c) 2006 - Visit chidder.livejournal.com

F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the dreams and aspirations of so many people when he wrote of the fabulous excesses of the 20's - a time not unlike the recent "get-rich-quick" mania of the Internet bubble, which also crashed, destroying many fortunes and lifestyles.
In The Crack-Up Fitzgerald writes equally poignantly of the agony of the aftermath of such excess and unfulfilled desires and social insecurities. He was able to capture all of this so clearly because it was the life that he and Zelda aspired to and, from time to time, lived. But they were always just on the outside, depending on the generosity of others both financially socially. He takes no prisoners.
It is no surprise that he is still being widely read. Don't miss Fitzgeral - it doesn't really matter which of his books you start with, you will find yourself moving through the collection.

Fragments of Fitgerald here do not really shore up his ruin. The most romantic of American novelists tells the story of why in the lives of American writers there are no second acts. The title essay 'The Crack - Up' is a very moving one. The tale of ' the dark - night in the soul in which it is always three o'clock in the morning ' of his breakdown and loss of a real feeling for life. He struggled back, and he made his efforts, most admirably perhaps as a father in trying to educate a daughter with two very problematic parents. He was finished at forty- four and did not make it to some other better world in his work and his life. No second act for him. But these fragments show the very beauty of perception and fineness of literary line which enabled him to write his one, and one of America's great masterpieces, Gatsby.

Fitzgerald's stories manage to unite his otherworldly grasp of the fluctuations in the human soul. He is a master at presenting its contrivances and vanities as things that happen to people. The tension in these tales rises with almost unconscious force. Red herrings of possible conclusions are whispered but almost in the style of a trickster. Someone always gets conned and someone unmasked- all within that now long-gone era that held a fullhouse of interesting details and premonitions of an ominous future. "Beatrice Bobs her Hair" always has something more to say about savage young ladies. It deserves its place, I think, in every highschool English curriculum. The spoiled rich girls inevitably fall madly in love- with the cads or the tricksters. It was interesting to read "Benediction" in this era of the priest scandals. How priests were seen by Fitzgerald, or perhaps how he conceived his alter ego- is apparent in his return to his natural self through the heroine's choice at the end. This writer always has a trick up his sleeve for the unpredictable conclusion.
I am surprised that there are not more raves over this collection, but perhaps that is the nature of the post modern era. I on the other hand -rave. Story, resolution, all those little formulas that separate the artist from the amateur in the impossible short story form. Fitzgerald, except for perhaps in Gatsby, never achieved such form and plotting in his novels. His youth too, can be sensed in the humorous and rather light-hearted manner by which he casts his characters and those obstacles that they encounter.

Fitzgerald may not have been overly fond of his short stories, but his writing skill and insight shine through anyway. In The Ice Palace and Bernice Bobs her Hair and the Four Fists in particular, Fitzgerald captures individuals struggling with themselves. Who/what should they be, and why? While I wasn't too fond of the pirate story, as it lacked these elements, the other stories in the book show a depth of understanding and introspection that makes for a wonderful, thoughtful read.

Not a bad set of stories. "The Offshore Pirate" was the best---its one of the sweetest stories I have ever read.

Fitzgerald's stories manage to unite his otherworldly grasp of the fluctuations in the human soul. He is a master at presenting its contrivances and vanities as things that happen to people. The tension in these tales rises with almost unconscious force. Red herrings of possible conclusions are whispered but almost in the style of a trickster. Someone always gets conned and someone unmasked- all within that now long-gone era that held a fullhouse of interesting details and premonitions of an ominous future. "Beatrice Bobs her Hair" always has something more to say about savage young ladies. It deserves its place, I think, in every highschool English curriculum. The spoiled rich girls inevitably fall madly in love- with the cads or the tricksters. It was interesting to read "Benediction" in this era of the priest scandals. How priests were seen by Fitzgerald, or perhaps how he conceived his alter ego- is apparent in his return to his natural self through the heroine's choice at the end. This writer always has a trick up his sleeve for the unpredictable conclusion.
I am surprised that there are not more raves over this collection, but perhaps that is the nature of the post modern era. I on the other hand -rave. Story, resolution, all those little formulas that separate the artist from the amateur in the impossible short story form. Fitzgerald, except for perhaps in Gatsby, never achieved such form and plotting in his novels. His youth too, can be sensed in the humorous and rather light-hearted manner by which he casts his characters and those obstacles that they encounter.

