Book Review: The Far Side of Paradise, a Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, by Arthur Mizener (1951, updated edition 1965)

The dust jacket of The Far Side of Paradise, by Arthur Mizener, 1951.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940. He feared that he was a forgotten writer, and in many respects he was. He hadn’t published a novel since 1934. The New York Times obituary of Fitzgerald said “Roughly, his own career began and ended with the 1920’s.” By the time the first biography of Fitzgerald appeared in 1951, The Far Side of Paradise, by Arthur Mizener, Fitzgerald was on his way to the pantheon of literary greats. The Armed Services edition of The Great Gatsby, distributed to soldiers in World War II, greatly increased the readership of Fitzgerald’s classic novel. The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Crack-Up, both published in 1945, increased interest in Fitzgerald as well.  

The Far Side of Paradise is a superb book, and I was impressed by Mizener’s handling of the material. As I was reading The Far Side of Paradise, I would think to myself “Oh, yes, I know that quote from his letters.” But it’s easy for me to know all of this, all these many years later, as I sit in my office among my shelves of many books by and about F. Scott Fitzgerald. But Mizener was the first person putting this material together, an impressive feat. Almost 75 years after it was first published, The Far Side of Paradise is an intelligent, penetrating look at Fitzgerald’s life. 

Mizener was a perceptive critic of Fitzgerald’s writing. He writes in the Introduction “Fitzgerald’s work is full of precisely observed external detail, for which he had a formidable memory, and it is this gift of observation which has led to the superficial opinion that he was nothing but a chronicler of the social surface, particularly of the twenties. Yet, for all its concrete external detail, his work is very personal.” (p.xiii) I think this is why Fitzgerald’s work has been so durable. He was capturing his own times as they happened, and yet he was also able to make his writing timeless, so it speaks to us, more than a century later.  

Mizener also does an excellent job of detailing Fitzgerald’s personality. His writing about Fitzgerald’s life still feels fresh. Mizener threads the needle of treating Fitzgerald sympathetically, but still detailing Fitzgerald’s behavior, which could be reckless and destructive when he was drunk.  

Because Fitzgerald died so young, there were still plenty of his contemporaries around when Mizener was doing his research and writing. Henry Dan Piper was also researching Fitzgerald at this same time, and Piper graciously shared his papers with Mizener. (Piper’s own book F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Critical Guide, was published in 1965.) One of the best two-sentence summaries of Fitzgerald’s complicated personality came from a man who was at Officer’s Training School with Fitzgerald. He said of Fitzgerald, “he was eager to be liked by his companions and almost vain in seeking praise. At the same time he was unwilling to conform to the various patterns of dullness and majority opinion which would insure popularity.” (p.23) This captures Fitzgerald so well—he wanted to be liked, but he was far too intelligent to be a conformist.  

Mizener perfectly describes the duality of Fitzgerald’s nature: “He writes like some kind of impassioned and naive anthropologist, recording with minuteness and affection and at the same time with an alien’s remoteness and astonishment.” (p.99) As Nick Carraway tells us in The Great Gatsby, “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” (p.40) I suspect that was often how Fitzgerald himself felt.  

Scott and Zelda moved to France in 1924, hoping to escape their chaotic life in Great Neck, Long Island. Instead, they merely found more chaos and disorder. One night, the Fitzgeralds ran into Isadora Duncan, the ballerina. Isadora was flirting too much with Scott, so Zelda wordlessly threw herself down a flight of stone steps. She was unhurt. The Fitzgeralds then drove off, but they turned onto railroad tracks. They slept in their car and were saved from injury the next morning when a farmer woke them up, shortly before the trolley came along and destroyed their car. (p.188) What can you do with two people who were so bent on self-destruction?  

Mizener gives the reader glimpses of the charm and charisma that Scott exerted in person. He entertained people with card tricks; he created fun and intricate games for children. Robert Benchley wrote to Scott: “Anyone who gets down on his stomach and crawls all afternoon around a yard playing tin-soldiers with a lot of kids, shouldn’t be made unhappy. I cry a little every time I think of you that afternoon in Antibes.” (p.186) What a beautiful and touching letter.  

