Z [book review]

With The Great Gatsby movie being out in theaters right now, it’s a classic novel that is on everyone’s mind.  I must admit that, although The Great Gatsby seems simple enough overall and it has become one of my favorites, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me that first time I read it as a Freshman in high school.  I had to cycle through reading it again two years later and then once more in college before I finally started to understand some of the implications and allusions contained in the text.  The two parts of the plot that I kept having the most trouble getting straight were 1.) Daisy’s connection to Gatsby, and 2.) the ending.

I have often heard high school students mention that The Great Gatsby is the most boring book…ever.  And many people carry that opinion into the rest of life.  Whether the boring-ness leads those people into believing that The Great Gatsby is not worth the time and effort of reading a book about nothing, or whether they transfer that belief to all literature books that are on the “Recommended” lists, it’s a great misfortune.

For me, even when I didn’t understand the ending, I knew that we had to read between the lines.  The Great Gatsby carries the weight of a belief-system wrought with the mystique of that in-graspable, fleeting nature and pursuant chase of time, money, and love.  The novel develops a possibility in our minds of what can happen if money is unlimited, people are fun-loving, and extravagance is not considered waste.  A culture where beauty and being classy can be appreciated rather than scorned.  A culture where innovation and discovery is encouraged to the utmost.  Sure, the money and wealth might run out or come to an end, but there are possibilities to dream about – and live out – in the meantime.  Although, given a moral value system, I’m not always sure that that character Daisy was very high on the classy-scale.

Until the recent release of The Great Gatsby movie, I was completely unaware of the social presence that Gatsby’s real-life author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his wife, Zelda, had worldwide in the 1920s and beyond.  Not only did they live in Paris along with that expatriate community that included such literary standard authors as Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Ezra Pound, but they also brought a specific “Flapper” identity to the world of Hollywood.

For those who don’t know, the “Flapper” identity is the term used for those women of the 1920s that, according to the stereotype we know, chose to wear lots of makeup, revealing clothing, and smoke cigarettes while they drank with the men and dated a lot of them too – maybe even asked them out instead of waiting for the man to take action.  These flappers often liked to drive cars too.  The word “flapper girl” might come from the idea of young women trying to find their way in life, much like a young bird flaps its wings while it learns how to fly.  In the larger picture of American society, women had just been granted the right to vote as guaranteed by the 19th Amendment of the US Constitution in August of 1920.  They were trying to define their new place in society, balancing out their identity as women with the traditionally manly right to vote.

Now the book review about Zelda:  Zelda Fitzgerald was the very definition of “Flapper” – labeled such by her husband as well as many literary greats both in New York and those expatriated oversees (mostly in Paris).       Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, portrays her as irreverent and, dare I say it, even puerile.  Her family was southern royalty, full of statesmen and legal professionals, yet (or maybe, so) she does whatever she pleases while a young single teenager as well as during her celebrity-couple years.  All of the years are full of chaos, deep longing for something unknown, and the pursuit of fame that, when achieved, isn’t at all what she had hoped that it would be.  If I didn’t know anything about this time-period, I would find it helpful to compare her to Paris Hilton, Clare Irby, Prince Harry…or even Shawn Combs (otherwise known as “P.Diddy” – master of Hollywood parties.)  As a couple, Zelda and Scott would have been the very first Spencer Pratt & Heidi Montag times ten, with dysfunction all around.

This is the personality that Therese Anne Fowler writes for Zelda, and I believe that it is true to the real-life accounts of Zelda and Scott’s shenanigans as the entertainment world’s first “it-couple.”  I read in The Wall Street Journal that the author “studied more than 20 books about the Fitzgeralds” in an attempt to capture that quintessence that is still “Zelda” – even in the 21st Century [see WSJ: “Zelda’s Moment” by Alexandra Alter].

Honestly, I love that Zelda was most likely the muse for Gatsby’s “Daisy.”  Both Daisy and Zelda are immortalized in the same way, having that same quality of loving fun but also being unable to shake a deeply-settled doubt about what’s important in life and what others are thinking behind their backs because there are just so many mistakes and mysteries in life.  Although its a public attitude to say the lady doesn’t mind what people think and that’s why she shucks those cultural standards of sane behavior, it’s often the case that opinions, opportunities, and ostensible attitudes are a reflection of being insecure, and also of confused priorities.  For Zelda, it would appear that her priorities were fame, fun, and fantasy – in the sense that the world she and Scott imagined for themselves really did come true and then it was the bane of their existence because she ended up in a mental hospital and he ended up an alcoholic, asking themselves existential questions like “Have we ruined each other?”

In other people, who aren’t Zelda, we might say they’re schizophrenic or bipolar and offer some very helpful anti-psychotic medications to stop the extreme moods, plus psychiatric counseling to teach anti-stress techniques and abandon co-dependency.  There are some people who have conditions that make those treatments absolutely necessary for a healthy lifestyle.  And it’s snarky to write it, but today, society would probably require Scott to spend time in rehab instead of verbally attacking his wife (yes, there are transcripts!) for being such a great source for literary sketches of the characters in his novels.

Overall, despite a few negative reviews that I’ve read out there on the internet, I think that calling this book a novel gives it the artistic leeway necessary to write in the first-person tense, and I trust that the “more than 20 books” the author studied did include the many letters exchanged between husband and wife, Scott and Zelda, to influence the authenticity of the narrative.  Zelda turns out to be a troubled but vibrant, intelligent, very “Southern” protagonist.  Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with her life choices, she’s a fascinating main character.  I also appreciate the author’s word choice; it’s a bit halting at times and really not a “quick read,” which, I believe, perfectly portrays the “Southern” mindset that Zelda most likely carried with her throughout life.

Favorite moments in the novel: when Zelda and Scott first meet at her ballet recital, Scott’s explanation of why he must be a writer, and their life as newlyweds – how can that crazy life seem so normal?

Rating:  Great re-telling of history.  Should be required reading in a Modern Literature class somewhere.

Link here: