Books 16 & 17 - A Fitzgerald Combustion!

Book 16: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

*I wanted to group these two books because together, they both focus on the tumultuous marriage between Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.

SPOILER: I only talk extensively about this novel because it is a classic and I feel certain that most people have come across it at some point in their lives.

The Great Gatsby
(click here to purchase)

Description: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. [Amazon]

I remember reading this novel during my Junior year in high school, but I don't feel as though I (or any other students my age) were really able to enjoy and appreciate it for what it really is. I remember a couple of things: the two eggs, new/old money, the dashing Gatsby and the very beautiful Daisy. What I do not remember is the web of tangled relationships among the characters, which makes for some fantastic reading.

Upon beginning the novel, I thought it was a very simple story, something that Hemingway might write (please do not yell at me for referring to Hemingway as simple). Nick Carraway is a young man working in bonds who moves next door to Gatsby's extravagant mansion. Though there are rumors spread around about Gatsby from the beginning of the book, readers do not actually meet him until Nick does in Chapter 3. I really enjoyed how Fitzgerald kept Gatsby behind a curtain if you will until just the right moment (during a party he is throwing on his property).

I find it extremely romantic that Gatsby, who grew up in poverty and cheated his way to the top of the social ladder, worked for five years to make his life just how Daisy, the love of his life, would want it. There's also something very beautiful and symbolic about the green light (his "dream") at the end of Daisy's property that he can see from his own home. As the novel progresses, Gatsby learns (or, I should rather say, denies) that once he has obtained his dream (Daisy), the green light which he clung so tightly to no longer has any magical qualities of a future with Daisy.

The relationships in this novel are out of this world. Of course, there is the rekindled love of Daisy and Gatsby (which ended five years earlier when Gatsby "goes off to the war" and ends again at the end of the novel). Daisy is really Nick's cousin, and she tries to put him together with Jordan, a professional golfer (who I really liked!). Daisy's own husband, Tom, has yet another woman on the side, Myrtle, while Myrtle's husband, Wilson, is both oblivious and terribly wrong about her infidelity. In the end, Nick leaves Jordan in New York and returns to the Midwest, Daisy goes back to Tom and they move yet again, and Wilson murders Gatsby and then takes his own life after Daisy accidentally kills Myrtle with Gatsby's car (which leads Wilson to think that Gatsby is both the other lover and the murderer).

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I stayed up real late on Friday, May 10th finishing the novel. I cried my eyes out after learning about Gatsby's unfortunate end, Nick's shattered view of life, and the destruction of New York during the roaring 20s due to the ending summer that the characters have lived through to the fullest. I cried, and then I cried some more, and I remember having a hard time falling asleep because I wanted to save Gatsby, to tell him that just because his dreams were unattainable, he could still try to make a new life for himself. I lied away in bed, contemplating one last question I had burning inside of me: Had Gatsby not been murdered by Wilson, how could the story have been different?

Meet the author: F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the major American writers of the twentieth century -- a figure whose life and works embodied powerful myths about our national dreams and aspirations. Fitzgerald was talented and perceptive, gifted with a lyrical style and a pitch-perfect ear for language. He lived his life as a romantic, equally capable of great dedication to his craft and reckless squandering of his artistic capital. He left us one sure masterpiece, The Great Gatsby; a near-masterpiece, Tender Is the Night; and a gathering of stories and essays that together capture the essence of the American experience. His writings are insightful and stylistically brilliant; today he is admired both as a social chronicler and a remarkably gifted artist. [Wikipedia]

**I also went to see the film version of The Great Gatsby, and it was simply perfect. It was 100% true to the book (which I always prefer over differences between the two).

F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald

Book 17: Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck

* The morning I finished The Great Gatsby, I went to the book store hoping to find another novel by Fitzgerald or something else set in the 1920s (I'm quite a fan of flappers, illegal drinking, and the secrets of those living in the early twentieth century!). I really had no idea which book I was going to purchase. The first table I walked over to was the "New in Paperback" table. Ironically, the first book I noticed was titled Call Me Zelda, and I knew instantly that it was about THE Zelda Fitzgerald. Upon further inspection of the book, I learned that author Erika Robuck took very factual information from the Fitzgeralds' lives and wrote a novel, a story, about them, focusing solely on Zelda. I knew I had to have this book and walked out of the store with it.