The Fitzgeralds were living outside of Baltimore in June 1933 when Zelda accidentally started a fire on the top floor of the house they were renting. No one was hurt, and the damage was contained to the top floor. Mizener writes of Scott: “He would never have the house repaired because, he said, he could not endure the noise, and the macabre disorder of the place with its burnt-out and blackened upper story was a kind of symbol of the increased disarray of his own life.” (p.230)  

Zelda’s mental breakdowns in 1930, 1932, and 1934 strained their marriage and their finances. After her third breakdown, Scott had to come to the realization that Zelda would never be cured. They saw each other occasionally, but they never lived together again. Scott’s sense of duty meant that he would not divorce Zelda. Nora Flynn observed Scott and Zelda at a party in the mid 1930’s. “They had loved each other. Now it was dead. But he still loved that love and hated to give it up—that was what he continued to nurse and cherish.” (p.264) Flynn’s observation reminds me of the end of Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story “Winter Dreams,” where Dexter Green says “Long ago...long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.” 

Scott went to Hollywood in 1937, to work for MGM as a screenwriter. Mizener writes of the short stories Fitzgerald wrote in Hollywood, “These stories, in spite of their brevity—perhaps even because of it—are purer in motive and more directly and delicately written than any of Fitzgerald’s earlier stories.” (p.286)  

There are shortcomings of the 1951 text of The Far Side of Paradise. Mizener doesn’t cover Zelda’s death—even in the updated 1965 edition, Mizener gets the year of her death wrong—it was 1948, not 1947. In the Foreword to the updated 1965 edition of The Far Side of Paradise, Mizener explains that friends of Sheilah Graham had told him that she did not want to discuss her relationship with Fitzgerald, so he tactfully omitted her name from the original text. Mizener did give the reader hints that Scott had a significant relationship in Hollywood at the end of his life. After Graham published her 1958 memoir Beloved Infidel, which discussed her relationship with Fitzgerald, Mizener re-wrote the last two chapters of The Far Side of Paradise to include Graham’s relationship with Fitzgerald.  

There are many excellent biographies of F. Scott Fitzgerald, including Scott Donaldson’s Fool for Love, and Matthew J. Bruccoli’s Some Sort of Epic Grandeur. The Far Side of Paradise remains a key biography of Fitzgerald, and anyone who writes about Fitzgerald’s life owes Arthur Mizener a debt of gratitude.  

The Far Side of Paradise ends beautifully. “He died believing he had failed. Now we know better, and it is one of the final ironies of Fitzgerald’s career that he did not live to enjoy our knowledge...now, a decade after Fitzgerald’s death, more of his work is in print than at any time during his life, and his reputation as a serious novelist is secure.” (p.300) Mizener’s ending needs no revision—the only change would be to update that it has now been almost 85 years since Fitzgerald’s death.   

Book Review: Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman (2004)

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, 2004.

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by noted Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, and published in 2004, fills an important gap in the collection of books by and about Fitzgerald by collecting 37 interviews with the author that were originally published during his lifetime.  

It’s fascinating to see how Fitzgerald was presented in the press during the 1920’s and 1930’s. In his lifetime, Fitzgerald was much more famous as “the author of This Side of Paradise” rather than “the author of The Great Gatsby.” None of the interviews in the book mention Gatsby in any detail, an indication of how the book was neglected by the public at the time it was published in 1925.  

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the reader aspects of Fitzgerald that might not always come across in his fiction. His sense of humor is usually on fine display in these interviews, and it’s interesting how often Fitzgerald mentions politics. Fitzgerald wasn’t a political writer, by any means, but it’s clear from these interviews that he viewed himself as a liberal. If all you know of Fitzgerald is his glittering portraits of the wealthy, you might not think that he would call himself a socialist, as he does in these interviews. Fitzgerald’s desire to show the corrosive effects of wealth in his fiction matches up with the personal political convictions that he espouses here.  

There are many fascinating tidbits for Fitzgerald fanatics to gather from Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’ll describe some of my favorites. A highlight is Thomas Boyd’s long interview with Fitzgerald, conducted in 1921 in Dellwood/White Bear Lake, just outside of Fitzgerald’s hometown of Saint Paul. (The difference depends on how specific you want to get with the location of the house the Fitzgeralds were renting.) Thomas Boyd was a book critic who wrote an acclaimed World War I novel, Through the Wheat. Scott recruited Boyd and his wife Margaret, who published under the name Woodward Boyd, to join him at his publisher Scribners. Thomas Boyd described reading some of the manuscript of Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. “He disappeared into the house and returned with the manuscript of The Beautiful and Damned. ‘Here it is.’ It was written on ordinary-sized paper and not typed. The pencil scrawl was in large letters and altogether it must have been two feet thick.” (p.17) It’s wonderful to have these kinds of firsthand details about Fitzgerald’s writing. You can’t help but put yourself in Thomas Boyd’s shoes and imagine the excitement of reading Fitzgerald’s handwritten manuscript.  

