Putting on the Fitz: Books about F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ruled the Jazz Age. Rich, talented, beautiful, and outrageous – Scott and Zelda partied like it was 1925. Both continue to fascinate the public and inspire novelists, filmmakers and artists. Director Baz Luhrmann's upcoming The Great Gatsby and the recently published Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler will renew interest in this beautiful but damned couple.
Fun fact: video game designer Shigeru Miyamo named his pixel princess "Zelda" after Zelda Fitzgerald.
Scott, one of the greatest modern writers, wrote The Great Gatsby. Zelda was a glamorous southern belle who smoked, drank, played with boys – and got away with it.
Together they ruled as the celebrity couple of the 1920s, the king and queen of the Lost Generation with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Jon Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and Isadora Duncan.
But it wasn't all golden. Zelda was Scott's muse – but she was also a rival and struggled with her artistic ambitions. Hemingway viewed her as Scott's Yoko Ono; Zelda thought Hemingway was a jerk. Alcoholism and mental illness were the dark passengers that dogged their so-called charmed life. Scott died at 44 from a heart attack; Zelda died in a fire at a mental institution.
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Fictionalized works with the Fitzgeralds:
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The Beautiful and the Damned
2 thoughts on “Putting on the Fitz: Books about F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald”
Erika Robuck (author of Hemingway’s Girl) is set to publish a novel about Zelda later this year. Title is Call Me Zelda.
Thanks – I’ll keep my eyes peeled for this!