F. Scott Fitzgerald [Paperback]

Ruth Prigozy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2004

Joyce Carol Oates said of F Scott Fitzgerald: 'Rarely is a literary figure so seemingly exemplary in the most terrible, tragi-pathetic of ways.' This book gives a revealing insight into the life and world of one of America's greatest writers. Scott Fitzgerald's life reads like one of his own stories: a young man of great promise marries into wealth, but beneath the golden surface lie alcoholism, debt, insecurity, and in Fitzgerald's particular case, the mental instability of his beautiful, unconventional wife, Zelda. In the face of these sorrows, Fitzgerald wrote brilliant, diamond-sharp prose and in The Great Gatsby he captured for all time the dark side of the American Dream. Many of the photos in this volume have never before been published, including a photo of the location where Fitzgerald and Zelda became engaged, along with rare first edition book jackets, paintings by Zelda, and photos of friends and colleagues, among them Maxwell Perkins, Gerald and Sara Murphy, and Fitzgerald's great rival Ernest Hemingway. Acclaimed Fitzgerald scholar Ruth Prigozy provides fresh insight into the life of the novelist who, in both his work and life, captured the rise and fall of the Jazz Age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Biographical Details Love literature but lack leisure? Readers who appreciate the bestselling Penguin Lives series in theory but find the volumes a trifle text-heavy in practice will flock to the new Overlook Illustrated Lives series, in which scholars gloss the lives and times of great 20th-century writers in slim books replete with photographs. Ruth Prigozy's F. Scott Fitzgerald ($19.95 158p ISBN 1-58567-265-3; July), Jeremy Adler's Franz Kafka (164p -267-X) and Mary Ann Caws's Virginia Woolf (136p -264-5) make up the first batch; volumes on Nabokov and Beckett are slated for publication this fall. The reproductions of family portraits, letters, movie posters and paintings are fascinating, and the pared-down bios are clean and highly readable.(July)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The Overlook Press Illustrated Lives series offers a new thumbnail biography of a major twentieth-century writer. This new entry is a worthy addition to a valuable series: readable, accurate, and visually effective. But make no mistake: the focus here is almost entirely biographical. Critical discussion of the writer's work is kept to a minimum. What distinguishes this brief biography is the number and quality of the illustrations. The editors have graced almost every page with telling, sometimes haunting, images of the author, his friends and family, the places and objects that meant so much to him. Thus we can trace the rise and fall of Scott and Zelda in pictures as well as words. The writing is lucid, brisk, and unpretentious--perfect for the casual fan or the student looking for an accessible introduction to the life of this major figure. The book closes with a useful bibliography and a reasonably thorough "life at a glance" chronology. Trygve Thoreson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 158 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Press (October 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0715632949
• ISBN-13: 978-0715632949
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid if not in depth survey of Fitzgerald's life, August 10, 2004

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: F. Scott Fitzgerald (Overlook Illustrated Lives) (Hardcover)

If you are looking for a very brief and enjoyable biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, this volume will certainly fill the need. Like other books in the series, it features a fairly short account of the subject's life and writings illustrated with a host of photographs. The other books in the series that I have read tended to focus a bit more on the social and regional context for the author's work, which is one of the weaknesses of this particular book. Though Fitzgerald is identified as a leading figure of the Jazz Age, not a great deal of text is expended on explaining precisely what this was and how it made his context different from other writers.

Neither is much attention lavished on Fitzgerald's achievements as a writer. The publication dates of his various works are noted, and mention is made of their relative critical and financial success, but if someone who had read nothing of Fitzgerald's work were asked to say something of the nature of his fiction after reading this book, I believe they would be unable to say anything with any certainty. What were Fitzgerald's unique contributions to American literature? What was his approach to the novel and the short story, and how did this differ from his predecessors? These questions are simply not addressed.

In the end, I found myself highly entertained by the recounting of major events in the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. How could it be otherwise? Few writers in American history have had such an interesting life, if also so short. Yet at the end there is the sense that far more was left unaddressed than addressed. All in all, the book feels like a lost opportunity to produce a solid short biography or a major American writer.

I do recommend the book, though I also hope for a competing volume. The illustrations are marvelous, and the book does do a good job of marshalling all the key figures in Fitzgerald's life. But in the end anyone really wanting to learn much about Fitzgerald will be left with the need to pursue the subject further. Contrast this with the Kafka volume in the same series and my point will be clearer.