As a left-hander, I’m always on the lookout for references to other left-handers. One of the articles says of Fitzgerald: “He is left-handed in everything save writing.” (p.95) I wonder if Scott was a natural left-hander who was switched to writing right-handed, as so many children were in those days? I’ve seen photos of Fitzgerald wearing a watch on his right wrist, which is usually a good indicator of a left-hander. Anyway, I will gladly accept F. Scott Fitzgerald as an honorary left-hander.  

One of the most amazing interviews in this book is from 1927. The interview was titled “Fitzgerald, Spenglerian,” a reference to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler, whose book Decline of the West Fitzgerald was reading at the time. Fitzgerald sounds like a prophet: 

“Mussolini, the last slap in the face of liberalism, is an omen for America...The idea that we’re the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait until the next war on the Pacific, or against some European combination!”  

Fifteen years after 1927 was 1942, when the United States, after suffering through the Great Depression, was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy. Fitzgerald hit it right on the nose, although he didn’t live to see 1942. I’m not sure why some of the quotes from this interview aren’t more widely circulated, since they demonstrate Fitzgerald’s astute political thinking.  

It’s always interesting to see how Fitzgerald is described by people who knew him. Interviewers vary on the color of his eyes between blue and green. Fitzgerald was described in a 1927 piece by Margaret Reid as “probably the best-looking thing ever turned out of Princeton.” (p.90) I’m sure Fitzgerald delighted in that. A 1928 piece informs us that “His ties and pocket handkerchiefs are all brightly-colored.” (p.95) I approve of Fitzgerald’s sartorial flair—I always use my ties as a way to get more color into an outfit.  

Another reference to politics is made in a 1931 interview with the Montgomery Advertiser: “Mr. Fitzgerald, who said he was a Jeffersonian Democrat at heart and somewhat of a Communist in ideals, declared that the prohibition law was not only a foolish gesture but that it was a hindrance to the machine of government.” (p.101) It’s no surprise that Fitzgerald was against prohibition, but very interesting that he now moved even farther to the left in his politics. Perhaps the stock market crash of 1929 had made him slightly more radical.  

My only small quibble with the explanatory notes was the footnote following this sentence: “His novel This Side of Paradise was published before his graduation from Princeton.” The footnote reads: “Untrue. This Side of Paradise was published in 1920.” (p.102) Yes, TSOP was published in 1920, but since Fitzgerald never actually graduated from Princeton, it’s technically true that the novel was published “before his graduation” since his graduation never actually occurred. It’s splitting hairs, I know. But don’t worry too much, the Princeton Class of 2017 awarded Fitzgerald an honorary degree, 100 years after he should have graduated.  

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald ends on a sad note. The last extended interview Fitzgerald ever gave was in September of 1936, on his 40th birthday. Recovering from a broken shoulder, Fitzgerald was in a bad place mentally as well, and he was really in no shape to be talking to any members of the press. But ambitious reporter Michel Mok surprised Fitzgerald by coming unannounced and knocking on the door of his room at Asheville, North Carolina’s Grove Park Inn. Fitzgerald should have slammed the door in Mok’s face. But Fitzgerald’s kindness took over, and he invited Mok in and rambled on about what a shambles his life was in at the moment. When Fitzgerald saw the article in print, he attempted suicide by overdosing on morphine. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful.  

After Mok’s article, there’s just one more short piece in the book. Barely more than a single page, it’s a 1939 article from the Dartmouth College newspaper, and it focuses more on movie producer Walter Wanger than Fitzgerald. Neither man is directly quoted in the article. And so, F. Scott Fitzgerald fades out of Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, leaving his own book without a parting word. It’s like a move Gatsby might have pulled, leaving one of his own parties while all the guests are still there. 

Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald is essential reading for Fitzgerald fans, and it gives us a glimpse of what a fascinating and intelligent man F. Scott Fitzgerald was.