Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

Both my world and literary views were, I will confess, warped by reading The Great Gatsby far too early in life. Fitzgerald's 'spoiled priest' rush to judgment, the notion that one must always remember not everyone has had the same advantages in life, and the obviously untrue concept that life offers 're-dos' have had a profound effect on my life. Luckily I'm open-minded enough to admit when I'm wrong, accept that a re-do at least leads to closure and may be necessary for that reason alone, and have realized that having an opinion is not quite the same thing as being judgmental.

So for many years I have accepted the notion that Zelda was a mistake for F. Scott Fitzgerald, that their marriage contributed mightily to his financial woes and his lack of productivity, and as one of the world's biggest fans of The Great Gatsby and The Last Tycoon, wished he'd married someone else.

I was, therefore (having read the Nancy Mitford bio of Zelda as well as Zelda's own novel, Save Me the Waltz, many years ago), reluctant to read a novel about Zelda. Luckily for me, the Twitter community of readers convinced me to give Z a try, and I'm grateful.

Update: after posting this review, I got a lovely email from Esther Bochner, senior publicist at Macmillan Audio, asking if I'd like to post an audio clip of Z to my review. I said I'd be delighted - and here it is.

Therese Anne Fowler has made me rethink my attitude to Zelda, and to come to some radically different conclusions about F. Scott Fitzgerald's struggles - and about his ambitions. I had never thought about Zelda in the context of her own era - a time when women had so few options and when smart women were no longer content merely to stand by their men, defer to their opinions and be content to be the 'little woman' or 'the woman behind the man.' Zelda's refusal to be overshadowed by Scott takes on a whole different complexion when viewed in this context, as does her desire to achieve. We'll never have the definitive answer to who was more competitive with whom, but in reading Z I was having stomach-roiling flashbacks to a lot of the lines in Gatsby about being able to redo and rewrite the past, as well as some uncomfortable challenges to my own intellectual status quo.

Among the questions Fowler poses in Z are these: why was it F. Scott Fitzgerald was so very willing to promote Ernest Hemingway's work to his agent, editor and publisher, and yet persistently ensured that the most his wife ever got on her own work was a joint byline? Why wasn't he content to be the best writer he could possibly be rather than acknowledged as the best living American novelist? And why did he persist  in emulating the filthy rich to the point of almost-bankruptcy over and over again, while simultaneously despising them and condemning them morally bankrupt? Why didn't these contradictions occur to him? More important for Zelda, why did he insist the women in his life be content with being nothing but decorative appendages whose sense of self-worth derived solely from that of the men to whom they'd attached themselves?

The genius of this novel is not that it's an unflattering portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but rather that it's finally a fair portrayal of Zelda, a woman caught between a rock and a hard place: her father's social standing (and societal expectations of women in the 1920s) and her husband's overweening ambition. There was little room for Zelda to flourish in that small space. And the fact that she didn't do so isn't really so surprising when you think about it. 

Counting blessings 2007

Mira's Crocuses, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

“Whenever … you feel like criticizing anyone … just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I first read The Great Gatsby when I was 12, and almost 40 years later, although I no longer reread it annually, it still provides me with a moral and ethical base of operations for the conduct of my day-to-day life. I no longer agree that the very rich are different from you and me – I’ve known enough rich people (whether rich by virtue of inheritance or as a result of their own hard work, talent, and luck) to know that net financial worth alone isn’t the determining factor in whether someone is a decent human being or not. Those who have never experienced adversity of any sort, who have led a charmed existence, are really the ones you have to watch out for, whether those people are career criminals or just people who’ve never been unemployed, never been broke, enjoy rude good health, and seem to sail through life with everything to smile about. It’s understandable that they may lack empathy or the ability to see how their actions impact others. I myself have been hideously lacking in both understanding of and empathy for back pain sufferers, for instance. Or at least I was until I put my back out once when in my early 30s, and learned firsthand how demoralizing it was be unable to perform as simple an action as brushing one’s hair without pain.

That experience (mercifully short lived and not repeated), taught me a lot about what I don’t know, and set me on a slightly different path in terms of the way I relate to others. I never did think I knew it all. The older I get the less I realize I actually know.

