Scandalabra
We had run through a lot, though we had retained an almost theatrical innocence by preferring the role of the observed to that of the observer.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, My lost city
Faithful to my thing for trashy, tell-all bios, I’ve been reading about Zelda Fitzgerald – the prototype of soap opera divas.
Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
Those telling the tale often seem compelled to take sides, to rule which drove the other round the bend and into the ground. It seems to me that each fed off the other in a mutual frenzy of self-indulgence that no-one not made of steel and bile could sustain. A sophomoric hunger for drama and material, caught always between milking and denouncing it.
Scott is a novelist and Zelda is a novelty.
– Ring Lardner Jr.
And when the reality didn’t make either one look good, they re-wrote it together, till both came out suitably tragic:
Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley […] remembers the Fitzgeralds’ joint recital of Zelda’s romance: “It was one of their acts together. I remember Zelda’s beautiful face becoming very, very solemn, and she would say how he had loved her and how hopeless it had been and then how he had committed suicide… [None of which was true.] Scott would stand next to her looking very pale and distressed and sharing every minute of it. Somehow it struck me as something that gave her status. I can still see both of them standing there together telling me about the suicide of Zelda’s lover. It created a peculiar effect.”
– Nancy Milford, Zelda Fitzgerald
Her greatest creation appears to have been her persona. Her paintings fail to enthral; incapable of sustaining a narrative or fleshing out characters, all of her best lines are found in F. Scott’s work, and in the letters to him from her many stays in asylums.
I keep thinking of Provence and thin brown people slowly absorbing the deep shade of Aix – the white glare on the baking dust of country pounded into colorless oblivion by an incessantly rotating summer. Avignon must be perfect now, to feel the wide quite of the Rhone, and Arles obliterating its traces with the hum of cafés under the great trees…
But there’s an odd unsettling that goes with reading personal tales of descent into madness. Perhaps we all have a lurking fear of insanity – the ultimate loss of control. As you crawl into their skin, you start looking for signs, try their lunacy on for size. Unnerved at times by the fit.
I was nuts for the week spent reading Strindberg’s Inferno/Occult diary, rattled all day by demonic dreams, and wondering if that was celery I smelled.
And I’m certain that madness accounts for a good deal of Sylvia Plath’s posthumous appeal amongst bright, dewy schoolgirls striking out on their tour of dark lures.
It’s not until later, once the cheap thrill has worn off, that you gain a full sense of the bottomless sadness of a fine mind being irreparably shattered, suffering its own alienating logic. Not until evening, hum of the day dying down, that you hope and worry again – properly glad and grateful for the strength of those now bursting out from under your wing.
We walked at night towards a café blooming with Japanese lanterns, white shoes gleaming like radium in the damp darkness. It was like the good gone times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of popular songs.
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Comment
- Gail,
Imagine if Zelda had written “The Third Sex” instead of The Beaver.
I say, screw the translation, let’s lampoon the merde out of it…..
You first…..I mean, “You’re IT.”
Bonne Annee et Bonne? Sante,
Amelia
— Amelia Bedelia Jan 3, 8:29pm # - Hi Amelia,
I began working on the Beav, but before proceeding am trying to get confirmation on rumours that a new translation has in fact been commissioned.
I thiink you’re right though that lampooning would be much more fun.
— gail Jan 4, 6:30pm #
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