This collection of short stories takes a candid look at America in the early 20th century. There isn't a stinker in the lot, but I think "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is my favorite. Fitzgerald has a way of making his readers connect with unlikeable characters that seems almost magical.

One reviewer (Ms Kay) opines this is the best of the Zelda biographies, whereas another ("skc-33") opines that the Cline biography is not enjoyable, that it reads like a dissertation. I agree that the Cline biography is extremely well researched but I disagree with regard to the references: the footnotes are not a bit distractive. I hardly noticed them. In fact, they were much less intrusive than I've experienced in other nonfiction works. The author's information on the other characters in the lives of the Fitzgeralds (the Hemingways, the Menckens, Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, Dorothy Parker, and dozens more) adds so much more to this biography; I found it a delightful surprise to have so much additional information on these other personalities with whom I am only casually acquainted. In addition, these other people played such an important role in the lives of the Fitzgeralds, it would have been unfortunate if Cline had omitted them.

Cline is English and brings a more worldly perspective in her analysis. Her only fault is trying too hard to be "fair and balanced" with regard to Mr Scott Fitzgerald. It is abundantly clear (through this biography and others) that he may have had a natural talent to write, but he was dishonest (stole his wife's journals without her knowledge, much less her blessing); plagiarized almost word for word Zelda's diaries into his own works; was an alcoholic of the worst degree; was an adulterer (I have no problems with an open marriage where both parties agree, but in this case, Zelda did not); and who did all he could to insure Zelda would not reach her potential as a writer, dancer, or painter. Despite his strong Catholic upbringing and desire to be buried in the Church, he had only a slight problem, it appears, with supporting Zelda's decision to have as many as three abortions (and he left it up to her, deferring his own judgment or strong opinion one way or the other; and giving her no emotional support after the decision was made). As one reviewer has posted, these personality faults do not matter; it is what one leaves behind. Even if one agrees with that, one will learn in all these biographies of Zelda, it was her work that was left behind and not his.

If I had only one biography of Zelda's to read, it would be Cline's. As noted above, I agree wholeheartedly with the review by Ms. Kay.

Incidentally, if you are still curious about Mr Fitzgerald's romantic side, he purposely did not wed Zelda in her home town (Montgomery, AL), but more than a thousand miles away (NYC), making it nearly impossible for any of Zelda's family or friends to attend; he limited the wedding to six people, and started the wedding early despite knowing that two of the six (Zelda's sister and her husband) would miss the ceremony.

And one more thing: Mr Fitzgerald did not allow Zelda to attend the baptism of their only child, "Scottie," for fear of what Zelda might do or say at that ceremony. The wedding story is told in all biographies; I only learned of the baptism story in Cline's biography.

If you take the time and read every other biography out there about Zelda Fitzgerald, you will notice something strange. While every one covers the same person and materials, not every biography is exactly the same. Nancy Milford's "Zelda" reads like a Fitzgerald novel- beautiful, careless and tragic. Kendall Taylor's "Sometimes Madness is Wisdom" focuses more on Zelda as an individual with multiple flaws and multiple talents, and also destroys the mythical love story that everyone thought was "Scott and Zelda". Sally Cline's "Her Voice in Paradise" expands on Kendall Taylor's basic concept but makes it all her own with such detailed research and weaving all of the broken stories together into one beautiful mosaic.

I would list this as THE best biography written about Zelda...well, actually this ties for first place with Kendall Taylor's bio, which is equally brilliant but on a totally different level. Read both and you get two separate layers of Zelda's short and complicated life. Any pity or admiration that you felt for Scott before reading either of these will most certainly vanish, for these books do not paint him as the romantic character that his legend portrays. In these he is an equally flawed human being much like Zelda, but a man whose lifelong coverup of his insecurities included alcohol abuse and adultery.

