superzelda: the graphic life of zelda fitzgerald. tiziana lo porto and danielle marotta.

i was so excited when i read about "superzelda", a graphic (love the pun!) novel about zelda fitzgerald! it had to be amazing!  and it was!! 

this is the perfect introduction to people new to the amazing yet tragic mess that is zelda fitzgerald.  it covers all of her life. the high points when she was the world's favorite flapper to the low points with her mental illness.  essentially it is pretty much is an illustrated cliffnotes for nancy milford's "zelda" but i mean what is wrong with illustrated cliffnotes?

i will say that i did learn one new thing from this graphic novel.  i knew scott wasn't allowed burial in a catholic cemetery but didn't know that decision was reversed and he and zelda were moved.

here were my favorite parts:

i always admired zelda for being her own person.

their partying was notorious but love the inclusion of josephine baker in his drawing.

this was a recipe harper and brothers included in "recipes of famous women".  zelda was kind of cook!

the perfect ending to this book.

if you love zelda fitzgerald, you should check this out.  her life was quite amazing and this is a good overview of it.

call me zelda. erika robuck. (121)

yes, another zelda book, though "call me zelda" is not directly about zelda fitzgerald but told from the perspective of her fictional nurse, anna howard.  the novel is set during zelda's time at phipps psychiatric clinic and though based on real incidents in zelda's life, it is about anna's life which was affected my zelda.

i came across the novel while googling about other zelda books so i didn't know anything about it until i read the first page.   i have to admit that i was a little disappointed that the protagonist was nurse anna and not zelda.  i am not a fan of fan fiction and this is kinda borderline fan fiction (though it did open my mind, i am going to give "the paris wife" a chance, though the fact that i found it for $1 was a huge factor as well).  i guess it's more like historical fiction, but regardless of what you call it, i wasn't a fan.  i found it overly sentimental, predictable and unimaginative.  

at first i thought it was cute how anna was the one that suggested zelda write for the doctors and also sent off zelda's manuscript to scribner's (both which occurred in real life).  however, other than that i didn't approve of anne's relationship with zelda.  it was extremely unprofessional and she crossed a handful of lines that could have been detrimental to zelda's recovery.  instead of being a nurse, anna turned into a sad schoolgirl trying her best to befriend the popular girl.  i mean she told her parents the instant she could about zelda being institutionalized (isn't there some client confidentially thing?).  she also became obsessed with zelda which was not healthy for either one of them.

and i hate to sound soulless but i felt that anna's missing-in-action husband and dead daughter was too cliché of a storyline.  though we saw the world via anna's eyes we never got into the inner workings of her soul.  i mean her husband and daughter were constantly brought up but simply as a way to know anna gave up on life but never complex enough to know what she truly struggled with it.

i also disliked how anna's life cleaned up so nicely.  i mean really, her husband's best friend shows up and they fall in love, but wait her husband might have been found . . . but no he didn't, now she can marry his best friend and not feel like she is betraying him!  all is well in the world.

last but not least, i absolutely abhorred anna's journey to find zelda's journals.  i have no idea why the author decided to focus on these journals, i doubt it would have been a wish of the real zelda to have them back.  i know real life zelda had issues with scott using them in his novels but wouldn't having them physically add to her anguish rather than relieve it?  and then finding them in the basement of their connecticut home?!?! really????  again, way too tidy of an ending.

another issue i had was the use of the polaroid camera on anna's journey.  she explained that her husband paid a fortune for it, but how could they afford that and not daily phone calls? in addition to that, i am sure the camera cost a lot but i can only imagine how much the film cost.  the cost of film made me think that anna's scrapbook for zelda was extremely unlikely.

the only thing that did genuinely shocked and impressed me was that the author included zelda's death in the novel.  but i will be judgey and say oh what a blessing that anna got the journals to zelda in enough time to give her peace before her death.

i hate to be a book snob but this was the worse of the zelda novels i have recently read.  everything in the story cleaned up too nicely, i can't handle movies with the hollywood endings, and the same goes for my novels.

beautiful fools. r. clifton spargo. (118)

after reading "z", i discovered a handful of novels dedicated to zelda fitzgerald have been published recently (i am assuming) to run on the coat tails of baz lurhman's "the great gatsby" release.  and of course, adoring zelda as i do, decided to read all of them.  the second one i chose was "beautiful fools" by r. clifton spargo.

