If I weren't already subscribed to A.A. Kostas, this brilliant essay would have sealed the deal. Anyone who mistakenly believes in Zelda's talent has only to read some of her work, which is available online and pretty awful. I would take issue with the description of her as an alcoholic. She was apparently able to quit drinking with no difficulty during her doomed quest to become a ballerina at the age of 27. As for the general assessment that Fitzgerald was washed up as a writer when he died, that seems unfair due to the brilliance of The Last Tycoon. If he had lived long enough to complete the book, it might have been his best work.
The third axiom is the one that matters most. Countering a myth doesn't get you closer to truth. It just gives you a different myth. The whole Fitzgerald-Zelda debate has always been less about who wrote what and more about what we need the story of authorship to look like at any given moment. The actual work sits there on the page regardless. Nobody reads the last line of Gatsby and thinks about who deserves credit. They just feel the weight of it. That's what the myth-makers on both sides keep missing.
If I weren't already subscribed to A.A. Kostas, this brilliant essay would have sealed the deal. Anyone who mistakenly believes in Zelda's talent has only to read some of her work, which is available online and pretty awful. I would take issue with the description of her as an alcoholic. She was apparently able to quit drinking with no difficulty during her doomed quest to become a ballerina at the age of 27. As for the general assessment that Fitzgerald was washed up as a writer when he died, that seems unfair due to the brilliance of The Last Tycoon. If he had lived long enough to complete the book, it might have been his best work.
The third axiom is the one that matters most. Countering a myth doesn't get you closer to truth. It just gives you a different myth. The whole Fitzgerald-Zelda debate has always been less about who wrote what and more about what we need the story of authorship to look like at any given moment. The actual work sits there on the page regardless. Nobody reads the last line of Gatsby and thinks about who deserves credit. They just feel the weight of it. That's what the myth-makers on both sides keep missing.
as remarkable as This Side of Paradise published at 24 is Gatsby published at 28