So in conclusion, if you are a voracious reader with a thirst for knowledge and devouring every detail into your mind, I would recommend that you buy this book immediately.

If you prefer to read a biography like you would read a work of literature, this is not the book for you.

This book is not enjoyable; it reads like a dissertation. Every few sentences are cited from some other source, mostly using direct quotes, leading me to believe that the author never learned the art of rewriting something in her own words. I respect the fact that she did a lot of research, but I don't want to be reminded of it in every paragraph. When the author actually bothers to use her own words, the prose doesn't flow and relies too much on heavy descriptive phrases. Too much time is spent giving lengthy biographies of other incidental characters like the Hemingways, the Menckens, and Dos Passos.

The constant reference numbers are very distracting, as is the perpetual adoration for Zelda herself. The author makes reference to Zelda's "madness" via quotes from the Fitzgeralds' contemporaries, and then immediately discredits the source as jealous or influenced by time or some other excuse.

The book would be a slightly better read if the reader was allowed to make judgments for him/herself.

I might recommend this book to someone who was doing research on Zelda Fitzgerald (or other '20s-'30s personalities) for a paper, but I would not recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading.

...

In the summer of 1919, during the courtship that would lead to marriage the following year, Zelda Sayre wrote Scott Fitzgerald a letter in which she observed,"Men think I'm purely decorative, and they're just fools for not knowing better . . . I love being rather unfathomable . . . Men love me cause I'm pretty ý and they're always afraid of mental wickedness ý and men love me cause I'm clever and they're always afraid of my prettiness ý One or two have even loved me cause I'm lovable, and then, of course, I was acting."
Well before her celebrated marriage, Zelda was nothing if not elusive ý and a master of the non sequitur besides. In "Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise," Sally Cline makes use of the linguistic romps found in her subject's letters, diaries and novels in a way that allows the reader to hear the voice of one of the Jazz Age's most celebrated and controversial women. That voice, arguably the best guide to Zelda's complex mind is a remarkable one, and by relying on it the biographer has created a narrative that pulses with vivid, angry, joyous, despairing immediacy. In Ms. Cline's treatment the unfathomable Zelda becomes less so.
Ms. Cline straightforwardly relates Zelda's upbringing as a Southern belle, her courtship and marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald, their life together as his career took flight, the birth of their daughter Scottie, Scott's alcoholism, the disintegration of the marriage and her madness and subsequent hospitalization for the still debated diagnosis of schizophrenia. Accounts of the various treatments Zelda endured while hospitalized, which included electro-shock therapy and injections of horse serum, are appalling.
The author is at pains not to tinker with the historical record the way Nancy Milford did in her1970 biography of Zelda, written at the height of feminist revisionism and what-ifs. Ms. Cline is very clear that in writing this book she hoped to show that "during Zelda's life her ballet, like her writing and painting, was subsumed under the greater interest of her marriage. As Zelda's biographer, I have tried to balance the account." What that means for the book is greater exposure to these endeavors. While the biographer makes a convincing case that Zelda was a fine writer, she is less persuasive about the merits of her dancing (begun at the age of 27) and her painting.
Ms. Cline does a masterful job of presenting the intoxicating (and intoxicated) sights, sounds and fixations of Jazz Age America from New York to Hollywood, with significant detours to Scott Fitzgerald's Minnesota, and back again. The writing is strong, the research exhaustive. Close to 100 pages of notes follow the book's index.
Zelda Sayre was born in Montgomery, Ala. on July 12, 1900. Her father was a judge and though not wealthy the family occupied a home in that part of town where old money thrived. Zelda quickly became part of a social set that included the city's wealthiest and most beautiful girls, and several of the friendships forged in childhood would remain with her throughout her life. These included Tallulah Bankhead (who became a Hollywood star) and Sara Haardt, a writer who married H.L Mencken.
Zelda met Scott in 1917 "when Montgomery was besieged by soldiers from nearby Camp Sheridan and aviators from Camp Taylor." The circumstance of war gave Zelda and her friends more social opportunities. As one of friends recalled, "We had a different date every night of the week. One night there was a young fellow from St. Paul, Minnesota. He was a blonde first lieutenant of the 67th Infantry, whom she would later draw as a paper doll with pink shirt, red tie and brown angel's wings."
Change came quickly and not always harmoniously into their lives. "Romance in Montgomery had seen Zelda as a celebrity dominating a struggling writer. Marriage in New York changed that. Scott was no longer struggling and she was no longer a celebrity. He had friends while she had none. Nor her family. "
Scott's ascendancy, while nearly overwhelming the marriage, also made it possible for Zelda to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in New York's best hotels. Though burdened with debt and the inability to keep one residence after another in order (as a bona fide Southern belle, Zelda never learned how to be a good housekeeper), the couple, become famous, partied with even greater frequency and intensity and counted among their friends (and enemies) the most illustrious men and women of the day.
John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, Dorothy Parker, H.L Mencken, Ernest Hemingway come alive in these pages. And Zelda, far from being simply the flapper goddess of one myth or the unreconstructed harpy of another, proves to be both ý and talented, genuinely talented, too. But the marriage was filled with violent argument.
One of the most striking of these came during Zelda's hospitalization and the publication of "Save Me the Waltz" was at issue. The confrontation was strong and required the intervention of one of Zelda's doctor's, Dr. Thomas Rennie, who acted as mediator, with a stenographer present. At the height of the battle, "Scott could not contain himself. 'So you are taking my material, is that right?'
"'Is that your material' Zelda asked. The asylums? The madness? the terrors? Were they yours?' Funny, she hadn't noticed.
"'Everything we have done is mine. If we make a trip . . . and you and I go around ý I am the professional novelist and I am supporting you. That is all my material. None of it is your material.'" And around they went. The irony is that Scott helped himself to Zelda's diary entries and letters for verbatim use in some of his earlier novels, a habit Ms. Cline substantiates.
The sparks that flew between the pair persisted until Scott's death in 1940.
In truth, after that event, the book loses some of its appeal, perhaps because the tension of the legendary marriage is removed, the dark passion dimmed. The book ends with the couple reunited in death. In a cemetery in Rockville, Md., they are buried side by side.

