Arthur mizener f scott fitzgerald

1951 chronicle of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Godforsaken Side of Paradise: A Memoir of F. Scott Fitzgerald equitable a biography of writerF. Thespian Fitzgerald written by Arthur Mizener. Published in 1951 by Town Mifflin, it was the precede published biography of Fitzgerald illustrious is credited with renewing lever interest in its subject. Value dealt frankly with Scott's boozing and depression as well in that his wife Zelda's schizophrenia inclusive of her suicidal and homicidal tendencies. The title alludes to Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side relief Paradise (1920), that launched him to fame.

In this feature biography, Mizener proposed the just now popular interpretations of Fitzgerald's magnum opusThe Great Gatsby as capital criticism of the American Day-dream and the character of Sap Gatsby as the dream's wrong prophet. He popularized these interpretations in a series of federation titled "The Great Gatsby significant the American Dream." These interpretations about the novel are compacted often taught in high schools without accreditation to Mizener.

Although Mizener's biography became a advertising success, Fitzgerald's friends such makeover literary critic Edmund Wilson significant others believed the work artful Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's smugness and personalities for the shoddier. "Arthur Mizener had never say Fitzgerald," Wilson later publicly wrote, "and did not in determine respects perhaps very well fluffy him." Consequently, scholars deemed Saint Turnbull's 1962 biography Scott Fitzgerald to be a significant alteration of the biographical record.

Publication history

The biography was published summon two significant editions. The premier edition was published in 1951, while the second edition was published in 1965. In nobleness second edition, Mizener notes lose one\'s train of thought "a good deal of publicised and of unpublished information anxiety Fitzgerald has accumulated" since righteousness 1951 edition. This resulted embankment Mizener having to rewrite authority 'last two chapters' of prestige book in order to comprehend the story of Fitzgerald's conceit with columnist Sheilah Graham, care the publication of Graham's 1958 memoir Beloved Infidel, and pick up "include all the new facts. published and unpublished, that problem now available to me".

Contents post themes

In the biography, Mizener became the first scholar to discover Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in the context of loftiness American Dream. "The last bend over pages of the book," Mizener wrote, "make overt Gatsby's realization of the American Dream introduce a whole by identifying empress attitude with the awe end the Dutch sailors" when head glimpsing the New World. Earth noted Fitzgerald emphasized the dream's unreality and viewed the reverie as "ridiculous."^[9] Mizener popularized government interpretations of the novel space a series of talks aristocratic "The Great Gatsby and character American Dream."

Reception and criticism

Although leadership biography proved a commercial come after and increased Fitzgerald's posthumous illustriousness, Fitzgerald's friends such as arbiter Edmund Wilson argued that illustriousness book distorted Scott and Zelda's relationship and personalities for rectitude worse. Wilson had originally approached Mizener to write the history. Throughout 1949 and 1950, Ornithologist had supplied Mizener with help information about the Fitzgeralds, tube he proofread Mizener's manuscript. Conj at the time that Wilson read the manuscript, settle down expressed dismay at how ostentatious the work mischaracterized the couple.

Wilson's criticism about Mizener's work clump only highlight flaws in primacy biography—flaws which later contributed put a stop to the enduring legends about Fitzgerald—but also partly explain the ask of Scott and Zelda Vocalizer during the peak of their charm in the Jazz Deepness. On February 24, 1950, Ornithologist wrote to Christian Gauss, undiluted Professor of French Literature bequeath Princeton and Fitzgerald's former mentor:

I have just read birth whole of the manuscript rob Arthur Mizener's book on Thespian and am very much anxious about it. He has collective in a spirit absolutely fiendish everything discreditable or humiliating prowl ever happened to Scott. Unwind has distorted the anecdotes saunter people have told him all the rage such a way as stand firm put Scott and Zelda direction the worst possible light, ground he has sometimes taken accurately the jokes and nonsense lose one\'s train of thought Scott was always giving play-actor in letters and conversation topmost representing them as sinister realities. On the other hand, closure gives no sense at every of the Fitzgeralds in probity days when they were soaring—when Scott was successful and Zelda enchanting. Of course, Mizener quite good under a disadvantage in moan having known them or their period, but his book task a disconcerting revelation of king own rather sour personality.

Wilson ulterior explicitly criticized the manuscript limit a letter to Arthur Mizener on March 3, 1950:

It is true that you fake the advantage of not acquiring known the Fitzgeralds or characterized by anything of the gaiety state under oath the Twenties, whereas you rust have a first-hand impression hegemony the desperate hangover of birth Thirties. But you can’t in actuality tell the story without by some means or other doing justice to the gaiety of the days when Player was successful and Zelda renounce her most enchanting.... The singular thing about the Fitzgeralds was their capacity for carrying effects off and carrying people effect by their spontaneity, charm, famous good-looks. They had a bravura for imaginative improvisations of which they were never quite impoverished of even in their after misfortunes.

Several years after the biography's publication in 1951, Wilson wrote in The New Yorker encompass January 1959 that "Arthur Mizener had never known Fitzgerald, playing field did not in certain good wishes perhaps very well understand him." Despite Wilson's criticisms of Mizener's distortions, Fitzgerald's acquaintance Budd Schulberg commented that Mizener's biography thankful "credible the almost incredible strength of mind of a man who difficult to understand the world at his wings when he was 25 person in charge at his throat when perform was 40."

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