Zelda: A Biography (P.S.) [Paperback]

Nancy Milford (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 29, 2011 | Series: P.S.

Acclaimedbiographer Nancy Milford brings to life the tormented, elusive personality ofZelda Sayre and clarifies as never before her relationship with F. ScottFitzgerald, tracing the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing womanundone by the clash between her husband’s career and her own talent. Zelda was an instant touchstone forcreatively inspired readers after its initial publication in 1983; Patti Smithhails it in her autobiography, Just Kids,recalling how “reading the story of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford, Iidentified with her mutinous spirit.” Now, the penetrating biography of one oftwentieth century literature’s most misunderstood figures—a book the New York Times calls “profound,overwhelmingly moving . . . [and] a richly complex love story” is availableagain in a handsome paperback edition from Harper Perennial.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Zelda Sayre started out as a Southern beauty, became an international wonder, and died by fire in a madhouse. With her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, she moved in a golden aura of excitement, romance, and promise. The epitome of the Jazz Age, they rode the crest of the era to its collapse and their own.

As a result of years of exhaustive research, Nancy Milford brings alive the tormented, elusive personality of Zelda and clarifies as never before her relationship with Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda traces the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing woman, torn by the clash between her husband’s career and her own talent.

About the Author

Nancy Milford holds both an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University where Zelda was her dissertation. She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Biography, and has served on the boards of the Authors Guild, the Society of American Historians, and the Writers Room, of which she is a founder. Her most recent book is Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She lives in Manhattan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reissue edition (November 29, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062089390
• ISBN-13: 978-0062089397
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat skewed look at an idiosyncratic talent October 7, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I re-read this as a sometime writer myself, and first read it when I was about fourteen. Now it appears to me that Zelda created original images in her writing -- as well as emotional connections -- that hadn't been put together quite that way before. Her letters, as quoted by the author, teem with improvisational phrases, original images, and sometimes deep insight, although her use of the self-important elegiac tone is typically, generally, in our culture only granted to certain male writers.

Fitgerald was eager -- obsessed -- to make a name for himself, and her talent (which came through even in her madness) became his plagarized muse. Both of them fell victim to these circumstances and mindset.
After reading this bio I would bet dollars to donuts that the image that kicks off "Tender is the Night," "the tan prayer-rug of a beach," was thought up by Zelda. This bio makes clear, to my mind at least, that Scott, acutely aware of the demands of the literary craft, recognized and basically stole her strikingly visual phrases, to sprinkle through his own writing; as well as making her life the subject of several of his stories and novels.
The drawback to this book and what makes it progressively harder to read is that, in the latter half, the author Milford often uses narrative structure to drain both any sympathy for Zelda's condition and any empathy which admiration for Zelda's talent might cause. Often after a typically striking example of Zelda's prose, Milford will follow it with, "She was truly alone now," or "Her face looked haggard as she..." Milford seems to focus on such not-really-telling "details" of Zelda's life to hide her own (Milford's) basic lack of empathy.
It is tempting to read this bio and then throw up one's hands at both of them, as mere pawns of Twenties Madison Avenue or of the jaded jet-set; and paint Scott as the sufferer. (Scott used Zelda's imagistic prose, but it didn't go the other way around; Zelda's autobiographical novel, "Save Me the Waltz," made her narrative limitations clear.) If you read carefully Zelda's letters excerpted throughout the bio and are familiar with Scott's work, you will retain some sympathy for the both of them, and have no doubt that if Scott hadn't had her words, her self, and her insights to use here and there, there would be no Fitzgerald legacy.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Zelda," By Nancy Milford May 29, 2003

By Poetpaint

Format:Paperback

I absolutely adored this book. It is extremely depressing at times to read considering the life of the woman the book is based upon, but other than that, it was fascinating. Milford' writing style is unique as well as informative and quite objective. The details about Zelda's life could only come from an author who has done her research. I would definetly recommend this book.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars More important than good September 16, 2010

By C. Ackerman

Format:Paperback

Many of the other reviews of this biography by Nancy Milford give a misleading picture of it. First, there seems to be such a need or desire to see Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald as a feminist heroine that this biography is misread. There is, to be sure, some evidence that Zelda had some literary talent of her own: she actively contributed to her husband's best work, she wrote some stories that were published under his name and he suggested in a letter that if she hadn't met him, she would have grown into a genius. Yet it's clear Milford, when writing this book, had a more circumscribed view. She read all or near all of Zelda's surviving fiction and found much of it shallow or incoherent.

Second, the other reviews don't, in my view, really convey the depth of tragedy here. If Ford Madox Ford had a time-traveling library and could have read this book, he would not have begun The Good Soldier with, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." Instead, he would have sad, "This is the second saddest story I have ever heard." Zelda and F. Scott became an incredibly famous and glamorous couple in the early 1920s, but within a decade, their lives were complete misery. F. Scott was a raging alcoholic and his inept responses to what in hindsight were early signs of his wife's mental illness would likely be considered abusive today. And Zelda for her part wasn't particularly loveable. The sheer gratuitousness and abruptness of Zelda's death only underscores the sadness of it all.

The book has two phases. The first reads like a documentary version of The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald's novel of an imploding society couple. In fact, Milford quotes a letter by F. Scott lamenting that he wrote it so young because the parts that weren't autobiographical when he wrote it became so (with the implication that he could have done parts better). Because Milford's biography has to adhere the archival record and can't cut loose with the exuberance of the Fitzgerald novel, it feels prodding in comparison, of interest mainly for showing how creative F. Scott was even with autobiographical materials.

The second half describes Zelda's descent into schizophrenia. This part doesn't feel particularly coherent at times, but then again, coherence is an awfully high standard to ask for a history of someone with a very poor grip on reality (especially when, as I suspect, the records available to work from weren't as thorough as a researcher might like). This is the part that becomes relentlessly sad. But it's also the part in which Zelda starts to become a sympathetic character. In her early years, she feels like she was crafted out a list of symptoms of histrionic personality disorder (shallow, attention-seeking, hyper-sexual, trouble reasoning -- basically a female version of a sociopath). But as her world goes to pieces, she becomes engaged in a battle to maintain a scrap of dignity and that's very touching.

Overall, I'm very glad that I read this, but I do feel it could have been done better. The writing is workman-like, but no more. For the most part, Milford sticks to the record so closely that it becomes a little maddening. There's no attempt to make sense of Zelda's personality disorders. Milford simply matter of factly states that this particular doctor diagnosed Zelda with schizophrenia and that that guest at the Fitzgerald house found her views erratic. Also, the literary analysis doesn't have any panache: it largely summarizes Zelda's writings in such a way that you feel like you have no need -- or desire -- to go read them yourself and then draws fairly safe conclusions from them. In other words, this really feels like it was someone's dissertation.

And I have to say that Zelda remains very elusive. For the first half of her life, she comes across as a very dumb dumb blonde. But then a letter or something she says is quoted, and those few words soar. So then what was Zelda? An idiot savante coquette? It's not really clear.