Sally Cline's Zelda Fitzgerald portrays the life of mythical 20s idol who married novelist F. Scott. This is no light coverage: six years in the making, it is the first on her life to appear in over thirty years and provides a complex analysis of the Fitzgeralds' lives and achievements.

I had to do some research on Zelda for an art exhibit and really knew nothing about her except that she was the "wife of FSF". However, after reading this book, I have added her to my "ultimate dinner party guest list"! She seemed like a fascinating person (no matter what ones opinion of her might be). From what little I knew of her, I had associated her with NYC so I truly enjoyed learning about her Southern belle heritage, and although I am middle aged, from what I know about my grandmother's (and mother's) life as Southern women, I could totally relate to her youth. And what woman hasn't fantasized about the glory days of the flapper era and the jazz age? So that was quite interesting as well. And as someone who had dreamt forever of traveling to Europe (and have fortunately finally been), I loved reading about their bi-continent lives. This book definitely whet my appetite to learn more about such an interesting person who, in my opinion, seemed to be ahead of her time.

Zelda Fitzgerald will always be known as the `wife of' F. Scott Fitzgerald and not, as her husband was, a writer, despite the best attempts of any biographer.

I found author Linda Wagner-Martin's biography less an indictment of F. Scott and more one of a Southern belle system that trivialized, sexualized and indoctrinated women in a life that emphasized their desirability and motherhood at the expense of any other gifts or talents. Wagner-Martin has the right argument but reaches the wrong conclusions and so I rated this interesting work three stars.

Wagner-Martin shows how Zelda willingly played into these roles in her young life, seeing it was a way out of her parents' house (although she returns there time and again), only to later realize that they had firmly entrapped her as a married adult. Neither she nor Scott could break that dynamic largely at her expense. Even their daughter Scottie described her mother as a willing victim, a perspective that was conveniently left out of this work.

At the same time Zelda was obsessing over her marginal status to the brink of mental instability, women like Zora Neale Hurston and Agatha Christie were overcoming fierce financial odds and social/sexist obstacles to accomplish their artistic visions.

