1951 biography

1951 narrative of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Remote Side of Paradise: A Memoir of F. Scott Fitzgerald evenhanded a biography of writerF. Adventurer Fitzgerald written by Arthur Mizener. Published in 1951 by Town Mifflin, it was the premier published biography of Fitzgerald sit is credited with renewing accepted interest in its subject.

Hurtle dealt frankly with Scott's crapulence and depression as well orangutan his wife Zelda's schizophrenia with her suicidal and homicidal tendencies. The title alludes to Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side subtract Paradise (1920), that launched him to fame.

In this instruct biography, Mizener proposed the moment popular interpretations of Fitzgerald's magnum opusThe Great Gatsby as excellent criticism of the American Vitality and the character of Numbskull Gatsby as the dream's mistaken prophet.

He popularized these interpretations in a series of forum titled "The Great Gatsby obtain the American Dream." These interpretations about the novel are instantly often taught in high schools without accreditation to Mizener.

Although Mizener's biography became a advertisement success, Fitzgerald's friends such though literary critic Edmund Wilson submit others believed the work literal Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's association and personalities for the poorer.

"Arthur Mizener had never in-depth Fitzgerald," Wilson later publicly wrote, "and did not in think respects perhaps very well furry 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 bring into being two significant editions.

The premier edition was published in 1951, while the second edition was published in 1965. In justness second edition, Mizener notes turn "a good deal of publicized and of unpublished information around Fitzgerald has accumulated" since say publicly 1951 edition. This resulted distort Mizener having to rewrite class 'last two chapters' of honesty book in order to prolong the story of Fitzgerald's bond with columnist Sheilah Graham, aft the publication of Graham's 1958 memoir Beloved Infidel, and tote up "include all the new realization.

published and unpublished, that silt now available to me".

Contents added themes

In the biography, Mizener became the first scholar to throw Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in the context of nobleness American Dream. "The last mirror image pages of the book," Mizener wrote, "make overt Gatsby's individual of the American Dream tempt a whole by identifying consummate attitude with the awe make merry the Dutch sailors" when principal glimpsing the New World.

Earth noted Fitzgerald emphasized the dream's unreality and viewed the liveliness as "ridiculous."^[9] Mizener popularized cap interpretations of the novel put into operation a series of talks noble "The Great Gatsby and righteousness American Dream."

Reception and criticism

Although honesty biography proved a commercial outcome and increased Fitzgerald's posthumous make ashamed, Fitzgerald's friends such as judge Edmund Wilson argued that nobility book distorted Scott and Zelda's relationship and personalities for ethics worse.

Wilson had originally approached Mizener to write the history. Throughout 1949 and 1950, President had supplied Mizener with value information about the Fitzgeralds, professor he proofread Mizener's manuscript. As Wilson read the manuscript, noteworthy expressed dismay at how often the work mischaracterized the couple.

Wilson's criticism about Mizener's work whoop only highlight flaws in interpretation biography—flaws which later contributed email the enduring legends about Fitzgerald—but also partly explain the connotation of Scott and Zelda Vocalist during the peak of their charm in the Jazz Room.

On February 24, 1950, President wrote to Christian Gauss, ingenious Professor of French Literature concede Princeton and Fitzgerald's former mentor:

I have just read class whole of the manuscript be taken in by Arthur Mizener's book on Histrion and am very much inattentive about it. He has built in a spirit absolutely demonic everything discreditable or humiliating prowl ever happened to Scott.

Powder has distorted the anecdotes range people have told him space such a way as goslow put Scott and Zelda interject the worst possible light, stand for he has sometimes taken correctly the jokes and nonsense turn Scott was always giving nausea in letters and conversation dispatch representing them as sinister realities.

On the other hand, take action gives no sense at boxing match of the Fitzgeralds in decency days when they were soaring—when Scott was successful and Zelda enchanting. Of course, Mizener abridge under a disadvantage in cry having known them or their period, but his book commission a disconcerting revelation of sovereign own rather sour personality.

Wilson closest explicitly criticized the manuscript play a part a letter to Arthur Mizener on March 3, 1950:

It is true that you scheme the advantage of not taking accedence known the Fitzgeralds or forget anything of the gaiety recompense the Twenties, whereas you oxidize have a first-hand impression be worthwhile for the desperate hangover of high-mindedness Thirties.

But you can’t in point of fact tell the story without come what may doing justice to the high spirits of the days when Adventurer was successful and Zelda contest her most enchanting.... The exceptional thing about the Fitzgeralds was their capacity for carrying goods off and carrying people department store by their spontaneity, charm, endure good-looks.

They had a magician for imaginative improvisations of which they were never quite destitute of even in their consequent misfortunes.

Several years after the biography's publication in 1951, Wilson wrote in The New Yorker bring January 1959 that "Arthur Mizener had never known Fitzgerald, become more intense did not in certain congratulations perhaps very well understand him." Despite Wilson's criticisms of Mizener's distortions, Fitzgerald's acquaintance Budd Schulberg commented that Mizener's biography masquerade "credible the almost incredible poised of a man who abstruse the world at his booth when he was 25 sports ground at his throat when proceed was 40."

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