"beautiful fools" as it said on the cover is about the last of affair of zelda and f. scott fitzgerald.  as i learned in "zelda", the fitzgeralds took a trip to cuba  (after zelda did not go on the institution's cuba trip),and  though they did not know it at the time, it would be their last trip together.  this novel is a fictional tale about that trip, though the complexity of their relationship was based on truth.  and of course the title, is from "the great gatsby", words scott took from zelda's lips at scottie's birth and put them on daisy's lips.  and though it was zelda's wish for scottie to be a beautiful fool, it's safe to say that both zelda and scott were beautiful fools so the title is appropriate.

the trip to cuba is disastrous from the start.  zelda saw it as an opportunity to save their marriage by proving she was well, while scott used it as a means to escape his life in hollywood and his mistress.  spargo created a handful of incidents that exasperated their already strained relationship.  scott meets some shady characters and puts zelda and him in some sticky situations, i won't spoil it but lets just say there is a barroom brawl and some cockfightings. but zelda does create a handful of awkward situations herself, including a trip to a clairvoyant.  however, regardless of the events that occur, scott and zelda would have had a troubling time regardless due to their relationship woe.

as i discussed in the post for "z", fowler discussed how people are divided into camp zelda or camp scott, however, spargo did an excellent job in "beautiful fools" of demonstrating how scott and zelda were both guilty of ruining their marriage.  as i read i was frustrated with zelda's neediness and erratic behavior and scott's drinking and money-wasting.  they were both on self-destruct mode.  as wonderful as they started off in their youth, they both had an equal hand in their demise.  which again reminded me of my very own zelda-scott relationship, i once had a disastrous trip to mexico with the same friend i talked about in the "zelda" post.  just like scott and zelda, drinking added a lot of drama to our trip. after the trip, we both spent time convincing ourself the other was responsible for the drama that occurred but looking back, we really were both to blame.  oddly enough, we did manage to scrape our trip together by putting aside our differences.  and even though i though it was the end of our friendship, it survived it.  (though only for a year or so after).  but even with all of its drama, i can look back at the trip and not be bitter and recognize it as experience that occurred at no fault of anyone but just the way life went.

the trip ends with zelda (though thought of as fragile because of her condition) taking charge and taking care of scott and the mess he gets them in.  and i guess that is what i admired about the fitzgeralds in this story. they were not perfect but they managed because they truly loved each other.  as scott in the novel said, "she was the only thing he truly loved in the world but his love was twisted and wounded  and he could never again make it a simple, straightforward thing."  and that is what happens with love sometimes, it gets injured but does not seize to exist.  and at our lowest points that love will be strong enough to help us endure.

i enjoyed "beautiful fools" more than "z" because spargo is the better writer.  while fowler's zelda felt forced, spargo's zelda was as colorful as i assumed the real one would be based on all i have read so far.  my only critique is that i got tired of all the war and fascist talk but i mean those topics were probably on the tips of everyone tongues during that time.  but all in all, a novel, i would assume scott and zelda would not be ashamed to appear in.

the last tycoon. f. scott fitzgerald. (115)

i have read all of f. scott's fitzgerald's novels with the exception of "the last tycoon".  i skipped it because it was published posthumously.  novels that are published after an author's death seem incomplete to me.  sure there are notes and outlines that can help complete it but what if while the author was writing a new idea struck him/her than those outlines and notes would be pointless.  a novel should have the author's stamp of approval before it is released to the world.  

however, after reading nancy milford's "zelda", i decided to give in and read "the last tycoon".  while reading "zelda" i realized that all of fitzgerald's novels are pretty much autobiographies so i needed to read "the last tycoon" to get a glimpse into his life when he was in hollywood and zelda was institutionalized.  also milford mentioned that the love interest in "the last tycoon" was not based on zelda but fitzgerald's mistress at the time, sheliah graham.  due to this i felt i had to read fitzgerald take on his affair.  in addition to this it would also help give some background for my next fitzgerald read "beautiful fools" a novel by r. clifton spargo about a trip scott and zelda.  the trip takes place during the time period scott was living in hollywood and graham was his mistress.

though zelda did not know of graham, she knew kathleen was not modeled after her, as all of the previous fitzgerald female characters had been.  milford explained in her book that zelda did not like the heroine of "the last tycoon", kathleen.  and maybe all of my recent zelda reading has made me biased but i also did not like kathleen.  kathleen was unworthy of stahr's love, there was no piazza or wow to her other than her resemblance to his dead wife, minna.  oddly enough, milford explained that graham had a striking resemblance to zelda.  (i will expand on this in a bit).  there seemed to be no real chemistry between stahr and kathleen other than a physical attraction.  also kathleen seemed to have no backbone or heart, she didn't read as mysterious but a coward.   i didn't like how she kept her engagement a secret from stahr. i felt like  she played with stahr's emotions because she liked being in proximity to power.  the narrator explained how kathleen was "un-hollywood" but she still played games like she was part of the hollywood set.  kathleen was also a bit of a bore, she had relationships with interesting men but was not interesting herself.  maybe fitzgerald would have developed her more but as kathleen is, she does not deserve to be the object of stahr's affection.

