![]() Mencken’s words, “so handsome that he might even have been called beautiful” is ruthlessly exploited by Ms. That he filched lines and scenarios from the writings of his gifted wife (and some friends), passing them off as his own, has been brilliantly explored in Nancy Milford’s 1970 biography “Zelda” and more recently in Sally Cline’s “Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise.” That he was, in H.L. ![]() Scott Fitzgerald was an embarrassing, nasty alcoholic is well-known. When Zelda suffers from nervous breakdowns at the end of the novel, her situation is not even poignant it is a yawn. There is a faint inkling of Zelda’s talent and reckless capers, but none of the desperate yearning for attention that drove them. Missing, too, is any deep sense of the beauty and tragedy of the South, ingrained into the DNA of a certain generation - a mixture of gaiety and sadness that ran, like a steady current, beneath the surface. Missing is Zelda’s grace, defiant courage, devastating wit, any hint of “the gleam of derision that flickered beneath the black edge of her eyelashes,” as her friend, writer Sara Haardt, observed. ![]() Fowler’s fictional Zelda clunks through a series of shopping sprees and endless parties in New York City, Hollywood, Paris and the French Riviera, a forgettable lump that easily could be played by Reese Witherspoon. ![]() Consider “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.” In this rewriting of history, the author stresses the emotional journey of her characters, but what are we left with? ![]()
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