Volume 17 & 18, Number 12 & 1 · January 27, 1972
Attis Adonis Osiris Fitzgerald & Co.
By Robert M. Adams
Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
by Sara Mayfield
Delacorte, 309 pp., $8.95
Dear Scott/Dear Max: the Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence
edited by John Kuehl, edited by Jackson Bryer
Scribner's, 278 pp., $7.95
Living Well Is the Best Revenge
by Calvin Tomkins
Viking, 148 pp., $6.50
The Golden Moment: The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald
by Milton R. Stern
University of Illinois, 462 pp., $10.00
Crazy Sundays: F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood
by Aaron Latham
Viking, 308 pp., $7.95
F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time, a Miscellany
edited by Matthew Bruccoli, edited by Jackson Bryer
Kent State, 481 pp., $12.50
'Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered': the swarms of books about F. Scott Fitzgerald that have been darkening the sky since his death just over thirty years ago are so striking that it has become trite even to remark upon them. More curious than the simple numbers involved is that so many of them seem to be groping for a format, and overlapping or cannibalizing one another for lack of it. Professor Mizener's The Far Side of Paradise (1951, revised 1965) was a straightforward literary biography which focused accurately, and with understanding and appreciation, on Fitzgerald's actual literary accomplishments. But Andrew Turnbull's redoing of the biography (1962), in addition to being worse written, duplicated an enormous amount of the same material and showed much less interest in Fitzgerald's fiction than in his 'personality.' It made only minimal reference to its predecessor; and, while elaborately documented, could easily, if reduced to its own ingredients, have been cut to the size of a modest reminiscence and portrait.
Review, 3692 words
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