however, if you read "the last tycoon" as autobiographical than the lack of actual chemistry between stahr and kathleen is a good thing because it demonstrated that fitzgerald's love for graham was superficial.  in the novel, stahr is a widow and his initial attraction to kathleen is because she looked like his dead wife.  as mentioned before, in real life graham looked like zelda, though zelda was not dead, her institutionalization must have felt like her death to fitzgerald.  stahr does not seem to be in love with kathleen but rather with the sentiment that she arose in him based one her likeness to minna.  it must have been the same for fitzgerald and graham.  as shown in milford's book, zelda's institualtionalizations was a burden on fitzgerald but he still loved her.  and though i do not condone fitzgerald's infidelity, i do not think he really loved graham.  i think she was a placeholder for his actual feelings for zelda, just as kathleen was for minna.  fitzgerald like stahr was not content with life and grasped onto a girl to hopefully find fulfillment.  even more odd, fitzgerald died without resolving his novel just like stahr died so we never get a resolution on his affair with kathleen.  however, i am going to say that stahr and kathleen's relationship would have amounted to nothing because like zelda for scott, minna was stahr's true love.  (i can and will admit that my interpretation of stahr's superficial love for kathleen is my need to have scott and zelda be the true love i think of it as, i mean i know they were a mess but there was something magical about them.)

"the last tycoon" also focused on hollywood and it's politics, not only in terms of the country (their is talk anout who is "red") but also within studios.  it was interesting to read about it though i didn't find it completely enthralling.  i also liked the narrator, cecilia, she reminded me of nick from "the great gatsby" both have an endearing naivety to them though cecilia does have a bit of a conniving streak.  

i also enjoyed reading the notes f. scott fitzgerald left for it.  it's amazing to see all the prework that goes into writing a novel.  i was shocked that he gave himself a word limit.  he wanted to keep it short like "the great gatsby".  i also loved how his characters have such depth backgrounds though we might not be shown all of it, fitzgerald at least saw them as a complete person.

i do wish fitzgerald was able to finish it.  i am not sure it would have been on the level of "the great gatsby" but i think not would have made for an excellent film.  one was made in 62, i think, i want to see it but it probably would have been better if it was based on a completed novel,

z: a novel of zelda fitzgerald. therese anne fowler. (113)

of course with the release of the latest film version of "the great gatsby", there would be a resurgence of interest in the fitzgeralds.  so when i heard about "z" by therese anne fowler, a novel about zelda fitzgerald, i had to check it out!

my interest in the fitzgeralds came via woody allen's "midnight in paris". the fitzgeralds especially zelda with her "lets go i am bored" demands were a delight.  and of course, all the myths about their partying intrigued me.  as a result, i read his novels (except the last tycoon) and hers plus a handful of their short stories.  and as a result of that read their wikipedia page to find out what was true in their books and it seemed like their novels were pretty autobiographical.  though intrigued by their life, i never picked up a bio or a book of their letters.  but i wish i had.

if i had read a bio, i would not have spent the whole novel thinking, did this really happen? i mean i know it is a novel but i hadn't realized zelda had called off their engagement though "this side of paradise" alludes to that.  i also didn't realize that the housekeeper from "the beautiful and the damned" was real.  also the squirrel coat really existed too!  or that the actress from "tender is the night" was based on lois moran, i knew the novel's affair was based on a real affair but didn't realize it was based on an actual actress that young (i had to google her, and she will only be famous for her literary counterpart).  i wanted to read nancy milford's bio of zelda which has been sitting on my bookshelf but since "z" is due back at the library on thursday didn't think i had the time.  oh well, this has sparked my need to read that, reread "save me the waltz" and another novel called "beautiful fools" about scott's last affair.

so back to "z", though interesting, i will admit that at times i did get a bit bored.  i mean i got it, scott was an alcoholic and as a result was a horrible husband.  in an afterword, fowler discussed how there are two camps "team scott" or "team zelda" when it comes to who was the victim in their destructive relationship.  i have always been team zelda, i mean, have you read a "tender is the night" and "save me the waltz"?!?! both novels discuss the same period in their life and i read scott as the destructive one.  sure nicole and alabama were instituationlized but its known some women were instituationlized for having "crazy" thought of independence and rejecting the cult of domesticity versus actual

illness.  

this point of view of zelda's bouts in mental institutions was interested and i appreciated fowler's presentation of it as such.  as i read about z's (i'll use z for the character in the book and zelda for the real zelda) time in institutions it demonstrated how she was not crazy but just rejected the traditional female roles society forced upon her.  she didn't want to stay at home and live a life of leisure.  she wanted to participate in the social sphere.  in addition to that,  she wanted to be seen as an individual from her husband.  and what did scott expect? the very spirit and personality he fell in love with was the same one he tried to mute later in life.  and plus with all the alcohol involved plus the partying its no surprised they had issues (see:  my life 2007-10).  also it was sad to see how writing was good therapy for z but she was not allowed to do it.  