At the end of the day all that really matters is the work one leaves behind. That `body' of work can take on greater meaning and relevance than what remains of its creator. Frankly, focusing on Zelda's personality only serves to further marginalize her and what little work she did produce.

An antecedent to the 1970's "Zelda" by Milford, ZSF:An American Woman's Life, shows Zelda against the backdrop of a feminism which exploded during and after World War I. Zelda is characterized as more than a Southern belle, as if this were the whole and sum of the parts of her; she is depicted as a woman who wanted to marry "and have all the nice old safe things" yet she wanted a place in the world where she could write, act, paint and dance, areas in which she excelled, without the interference of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It's a good read and a decades-later follow up to Milford's biography of Zelda.

I knew something of the story of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, but after reading this book I think that Scott is the one who needed therapy.

I can't believe he accused Zelda of stealing material from him. After all, it was her life. I'm sorry that she could not break away from him.

I found it interesting to read about the amount of money he was paid and how they spent it all. He probably realized he wasn't going to live to be old.

I was very surprised to see just one review on Amazon of this wonderful biography. This is the first review I have written here. I always check out what readers have to say about books I have read or intend to read. So I was really looking forward to a lot of stimulating feedback. That being said, I guess I will put in my two cents. This truly is the story of an American woman. And that is why I think it is so relevant to every woman living in American society today. Wagner-Martin does an exemplary job of illustrating how the genius and talent of woman can become neutralized through the weight and burden of early conditioning. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was a creature screaming and yearning to differentiate herself from the overpowering presence of her talented and lauded husband. The awful tragedy is that this intense passion to become her own person was so grossly misconstrued as mental illness. It is tough reading. My heart so went out to Zelda. Yet I can't help but recognize that woman today still has an uphill battle in a society that has yet to relinquish it's paternalistic tendencies and endemic misogny. I can't recommend enough this amazing study of a woman so ahead of her time, yet so crushed under the force of circumstance. The one hopeful note I can offer is that from it women readers can feel galvanized to act as individuals independent of convention and impulse and need and rise beyond the circumscribed roles imposed upon us. If only Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, as well as that tragic icon, Marilyn Monroe, could have lived long enough to see how far we have come in the battle for the rights of woman. But we have these beautiful women to look back upon to recognize the distance travelled. I guess that is something to be thankful for.

This is a wonderful book, poignant yet revealing, just like the man it is about. Frances Kroll Ring was Fitzgerald's secretary in the last few years of his life. What she details in her memoir will enlighten anyone who has only ever thought of Fitzgerald as merely an alcoholic who just stumbled into writing. Yes, she records that he was drinking well up to his death, but he was also doing something important. He was in the middle of writing "The Last Tycoon", a work that was to be unlike his previous efforts, more mature and reflecting a different sensibility. But, as one finds out at the end of "Against the Current", he never realized his goal. The great work was left unfinished, and therefore one more tragedy closed the curtain on an already sad life.

The Los Angeles Times review got it right: This book "is like a rediscovered snapshot, bringing a legendary figure into brief, vivid focus." That snapshot also includes a perceptive young woman and her family, Fitzgerald's inner circle (Sheilah Graham, Scottie, Maxwell Perkins, and Edmund Wilson), and a slice of Los Angeles during its most creative period. Hollywood is the backdrop for this book and *The Last Tycoon*, which Fitzgerald was writing at the time, but there's no glitzy melodrama here, and Ring mostly steers clear of "the Fitzorama"--her term for the literary-industrial complex that has grown up around Fitzgerald. By telling her story simply and beautifully, she produces the vivid focus mentioned above. The book also includes reproductions of letters, notes, and telegrams composed by Scott, Zelda, Perkins, and Wilson. Highly recommended.

To be featured on ShowTime-TV channel..by Henry Bromell,a Fitgerald expert-writer,(NY). It's neither a docu, nor a BioPic. Kroll's memoir, 1985..details his last frantic attempt in Hollywood-- to finish.."The Last Tycoon"...Scott died-at 44- heart attack-Dec.21,1940 after years of smoking/ drinking. His wife..Zelda is played by Sissy Spacek...who read the 1960's bio.."Zelda".
Kroll,now 85 has visited the set in Canada-where producers found Spainish-style hacienda..like Scott's in LA.

