Word: zelda
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...ZELDA by Nancy Milford. 424 pages. Harper...
...want is to be very young always and very irresponsible," Zelda once wrote Scott Fitzgerald...
...Jazz Age. But it must have been a bit unsettling to find such a statement in a letter from one's fiancee. By anybody's judgment, Scott Fitzgerald made a disastrous marriage. As this painstakingly researched biography shows, though, he was thoroughly forewarned. He met Zelda in 1918 when she was the belle of Montgomery, Ala., society and he was an Army lieutenant. The very first time Scott was invited to dine with her parents, Zelda so goaded her father that he chased her around the dining table waving a carving knife...
Worse shocks were to follow. After they became engaged, Scott went to New York to launch his writing career. Zelda stayed home and continued to accept prom invitations from all over the South. On one foray to Georgia Tech she was met at the train by four students, each of whom she had told was to be her escort. During the same weekend she got "pinned" to a young golfer. Back in Montgomery, she thought better of it and sent the pin back with a nice note, which she absentmindedly addressed and mailed to Scott. There is plenty of reason...
...story of Scott and Zelda is one of the genuine literary legends of the century, recounted in several full-length biographies of Scott and mentioned in countless memoirs. Nancy Milford's book retraces all the familiar territory-the marathon drunks, the dips in public fountains-and adds poignant new testimony from diaries and letters concerning Zelda's schizophrenia. The book, though, is yet another proof that to know all is not to forgive...