Customer Reviews

Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise

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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.

...

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  and they're always afraid of mental wickedness  and men love me cause I'm clever and they're always afraid of my prettiness  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  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  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  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.

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.

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.

Still reading, has a ton of information. Too much naming names and backstory of Fitzgerald friends. Good book though, probably should have went for a more basic bio.

This well-researched and well-written biography paints a fascinating portrait of Zelda, while totally distorting facts about Scott. Sally Cline is a talented and enthusiastic biographer, but she is hardly objective. She is a revisionist historian who colors facts with her own biases. This is as unfair as a biography of Ernest Hemingway that applauds him for cheating on his wives.

Cline clearly dislikes Ernest Hemingway almost as much as she dislikes Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda was a talented and under-appreciated artist, and Cline does give a fairly accurate picture of her. She brings Zelda to life as the talented, attractive, flawed woman who has fascinated readers for decades. But Cline also turns Scott Fitzgerald into a distorted villain.

She portrays Scott as an over-rated writer whose success largely depended on his plagiarism of Zelda. Zelda did receive less credit than she deserved, but she was not systematically plagiarized the way Cline implies.

Furthermore, this biography portays Scott as a closeted bisexual. This is also blatantly untrue. While Zelda was clearly bisexual, Scott was not. Nevertheless Cline almost gleefully heaps contempt on him for his supposed sexual tendencies.

It's impossible to blame all the Fitzgeralds' maritial problems on either one of them, and we should be suspicious of any biography that tries to. It deserves 5 stars for its portayal of Zelda, and 1 star for its portrayal of Scott. While thoughtful and well-written, too much of it is fiction and speculation that masquerades as fact. If you read only this biography you will come away with a grossly distored impression of the Fitzgeralds.

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.