This is a wonderful, unassuming narrative about the final days of F. Scott Fitzgerald which paints him as a real human being with real problems, writing immortal fiction with a dying hand. His fragility and beauty is evident, and this quick read is a must for anyone determined to learn about the real Fitzgerald.

In the Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald created a wonder. He described a world and a fiend we can all relate to, that of frustrated and not fully requitted love, and he described it with all the beauty that anybody using the English language could muster. His message was the we are all fighting against the tide of time, which beats us back ever more forcefully with the progressing years, and yet we all feel that our youth, our elixir, our perfect moment and strength of Orient is within our grasp. Gatsby was a man who had lost once, and yet felt the compulsion to fight again, for the ultimate prize that would revoke his past defeat. A simple and bewilderingly focused passion that in the end destroyed the man as only it could. That was Gatsby's only goal, but in stripping his life down to such basics, and in essence, seeking to negate the past, Gatsby found he was fighting against the viscious tide of time. Read this book for the narrative, if you like. Read it for the beautiful Jazz Age description if you like also. But read it most of all for the moments in it whose beauty surpasses all contemporarys'. Find the green light.

La verdad es que desde el principio uno podia suponer como iba a terminar la historia. Mal al principio por no defnir a cada personaje, se hace dificil seguir la historia. Gatsby no quiere quedar afuera de la sociedad en esa epoca, y de esta manera, tiende a prostituirse en todo sentido con tal de conseguir su unico y preciado fin

In the Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald created a wonder. He described a world and a fiend we can all relate to, that of frustrated and not fully requitted love, and he described it with all the beauty that anybody using the English language could muster. His message was the we are all fighting against the tide of time, which beats us back ever more forcefully with the progressing years, and yet we all feel that our youth, our elixir, our perfect moment and strength of Orient is within our grasp. Gatsby was a man who had lost once, and yet felt the compulsion to fight again, for the ultimate prize that would revoke his past defeat. A simple and bewilderingly focused passion that in the end destroyed the man as only it could. That was Gatsby's only goal, but in stripping his life down to such basics, and in essence, seeking to negate the past, Gatsby found he was fighting against the viscious tide of time. Read this book for the narrative, if you like. Read it for the beautiful Jazz Age description if you like also. But read it most of all for the moments in it whose beauty surpasses all contemporarys'. Find the green light.

Life in the Roarin' 20s was oodles of fun. The wealthy people all throughout the United States were going to parties and making money. Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Daisy and Tom Buchanan were right there in the action. But, there was a huge conflict that stopped all the fun for these four individuals. The Great Gatsby will show you what is really behind all of the excitement in the 1920s. You will here about the poor people who couldn't afford the parties and fun events. Also, the ever-going romance between Gatsby and Daisy, and the problem they have when facing society will amaze you. For example, they meet in secret places tucked away from the public. Their romance is one of betrayal and privacy. This novel will also describe the Jazz Age as it really happened with the alcohol binges at Gatsby's parties, the fashion of flappers, and architecture, especially the homes of Gatsby and the Buchanans. Before you know it, you will be living in the Era of Wonderful Nonsense right along with the characters while sharing their story. This novel is definitely a must read!

This is a very attractive packaged, comprehensive collection of Fitzgerald's early work, containing his first two novels (This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful & Damned) and his first two short story collections. Included are some classic short stories such as May Day and The Diamond As Big As The Ritz. Some of the other stories are less than classic, but all are enjoyable. As is the case with all Library of America volumes, the book is very easy to handle and read. There is a useful set of notes and chronology of Fitzergald's life in the back. All in all, this is well worth the price.

I am really shocked that this first rate Fitzgerald collection does not have the "Polly Parker" stories that originally were printed serially in THE SATURDAY EVENING POST in 1922. Apparently these uncollected stories remain unavailable anywhere in book form.

Polly Parker was a typical Fitzgerald heroine -- a blue-eyed flapper with a pert nose and golden hair bobbed very short. The reason her stories are omitted, I gather, is that they were slightly more sexual in tone and also addressed taboo subjects such as alcoholism, racial violence, incest, and insanity.