in the afterword, fowler also mentioned zelda was probably misdiagnosed and today would be diagnosed as bipolar.  also her meds harmed her more than help.  though i think it was the time period that was against her versus any mental illness, it reminded me of the book "girl interrupted", these women were not crazy only had too progressive thoughts for the time period. z's "illness" was really just an unwillingness to conform to female gender roles.

though i did appreciate fowler's painting of z's institutionalization, there were some things i could have done without.  one being all the hemingway nonsense. i get that hemingway and zelda hated each other but that scene when hem made a pass at z was way too graphic for my liking.  z had her outlandish moments but that seemed really out of character.   also i did not enjoy all the fairy talk.  i know cole porter was questationable (i did see "de-lovely" and fairy or not he is one of my favorite songwriters) but did people really question ernest and scott's relationship?!?  and then the scene with scott's moaning?  i think that was all done in poor taste.

[author's note:  so i just finished reading in nancy milford's biography,"zelda", that the moaning incident did occur.  and there was talk of hemingway and fitzgerald being faires!]

and my last critique is that fowler's "z" wasn't as colorful as the real zelda.  zelda's works are always filled with clever little lines and musings but there wasn't too much of that in "z".  i mean fowler tried but didn't succeed.  also i got tried of z interrupting awkward moments with a comment about dancing.  though i guess she was the epitome of the flapper girl.

all in all, glad i read it since it sparked a new interest in the fitzgeralds.  but left me wondering what really went on.  and as a result,  i plan on reading alot more about f. scott and zelda.

ps i totally forgot.  so the book is divided into parts and have an epigraph.  all of them were quite delightful:

always be drunk:

thought this quite clever since scott was a wordsmith:

and of course how great was the dedication page:

the great gatsby. f. scott fitzgerald.

before i start, seriously how tender is the dedication page. it's about as tender as night is.

so as i explained in my previous post i wasn't impressed with my initial reading of "the great gatsby". looking back, it's probably because instead of getting a great love story between daisy and gatsby, i got a lesson on how one should leave the past in the past. and since i was looking for love and came up empty handed, i reacted like the cold hearted person i am, indifferent. it wasn't bad but it didn't make leave a lasting impression on me. plus "the great gatsby" is always always claimed as an important american classic but i didn't seem that great to me.

however, on my second read i had a greater appreciation for "the great gatsby". i am embarrassed that on my first reading, i neglected fitzgerald's beautiful prose. i remember finding so many great lines in "this side of paradise" (which was my second fitzgerald read) but didn't find any lines interesting on my first read, but that definitely changed on my second. maybe it's because i have become a more avid reader of the classics and also have read more of fitzgerald's works so am now more qualified to identify great lines. here are some of my favorite:

“if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away."

“i hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“there are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

“and I like large parties. they’re so intimate. at small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

“i wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”

“let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

"it was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.”

“in his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

“thirty--the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
(god, it sucks getting old).

and of course with this more careful reading, i realized how great of a novel
"the great gatsby" is.  the story line had so many twist and turns. first there is the mystery and suspense of "who is gatsby". my favorite tale was of the girl who ripped her dress at his party and how he sent her a replacement. then, of course the story of love lost then found. and last but not least the surprising ending of gatsby and the demonstration of how horrible and cruel people can be. unfortunately, gatsby's ending was for the best because as horrible as tom was, daisy would have never left him. and loke i said before it is so sad how daisy and tom ruined people's lives and then just moved on with their own.

in my usual fashion with love stories (see: anna karenina, wuthering heights) i could not indulge in gatsby's love for daisy. instead of finding it romantic, i found it pathetic. yes, i believe that everyone has one great love in their life but if life doesn't work out for you than that person was not your true great love. trust me, i spent years pining after one person in my twenties and realize now that i was not in love with that person but in love with the idea of him. and that is what happen with gatsby, he wasn't in love with daisy but the memory of her. daisy was no longer the young girl from louisville, gatsby fell in love with but he couldn't grasp that. gatsby's inability to understand this is because he got stuck in a moment (to quote U2). and that is the saddest part of the book, even more sad than his death. whereas daisy went on with her life: got married, had a kid and lived; gatsby stayed trapped by his love for her. he spent 5 years trying to impress her, some may call this romance but i call it a waste of time.

but of course, it's unhappy ending is what makes it more true. i know i hated it at first but in actuality it is what makes the story great. and my sincerest apologies to f. scott, it is great but still think it would have been more compelling if i read it at an earlier age.

ps. flavorpill had an article about reading "the great gatsby" for the first time at 37 article about reading "the great gatsby" for the first time at the age of 37. it best describes why one should read it at an earlier age though it is good at any age.