The good news about this is that my attitude is, “I’ve got a lot to learn.” The bad news is also that I’ve got a lot to learn – and less time left to learn it. I’m trying to be a lot more discriminating in my reading these days, and a part of that process is starting to read more non-fiction. In December I requested a copy of Roméo Dallaire’s account of the UN peacekeeping mission, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, from the library, and while it was a tough read on various levels, I finished it earlier this week. I do have a slightly morbid approach to Christmas reading, I realize. One year I read Jane Smiley’s Greenlanders and Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Somehow reading about starving Greenlanders in the Middle Ages and the origins of the slave trade over the festive season actually made me count my blessings, something I found difficult to do at the time since I was at the onset of a five-year bout of Achilles tendonosis and in considerable pain. Still, I wasn’t starving and I was no one’s slave, and since I had time off that year, as long as I didn’t try to walk I was all right.

Shake Hands with the Devil (just to repeat myself) is a difficult book. The sheer volume of acronyms is hard to handle, and I haven’t seen anything like it since I worked in high tech public relations, where one of my colleagues said, “For the first six months I had no idea what anyone was talking about at the weekly work in progress meetings, the acronyms were flying so fast and furious.” I was almost at the end of the book before I clearly understood who the RGF was and who the RPF was, and who the chief players of both armies were. Dallaire does a good job of providing his personal background, while failing to adequately explain Rwanda’s history as a country and former German, then Belgian colony. Having grown up in a former British colony, I don’t know much about other forms of colonial rule, direct or indirect. Of course, as a Canadian, I think often of the words I read in an annual collection of Scottish short stories about the similarities between Canada and Scotland: two countries with distinct cultures that are continually bombarded by the culture of their neighbours to the immediate south - and that represent 10 times their population.

And then there is the subject matter itself, and Dallaire’s obvious pain and frustration at the role he was forced to play and the ruin of so many of his dreams. Reading about genocide cannot ever be a pleasant experience (unless you’re really perverse, and I don’t even want to think about that). To his credit, Dallaire is open about his personal ambitions, his naïve excitement at getting the command, his desire to do good, and frank about the effect the horrors he witnessed had on him. Unfortunately, he's so engaging that he garners most of the sympathy.

And so it wasn’t until the very end of Shake Hands with the Devil that the importance of the Rwandan genocide really hit me, and what Dallaire says about terrorism foreshadows what Thomas Friedman says in The World is Flat: if the underlying causes of terrorist rage are not addressed, the so-called war on terrorism will never be won. There won’t even be a ceasefire.

From Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire with Major Brent Beardsley (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003, pp. 520-521):

At the Canadian Forces Peace Support Training Centre, teachers use a slide to explain to Canadian soldiers the nature of our world. If the entire planet is represented by one hundred people, fifty-seven live in Asia, twenty-one in Europe, fourteen in North and South America, and eight in Africa…. Fifty percent of the wealth of the world is in the hands of six people, all of whom are American. Seventy people are unable to read or write. Fifty suffer from malnutrition…. Thirty-five do not have access to safe drinking water. Eighty live in sub-standard housing. Only one has a university or college education.

It isn’t only the very rich who are different from you and me. When the impulse to whinge and moan strikes me, I think I’m going to reread this passage and count myself lucky to be among the 30 who can read and write, the 14 living in the Americas, the 50 not suffering from malnutrition, the 65 with access to safe drinking water (except for a few turbidity issues for short periods of time here in Vancouver). And even luckier to be the one who’s had the chance to complete a university degree.

Throughout most of 2006, my friends, family, and acquaintances have sustained me and brought me much joy. To all of you: thank you. If I am unable to return the favour directly, I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I will certainly pass on your kindness and generosity to someone else. This photo is dedicated to all of you in the hope that you will remember that, to quote Fitzgerald yet again: "In the real dark night of the soul, it is always 3 o'clock in the morning." (from The Crack Up). Here’s a link that expresses verbally what I hope this photo says visually about fear, pain, growth and hope:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul

And a link to the Dallaire book:

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679311713

And a link to the Friedman book:

http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm

Happy New Year.