"GRANDPA'S GOLD" the first Polly story, deals with lasting echoes of the Civil War. Spoiled Polly goes to Vermont for the summer to stay with her aging grandfather -- the last remaining Union army veteran in Vermont. Ultimately she robs him of a small fortune in gold coins which he had originally intended to donate to a Negro orphanage. This story highlights Fitzgerald's ambivalence towards the young women of the day -- Polly is cruel and selfish, but also winningly spontaneous, free and independent. Fitzgerald's racism is in full flower here as well. The fact that she is "only" robbing colored people seems to make her crime an amusing prank rather than a vicious crime.

"ALLIGATOR QUEEN" is both darker and more sophisticated. Polly is a houseguest in Georgia, where she meets Eleanor Hiss, a jazz age siren who may or may not have negro blood. The two girls deliberately lead a young Harvard man out into quicksand, then go joy riding in his car while he slowly drowns. Fitzgerald later wrote that Eleanor seduced Polly in an early draft -- but in 1922 the SATURDAY EVENING POST would never have carried a story with an explicit lesbian seduction.

"HOLY MATRIMONY" is the ironic finale to the Polly Parker stories. Invited on a weekend yachting party, Polly is compromised by an Eastern Prince and forced to marry silent movie star Reginald Dashwood. Dashwood is a homosexual who needs "discreet companionship." Polly marries him, assuming he is a pushover, but instead he is cruel, domineering and controlling -- and aided by an iron-willed mother who treats Polly like a servant. Polly's "punishment" is ironic, since she now has unlimited wealth and a dazzling husband -- but no freedom and no hope of either sexual or spiritual release.

Taken together, these three stories represent Fitzgerald's darkest early work -- and they should be included in any "definitive" collection.

I bought this book for the short stories. They are like small diamonds on a necklace, sparkling in a row, each one a wonder. Fitzgerald's short stories are like that.

"The Off Shore Pirate" is hilarious. The "Ice Palace" is strange and beautiful. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is about a baby born very old who gets younger every year.

"The Diamond As Big As The Ritz" is classic Fitzgerald, about the rich.

The story that is missing is "The Rich Boy." This is the story that started the famous spat between Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

In this short story, Fitzgerald writes: "The rich are very different from you and me." Hemingway responds in his short story, "The Snows Of Kilimanjaro:" "Yes, they have more money."

But you will not find "The Rich Boy" in this book. Too bad.

Included with the short stories are two novels:: This Side Of Paradise and The Beautiful And Damned. They are very adolescent novels. High school students might enjoy them.

Maybe not.

The short stories do more to describe the Jazz Age than his novels.

If you are serious about this author, his greatest novel is The Great Gatsby. His next best novel is Tender Is The Night. "The Rich Boy" is his best short story.

Jazz Age Stories is a collection of Fitzgerald's early works and a hodgepodge of storylines that don't overlap characters (except once very briefly) and repeat similar themes. Each story stands alone as unique, some more beautiful or haunting than others; some are plain duds so short that they ended before they seemed to have even started, leaving you wondering, "and so what's the point?" Overall, this book offers a good variety of both fun and thought.

I won't attempt to describe all the stories here and I can't pinpoint the "one" that I liked best, as many are standouts. The three tops for me were "Bernice Bobs Her Hair", "The Cut Glass Bowl", and "The Ice Palace". Others I liked were "Benediction", "Head and Shoulders", and "The Four Fists".

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" centers on Bernice who is spending a few weeks visiting her cousin Margaret; both are wealthy girls. It's a complex story about teenagers' personal relationships and how these teens deal with the opposite sex and how they interact among their own sex. It describes their obsessions to attain high social status and self-gratification, finally boiling down to their wicked pranks in using people to make themselves look good at the expense of others. The title character Bernice gets caught up in all of this. The ending is a classic!

I also enjoyed "The Cut Glass Bowl" in the way Fitzgerald masterfully builds his story around the characters coming into physical contact with the bowl and how that "contact" subsequently alters their lives. But this is not just any ordinary bowl.

