Zelda In Fitzgerald’s This Side Of Trouble By Zelda is a piquant southern belle that meets Scott F. Fitzgerald right before World War one ends. She was described as being a carefree young lady and often flirted with many men, however Scott captured her heart, especially once he proves that he can turn his dropout from Princeton University into a successful career as a writer. Although Scott is far from the stable income Zelda desires, he manages to get her to marry him with the initial success of ‘This Side of Paradise’.
Once gifting her a platinum watch to seal his promise of soon to be earned wealth, she sets off to New York City to marry Scott with her sister as a witness. As a young and promisingly rich couple they traveled and overspent money on luxuries and . Trouble came when Scott started borrowing against future royalties for work yet to be written. Soon they had “Scottie”, a name that Zelda initially did not agree with At the conclusion of the book Scott dies of a heart attack in Hollywood, California while Zelda is home with her mother in Montgomery, Alabama and awaits Scottie to come home for Christmas break from Vassar.
Zelda manages and lives for seven years after Scott in Montgomery with her mother and focused on her love of the arts. Scottie went on to marrying well and had four children, which brought Zelda much joy as a grandmother until her untimely death trapped in a fire inside the Highland hospital that she would stay at to rehabilitate from time to time. Therese Ann Fowler discovered the art of writing later in life after raising her two sons as a single mother. Eventually going on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in sociology/cultural anthropology nd then later receiving a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Upon completion she took to writing short stories and eventually delved into the art of novels. Her next work in the making is a novel about the Vanderbilt family. Fowler is a pioneering author having delved into literary fiction using real figures from the past that are quite mysterious to the average reader. Many readers know of the book “Great Gatsby” and several are well aware of Scott F. Fitzgerald’s works but very few actually know of his wife Zelda and their relationship.
What was known about Zelda was generally unfavorable, which became Fowler’s mission to try to recreate a better version of what she could have been like. She mentioned that she wanted to take a rather unknown perceptive and paint a new voice for the widely misunderstood wife of Scott F Fitzgerald. With that being said, Fowler was nervous about taking a sometimes unfavorable stance with Scott’s dialogue, at times he would have to be the “bad guy” in this novel and she called this style on him as “fictionalized truth”. The novel took about a year from start to finish as Fowler described.
The research for the main characters took about four months, most of which was reading the letters Scott and Zelda sent to each other course of their relationship as they spent much of it apart in separate states. Other research was on literary journals done that focused on the life and the decade that they made their own. Having gathered enough background material to creatively draw a new life into, Fowler started the writing process. To keep the book fiction based and separate it from any reality she researched as much as much as she could and factualize without taking liberties.
The remaining months in the year it took to write the book were left to let creative juices flow and allow time to thoroughly edit. Fowler mentioned that “at first she wrote in third person, and then scrapped that version to write in a more favorably first person. ” She felt that would “make the book more groundbreaking if it came from the perspective of Zelda specifically, and would help paint a better picture if said in her voice as if it was a diary entry. ” Fowler described “Z” becoming a television show as the second best honor to earn as an author, next to having a book become a New York Times best seller.
She was excited to have this book become a television adaptation and even had the chance to see it filmed on location in Savannah, Georgia and in New York City. Part of this excitement did not damper her not being a story writer for the series because she did not feel that she created the characters per say, she only tried to fill in the ambiguous lines. Many critics took “Z” as a personal attack on F. Scott Fitzgerald, citing that the book painted him to be an alcoholic with jealously issues that dampened the free spirit of Zelda.
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers from Washington Times states “Missing from this novel are any of the virtues that tipped the scale in Fitzgerald’s favor”. She also believed that Z is a shallow and closeminded rendition of historical fiction that does not allow for deeper contemplation “for a public accustomed to a steady diet of random ephemera, collected in flashing bytes through a vast network of email, mobile apps and social media. ” Other critics mocked the use of language, saying that there are too many modern phrases used in the novel that takes away from it being a 1920’s historical fiction piece.
Anne Margaret Daniel from Huffington Post picked apart aspects of Z and proclaims it is a disrespectful work to Scott in general and uses his mastermind as inspiration for most of the material throughout the book. “So much for Z being a book about Zelda. Scott is the moneymaker here. ” (Daniel, 2013). Although a solid review, Daniel points of pivotal flaws in the book that take away from the general credibility of the work. Most of the critic reviews are harsh, they are unnecessary over critical. At its very base, Z is an entire work of fiction.
Everything can be made up to Fowler’s desire without being judged on its authenticity of what could actually be the most likely truth. Not quite aware of this famous couple, the choice to read this book came from the author interview in class. Falling into the common belief that Zelda Fitzgerald was just a crazy woman that preoccupied the loving F. Scott Fitzgerald, reading a new perspective on the situation was a welcome idea. F. Scott Fitzgerald being a favorite author also incited interest in this piece of historic fiction.
Although having only seen the pilot of the television adaptation, it is brilliantly portrayed in the rather small amount of twentyseven minutes. This is the kind of show that will be utterly engrossing and popular with audiences that always pondered about the commonly unknown love story between Scott and Zelda. The pilot opens with Zelda jumping in a pond and walking home soaking wet and shoeless, a showpiece of how free spirited she was despite her family constantly scolding her and trying to tame the youngest Sayre.
Later she cohorts at party’s with nearby stationed army men and smokes cigarettes, exaggerated versions of what took place in the book. She then preforms a ballet routine at the country club while Scott watches on. He waits until the reception and after she has had several dances and teasing glances to interrupt and make himself known to Miss Zelda Sayre. While the television series did not exactly match the book word-for-word in the beginning it did keep the same context there with beautiful visuals of the couple’s first impression of each other that is quite similar to the text.
The book described the initial meeting of Zelda and Scott quite steady, and in the television adaption it was left on a cliff hanger to get the audience excited for what is to come in later episodes. It can be gathered that the television series is not quite going to stay absolutely true to what occurred in the book, however it looks extremely promising by telling what could be another version of the famous couple’s tumultuous love story.
