By
Mary Ann Grossmann
mgrossmann@pioneerpress.com
In
the summer of 1924 Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were living on the
French Riviera, where they'd moved to repair their fraying marriage. They were
short of money, and Scott was desperate to begin work on a new novel.
What
happened when Zelda met a French aviator beside the blue Mediterranean would
have a lasting impact on her relationship with her husband and on his writing,
says Scott Donaldson, one of the nation's premier literary biographers.
Among
Donaldson's nine books about 20th-century American authors are "Fool for
Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald" and "Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise
and Fall of a Literary Friendship."
So
this Minnesota native is eminently qualified to discuss "Summer of '24:
Zelda's Affair" when he gives the first Richard P. McDermott-Fitzgerald
Lecture this week at the University Club, one of the Fitzgeralds' hangouts. His
talk -- he dislikes the word "lecture" -- is based on a chapter in
his new book "The Impossible Craft: Literary Biography."
BACKGROUND
Before
we get to 1924, we need to refresh our memories of the Fitzgeralds, who were
the Jazz Age, a term coined by St. Paul-born Fitzgerald. Vivacious Zelda was
the original flapper.
They
were married in 1920, a week after publication of Fitzgerald's novel "This
Side of Paradise," which he wrote in his parents' St. Paul apartment. The
newlyweds spent time in Europe, returning to St. Paul to await the birth of
daughter Scottie in 1921.
A
year later "The Beautiful and Damned" was published, and they moved
to Great Neck, Long Island, N.Y., where their interactions with society people
provided the setting and mood for the novel germinating in Fitzgerald's head.
Which
brings us to 1924, the beginning of a seven-year stay in Europe for the
Fitzgeralds and their daughter.
Things
were not going well for this celebrity couple, Donaldson said in a phone
conversation from his home in Arizona:
"Scott
and Zelda had been living in and around New York for two to three years and
pretty much letting things evaporate in drinking and partying. Fitzgerald was
very conscious of that. In early 1924, he wrote to Maxwell Perkins (his editor)
that he had to get away and try to devote himself to finishing what would
become 'The Great Gatsby.'
"They
find this villa near Saint-Raphael, and he begins to live in the book, which
occupies all his time. There is an English nanny for Scottie, and Zelda is
bored silly. She goes down to the beach and befriends three young French naval
officers and pairs off with one of them, Edouard Jozan."
Donaldson
believes Zelda had a physical relationship with the young Frenchman, although
some biographers think it was only a flirtation.
"If
it wasn't physical, it was still psychologically crucial to Zelda and
Scott," he says. "It impacted their relationship.
They
both wrote and talked about it."
Fitzgerald,
who at first was happy Jozan was keeping his wife company, finally realized
they were spending all their time together. He supposedly insisted on a
confrontation, boasting he could beat up the man who was 10 years younger and
in better physical shape.
"That
never happened. Jozan got out of town," Donaldson says. "But that
(threat) was important because it influences major scenes in Fitzgerald's
fiction. In 'Gatsby,' Tom and Jay (Gatsby) are fighting for Daisy. In 'Tender
Is the Night,' Tommy (Barban) establishes he is going to take care of Nicole,
and her husband, Dick, more or less accepts that. Someone says all of
Fitzgerald should be regarded as a series of losses -- loss of the love of
one's life, loss of the Golden Girl."
INTERPRETATIONS
The
Fitzgeralds' marriage survived, but Donaldson says, "I don't know if it
was ever quite the same."
For
one thing, Fitzgerald took over Zelda's life, using what happened to her in his
fiction.
"He
famously said in confrontations with her psychiatrists that it was his material
and she wasn't supposed to write about it," Donaldson said. "Taking
over her romance, making it something he had to write about, think about, talk
about, diminished her.
"Strange
psychological things were going on. Theirs was certainly a complicated
relationship. Zelda's mental illness and Scott's alcoholism were crucial to
making a very difficult marriage.
"But
there is something admirable about Scott sticking to it. Although he thought
about divorcing Zelda when she was at her most schizophrenic, he supported her
as much and as well as he could and did his best for Scottie, sending her to
expensive schools."
Zelda
had her first nervous breakdown in 1930 and was in and out of mental
institutions for the rest of her life. Fitzgerald was fighting his own demons
with alcohol. In 1936, he recounted his mental breakdown in the three-part
autobiographical essay "The Crack-Up."
By
1937, the Great Depression had driven the frivolous Jazz Age into history and
Fitz-gerald headed for Hollywood, the only place a writer could make a living
in those days. He died in 1940 in the apartment of his lover, columnist Sheilah
Graham.
Zelda,
who wrote a book and had her paintings exhibited with the help of her husband,
died in 1948 in a fire at a mental hospital in North Carolina.
In
his University Club talk, Donaldson will discuss the Fitzgeralds' summer of
1924 as an example of challenges facing biographers:
"I'll
look at Scott and Zelda and Jozan and how that one relationship has been
misconstrued by various biographers and by both Fitzgeralds, and what that has
to say to us about difficulties of arriving at an accurate portrait of people
who lived and died, loved and did not, nearly 100 years ago."
DONALD'S
FASCINATION WITH FITZGERALD
Scott
Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul in 1896 to an alcoholic father and
socially-inept mother who had great aspirations for her son. The family never
owned a home, living just off Summit Avenue in respectable apartments, and
young Scott was welcomed into the homes of his wealthy classmates at St. Paul
Academy. The Fitzgeralds were comfortable but not rich in the same sense as the
Irvines and others whose children were Scott's friends, so he moved in a social
class to which he never felt he belonged.
"I've
always felt a kind of kinship with Fitzgerald, growing up somewhat like
him," Scott Donaldson says. "My family lived across the river (near
Lake Harriet) and was slightly more respectable than his. But I felt a social
distance between myself and some of my classmates at the Blake School.
"I
don't think Fitzgerald ever got over those differences in lots of ways. It was
during his years in St. Paul when a lot of the impressions got formed in his
life, when he became most sensitive to his sense of not quite belonging, a
sense of social in-feriority that's in his best writing, like 'Gatsby' "
Donaldson
graduated from Yale University. After serving in Korea, he was a suburban
political reporter for the Minneapolis Star afternoon newspaper and started his
own paper, the Bloomington Suburbanite, while working toward his doctorate in
American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is emeritus professor of
English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
Among
his books are "John Cheever: A Biography," "Archibald Mac-Leish:
An American Life" and "Death of a Rebel: The Charlie Fenton
Story."
Donaldson,
whose son Andrew lives in Minneapolis, was a keynote speaker at the 1996 St.
Paul celebration of Fitzgerald's 100th birthday and spoke at the 2002 F. Scott
Fitzgerald Society's international conference at Landmark Center. He will be a
keynoter at this year's conference in July in Dublin, Ireland.
Mary
Ann Grossmann can be reached at 651-228-5574.
IF
YOU GO
What:
Scott Donaldson gives the first annual Richard P. McDermott-Fitzgerald Lecture
When/where:
7 p.m. Friday; University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul
Admission:
Free
Sponsor:
Fitzgerald in Saint Paul
Information:
stu@fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org