"The Ice Palace" is the poignant tale of a small-town southern girl who goes north to visit her Yankee fiance and ends up experiencing a completely different world, one so foreign from her own in terms of the cold all around her, and I'm not just talking about the freezing snow and ice but also the personalities too.

"The Diamond As Big As the Ritz" got Fitzgerald a lot of attention, but I disliked it personally not only because it bordered on a bizarre science-fiction plot but also because the tone was hard-core surrealistic and dark. Even for a Fitzgerald piece, it was too absurd to enjoy because the plot was distracting. It's about a college student during summer vacation who visits his friend who comes from an ultra-super rich family living in the middle of nowhere in Montana in a jewel studded mansion guarded by anti-aircraft guns and where trespassers are kidnapped and held captive and guests are..... Well, that's an awful lot to swallow.

While Fitzgerald did write absurd plots, the tone in these were light and the storylines captivating. For instance: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is the reverse story of birth, in which the "baby" starts life as a 70 year old man and gradually grows younger and younger; and "O Russet Witch!", in which a single russet-hair, stunning beauty one day alights from a limousine and somehow as if by magic causes a massive traffic jam affecting the entire city of New York. Absurd, yes; but Fitzgerald's point is by no means absurd.

Finally, reading short stories in one respect is good, as you don't need to spend days or weeks to find out how they end, as is the case with novels. The downside is that since the stories are short they don't seem to deliver the same level of power or characterization that long novels do. However, with Fitzgerald's natural-born gift and exuberance for writing mesmerizing words, you can't go wrong with either kind of story, long or short.

F. Scott Fitzgerald may be remembered most often as the author of "The Great Gatsby", but during his lifetime, he earned most of his income by writing short stories for magazines. This compilation includes many of his earlier classics, all dealing with the same wealthy class of people that appear in his novels. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is a delightful tale about the lengths (literally) that girls will go to in order to fit in socially. "The Offshore Pirate" is a compelling and romantic story with an exciting and climactic ending. In addition, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", a longer and quite famous story has a brilliant plot; a boy visits his wealthy friend's home, and while he enjoys himself immensely and even falls in love, he finds out that the visit may come at a hefty price. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a hilarious story about a man born looking like he is 70 years old, and looking progressively younger as he "ages", so that he eventually seems younger than his grandson. All in all, you cannot miss with any of his stories, and they make great evening reads - one a day will surely keep the doctor away!

Nostalgia has an inevitable foreshortening effect upon reputation. For most of us, Fitzgerald is the perenially young, perenially arch chronicler of the 1920s Jazz Age -- of bathtub gin, flappers, rumrunners and boats born ceaselessly back.

This collection of short stories does much to restore an unappreciated side of Fitzgerald the writer, most notably his willingness to experiment with technique, his almost existential grasp of human absurdity and his articulation of unease and pessimism about the possibilities of the American Dream.

The stories range widely in quality from precious parodies from his Princeton years ("Jemina") to profoundly moving glimpses of the human condition ("The Lees of Happiness"). Even the most insubstantial of the stories printed here are worth the read for, if nothing else, they show that even at his youngest and roughest, Fitzgerald had a keen grasp of voice and description and how to use it to breath life into wispy plot lines.

I take issue with some of the critical recommendations contained in Patrick O'Donnell's fine introduction to the collection. I did not, for instance, find "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" particularly impressive. I think the best stories are those that hew to a psychological theme prevalent in Fitzgerald's fiction and his adult life -- the dread of what comes after youth and a nostalgic fixation on youth as the best time in a person's life. The stories I liked most -- "The Lees of Happiness," "The Ice Palace," "The Cut Glass Bowl," "Benediction," "The Four Fists," "'O Russet Witch!'" -- all tackle this theme.

Many of the stories in this volume aren't profound, but are just a delightful read. I defy you, for instance, to read "The Camel's Back" without bursting out loud in laughter over its protagonist's gyrations and setbacks in quest of his true love.

There is a wistfulness at the center of Fitzgerald's prose and his life story that seems to have faded from our collective remembrance of him as a Great American Author. This volume does much to remind us of that winsome note and to remind us that Fitzgerald paid dearly for it in his personal life as it lit up his writing at the same time.