Description: Everything in the ward seemed different now, and I no longer felt its calming presence. The Fitzgeralds stirred something in me that had been dormant for a long time, and I was not prepared to face it....

 

Call Me Zelda
(click here to purchase)

From New York to Paris, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald reigned as king and queen of the Jazz Age, seeming to float on champagne bubbles above the mundane cares of the world. But to those who truly knew them, the endless parties were only a distraction from their inner turmoil, and from a love that united them with a scorching intensity.

When Zelda is committed to a Baltimore psychiatric clinic in 1932, vacillating between lucidity and madness in her struggle to forge an identity separate from her husband, the famous writer, she finds a sympathetic friend in her nurse, Anna Howard. Held captive by her own tragic past, Anna is increasingly drawn into the Fitzgeralds’ tumultuous relationship. As she becomes privy to Zelda’s most intimate confessions, written in a secret memoir meant only for her, Anna begins to wonder which Fitzgerald is the true genius. But in taking ever greater emotional risks to save Zelda, Anna may end up paying a far higher price than she intended.... [Amazon]

I could not wait to get home and begin reading this book (but first, I had to finish Gatsby, of course!). Just holding this book in my hands allowed me to step into the lives of F. Scott and Zelda. During the 20s, men were thought to be more important than women. That being sad, I was glad that someone finally gave Zelda a voice of her own (no matter how much of it was true or not).

The story begins immediately when we meet Nurse Anna, the story's protagonist and narrator. I was first confused as to why Zelda was not telling her own story in first person, but I soon learned that her story seems much more distraught/crazy/hopeful/sad/ecstatic when we are in contact with Zelda through someone else's eyes. On page one, we learn that Zelda is being checked into Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at John Hopkins University Hospital (Baltimore, Maryland) because of her schizophrenia, anxiety, and bipolar disorders, something that Zelda factually suffered from in her real life and throughout her marriage to F. Scott.

As a nurse, Anna knows how to set boundaries between herself and her patients, but something in Zelda disables her ability to step back. As Zelda reveals more and more about herself, Anna learns that what's making her attach herself to Zelda is the fact that she, too, has suffered her own tragedies - her husband has gone missing in the war more than fifteen years ago and her young daughter passed away suddenly after catching a deadly illness. Alone, frightened, and on the brink of giving up, Anna relates much more to Zelda than she ever thought possible.

Zelda, on the other hand, opens up to Anna only, and soon Anna's life solely becomes caring for Zelda. After Zelda leaves the hospital to live at home with her husband and their daughter, Scottie, Anna resigns from her position at the clinic to work full-time with Zelda. Whereas she used to go out with her brother, Peter, (who's studying to be a priest) and spend one weekend a month at her parents house outside of Baltimore, Anna begins spiraling further down with Zelda into the dark world within the Fitzgerald home. Fitzgerald, while he cares deeply for Zelda, is an alcoholic who steals Zelda's own writings and uses them in his novels. Another fact that I should point out is that Zelda did publish her own writings against Fitzgerald's wishes in which she describes their unwinding marriage, and some of the content within her private journals can be found in his novels, word-for-word. Likewise, Fitzgerald describes his version of their marriage in his novel, Tender is the Night, which I hope to read in the near future.

What more can I say about the book without giving anything away? It is a story of deep, enduring love, relationships (both supportive and toxic), second chances, and redemption. I love historical fiction because when I read it, I am really put directly in the middle of a scene that once took place in the past.



Erika Robuck

Call Me Zelda is not a book that you want to pass up. Even if it doesn't seem to be your cup of tea, give it a shot. This has probably been the best book I've read this year. I've come to admire this author so much that I've even read Robuck's first novel, Receive Me Falling (another historical novel which I will blog on later). Her second novel, Hemingway's Girl, is sitting on my "to read" pile beside my bed. And you guessed it - it, too, is historical fiction about Hemingway and his relationship with another woman. Robuck is currently working on her fourth novel about Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of my very favorite authors.

Meet the author: Erika Robuck self-published her first novel, RECEIVE ME FALLING. NAL/Penguin published her second novel, HEMINGWAY'S GIRL, and will release her forthcoming title, CALL ME ZELDA on May 7, 2013. Erika has an historical fiction book blog, and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Hemingway Society. [Amazon]

To visit Erika, follow these links:

Erika Robuck SITE
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UPCOMING BOOK: Receive Me Falling by Erika Robuck
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