Save Me The Waltz (Vintage Classics)

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Zelda wanted desperately to be taken seriously as a writer, and for the first time wanted her work to be evaluated on its own merits, without her husband’s intervention, opinion, or the use of his name. Following her high school graduation in 1918, Zelda met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a weekend country club dance. She was a regular at such social activities, and he was an officer stationed at nearby Camp Sheridan. Scott began a courtship, but Zelda was hesitant about his financial prospects and continued to court other suitors. When he published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in March 1920, she finally agreed to marry him, and the two wed in New York on April 3. Zelda gave birth to their only child, Frances (“Scottie”) Fitzgerald, the following year. By Spring of 1932, Zelda Fitzgerald had been a recurrent patient of several psychiatric institutions. After an episode of hysteria, Zelda insisted that she be readmitted to a mental hospital. [2] Over her husband's objections, [2] Zelda was admitted to the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on February 12, 1932. [2] Her treatment was overseen by Dr. Adolf Meyer, an expert on schizophrenia. [20] As part of her recovery routine, she spent at least two hours a day writing a novel. [3] These lessons were reluctantly paid for by Scott, an arrangement which Zelda also disliked intensely. To support herself and to be able to pay for her own lessons, she began to write again. Articles and short stories including Our Movie Queen, Miss Ella, and A Couple of Nuts were published in Harper’s Weekly, The Smart Set, and The Saturday Evening Post. She installed a large mirror and a barre at home where, in addition to the time spent at the studio, she would practice for hours.

She chose Max Perkins, her husband’s own editor, writing to him, “Scott completely being absorbed in his own [novel] has not seen it, so I am completely in the dark as to its possible merits but naturally terribly anxious that you should like it.” Forty years after its publication, Zelda's biographer Nancy Milford speculated in 1970 that F. Scott Fitzgerald extensively rewrote Zelda's novel prior to publication. [11] This supposition was echoed by later biographers. [12] However, scholarly examinations of Zelda's earlier drafts of Save Me the Waltz and the published version disproved this speculation. [13] Nearly every revision was by Zelda and, contrary to Milford's biography, her husband did not rewrite the manuscript. [14]I glad[ly] submit to anything you want about the book or anything else…However, I would like you to thoroughly understand that my revision will be made on an aesthetic basis: that the other material which I will select is nevertheless legitimate stuff that has cost me a pretty emotional penny to amass and which I intend to use when I can get the tranquility of spirit necessary to write the story of myself versus myself.” This Side of Paradise was an immediate success, and the couple became overnight celebrities. In rendering the youthful rebellion of the 1920s, Scott became known as the chronicler of the Jazz Age, and Zelda became an emblem of the 1920s liberated woman. They both indulged in an extravagant lifestyle, spending beyond their means on travel, parties, and liquor. In 1924 the Fitzgeralds moved to France, where they joined a group of American expatriates, led by Gerald and Sara Murphy, on the Riviera. There Scott finished his third novel, The Great Gatsby, in 1925. Although the book would later become a classic, its middling initial reception disappointed Scott. By the end of the decade, the Fitzgeralds’ already quarrelsome marriage had grown more agitated. Scott struggled to write his fourth novel, and Zelda sought creative outlets of her own, writing short stories for magazines, painting, swimming, and intensely practicing ballet, a hobby from her youth. They get engaged, David telling her father that he has some money from his family. As the war carries on, David is sent away and they both have affairs with other people. Neither seems to mind too much, and they get married when the war ends. Alabama leaves her parents’ house behind, thinking that she will miss them both. She does not know how poor David truly is, but they are both happy to have each other.

This time she was sent to a hospital in Switzerland, where the doctors recommended psychological treatment. After seeing a highly sought-after psychiatrist, Dr. Oscar Forel, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Alabama grows further apart from her husband and their daughter. Determined to be famous, an aging Alabama aspires to become a renowned prima ballerina and devotes herself relentlessly to this ambition. She is offered an opportunity to dance featured parts with a prestigious company in Naples—and she takes it, and goes to live in the city alone. Alabama dances her solo debut in the opera Faust. However, a blister soon becomes infected from the glue in the box of her pointe shoe, leading to blood poisoning, and Alabama can never dance again. Though outwardly successful, Alabama and David are miserable. Purposely I didn’t — knowing that you were working on your own and honestly feeling that I had no right to interrupt you to ask for a serious opinion. Also, I know that Max will not want it and I prefer to do the corrections after having his opinion … In the autumn of 1929, she was offered a salaried position with the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, dancing a solo role initially in Aida with more solos to follow during the season, but had to decline the offer as she was not mentally capable of fulfilling the demanding contract.Most of the stories appeared under her husband’s name. The F. Scott Fitzgerald byline fetched a far higher price and made it easier to get pieces accepted, but it also meant that Zelda struggled to establish any kind of writing the identity of her own. In 1927, at the age of twenty-seven, Zelda started taking ballet lessons again. She studied with notable teachers including Lubov Egorova in Paris, and it soon became an obsession that preoccupied her for up to eight hours a day, often to the detriment of her relationships with her husband and daughter.

Here we have a woman whose talents and energy and intellect should have made her a brilliant success, who was determined to be an accomplished artist, writer, and ballet dancer in an era where married women were supposed to be wives and mothers, period.” Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900 – 1948) is best known for two things: as the wife of celebrated writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and for being the first true Jazz Age flapper and an icon of the new post-World War One era. However, she was also a talented writer, painter, and dancer in her own right. Here, we’ll explore Save Me the Waltz and other writings of Zelda Fitzgerald, which certainly deserve a fresh look.Zelda also faced challenges in the ballet studio. In her mid-twenties, she was too old to achieve her dream of becoming a prima ballerina, but she could still have made a career out of it had her health not failed. When Scott did see the novel soon after, he was furious. He wrote to Zelda’s doctor accusing her of plagiarizing several ideas from his current novel-in-progress, which would become Tender Is the Night — “literally one whole section of her novel is an imitation of it, of its rhythm, materials…” — and of exposing too much of his private life. Milford, Nancy (1970), Zelda: A Biography, New York: Harper & Row, LCCN 66-20742– via Internet Archive Svrluga, Susan (February 22, 2016), "Calls to change U. of Alabama building name to honor Harper Lee instead of KKK leader", The Washington Post, Washington, D.C. , retrieved December 8, 2021 A portrayal of the marriage of Alabama Beggs and David Knight, Save Me the Waltz highlights the trials and tribulations both went through in their attempts to discover their own identities, separately and in the context of one another. Using place and setting, Fitzgerald manages to portray the nuanced, multifaceted lives of the Knights. Fitzgerald’s characters are compelling, interesting and multi-dimensional, and she makes them extremely likable, despite all their flaws.