Book Review: Save Me the Waltz, a novel by Zelda Fitzgerald (1932)

My paperback copy of Save Me the Waltz, by Zelda Fitzgerald. Originally published in 1932, this paperback is from 1968. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Zelda Fitzgerald’s writing was inevitably overshadowed during her own lifetime by the writing of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, but Zelda published several short stories of her own, and one novel in 1932, Save Me the Waltz.  

Save Me the Waltz tells the story of Alabama Beggs and her husband David Knight. The characters of Alabama and David are stand-ins for Zelda and Scott, and the novel closely parallels the Fitzgeralds’ married life. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing often drew from his own life experiences but Save Me the Waltz is nakedly autobiographical in a way that his writing seldom was. 

Zelda Fitzgerald’s writing style falls into the “you’ll either love it or hate it” category. Similes and metaphors collide and crash together, and there are times where the reader can barely hold on to what’s happening. Here’s an example: “A shooting star, ectoplasmic arrow, sped through the nebular hypothesis like a wanton hummingbird. From Venus to Mars to Neptune it trailed the ghost of comprehension, illuminating far horizons over the pale battlefields of reality.” (p.73) I can’t tell you what those two sentences mean. It’s surprising that Zelda never wrote poetry, because her writing style was quite poetic. Some of her more surreal flights of fancy, like the above passage, might have been more effective if set in a poem rather than in the framework of a novel.  

In Save Me the Waltz, Alabama and David, who is a painter, move to the south of France, where Alabama meets a handsome French aviator. In real life, Zelda and Scott moved to the south of France, where Zelda met Edouard Jozan, a handsome French aviator. Much ink has been spilled over whatever happened between Scott, Zelda, and Edouard Jozan during the summer of 1924. Fitzgerald biographer Scott Donaldson wrote an entire chapter in his book The Impossible Craft about how 14 different biographers, Donaldson included, treated the relationship between Zelda and Jozan. Was this merely a flirtation, or was it something more serious? Well, there are 14 different answers to that question. Donaldson points out some interesting differences: “A majority of the female biographers...tend to deny that the affair actually took place and assume that the crisis it generated was more or less fabricated by the Fitzgeralds. Most of the male biographers...follow the lead of Mizener and Turnbull in believing that Zelda and Josan’s relationship was indeed adulterous.” (p.175)  

Donaldson astutely writes of the differing accounts of the relationship, “It can safely be said that the single trait all biographers share is a certain arrogance as they undertake to understand how it must have been, say, for Zelda and Scott and Edouard a long time ago...This illustrates what has often been remarked: that every biography conceals within itself the autobiography of its author.” (p.187) 

Much of what biographers have theorized about Zelda and Jozan has come from Save Me the Waltz. Biographers often cite this passage: “He drew her body against him till she felt the blades of his bones carving her own. He was bronze and smelled of the sand and sun; she felt him naked underneath the starched linen. She didn’t think of David. She hoped he hadn’t seen; she didn’t care. She felt as if she would like to be kissing Jacques Chevre-Feuille on the top of the Arc de Triomphe.” (p.92) 

Zelda’s biographer Nancy Milford thinks that Alabama does not sleep with the French aviator, therefore Zelda did not sleep with Jozan. But Milford oddly chose to ignore the above passage in her biography. Is the above passage proof that Zelda had sex with Jozan? Not really, it’s from a work of fiction. Maybe Zelda just imagined “feeling him naked underneath the starched linen.” But it’s certainly a steamy passage.  

The French aviator eventually has to go away. He writes Alabama a farewell letter. Does Alabama read the letter? Nope. “Alabama could not read the letter. It was in French. She tore it in a hundred little pieces...” (p.101) This drove me nuts. If you were in love with someone, even if you knew it was doomed, even if you couldn’t read French, wouldn’t you try a little harder to read the farewell letter they sent you? Or maybe find a French friend who could translate the letter for you?  

In retaliation for whatever happened between Alabama and the French aviator, David has an affair with Gabrielle Gibbs, who is an actress playing a dancer. Gibbs seems to be a stand-in for the ballerina Isadora Duncan. I don’t think any biographer has claimed that Isadora Duncan had a fling with Scott, but they apparently flirted so much when they met that Zelda threw herself down a flight of stone steps. Miraculously, Zelda was unharmed. 

Save Me the Waltz made me wonder if the Fitzgerald’s acquaintance with Isadora Duncan was the spark that re-ignited Zelda’s passion for ballet? It’s after David’s affair with Gabrielle Gibbs that Alabama throws herself into the ballet. For me, the novel improved once Alabama took up the ballet, as it gave the book more narrative focus.  

As in Zelda’s real life, the ballet becomes an all-consuming obsession for Alabama. In the novel, Alabama takes a job dancing in Naples, away from her husband and daughter Bonnie. The tragedy of Save Me the Waltz is that just as Alabama seems to find some meaning in her life through the ballet, she loses everything else. Her relationship with David becomes more strained. For me, the saddest part of the novel was when Alabama is with Bonnie in Naples, and she can’t relate to her daughter at all—the only thing she can think about is the ballet. Alabama has become a shell of a person. If this is any indication of what Zelda was actually like in 1929, it’s easy to see that she was headed towards a mental breakdown, which occurred in April of 1930.  

What is one to make of Save Me the Waltz? Zelda’s unorthodox writing style makes it a hard book to get into. But worse than that, Zelda has somehow made the story of Scott and Zelda dull. Alabama is a blank, a cipher that the reader has little access to, and David is an unappealing narcissist. 

Even Nancy Milford has trouble defending the novel on artistic grounds: “She has trouble sustaining a longer narrative and Save Me the Waltz is not an easy book to read.” (p.223) And Milford highlights the key flaw of the novel: “Perhaps that is the larger problem presented by this novel—that because it is so deeply autobiographical, the transmutation of reality into art is incomplete.” (p.224) Save Me the Waltz feels like a catalogue of events that happen, rather than a novel that has been shaped towards a definite end.  

All that being said, it’s a remarkable achievement for Zelda Fitzgerald that Save Me the Waltz was written at all. After her mental breakdown in April of 1930, Zelda spent 15 months in Swiss sanitariums, then returned home to Montgomery, Alabama. Her father died two months later. In February 1932, Zelda had her second mental breakdown. She finished the first draft of the novel very quickly, just a month later.  

And there are passages in Save Me the Waltz of clear writing and sharp dialogue, as when David says, “People are like almanacs, Bonnie—you never can find the information you’re looking for, but the casual reading is well worth the trouble.” (p.181) That’s just brilliant.  

After initially being rather perturbed that his wife had written a novel and sent it to his editor Maxwell Perkins without telling him, Scott had praise for Save Me the Waltz, writing to Perkins in May 1932, “It is a good novel now, perhaps a very good novel—I am too close to it to tell. It has the faults & virtues of a first novel. It is more the expression of a powerful personality, like Look Homeward, Angel than the work of a finished artist like Ernest Hemmingway. It should interest the many thousands interested in dancing. It is about something & absolutely new, & should sell.” (Dear Scott/Dear Max, p.176) Yes, Fitzgerald hardly ever spelled Hemingway’s last name correctly. And Scott was quite right to compare Save Me the Waltz to Thomas Wolfe’s debut novel, Look Homeward, Angel, as both novels have the same quality of being nakedly autobiographical.  

In the same letter, Scott, knowing that Hemingway had a book in the works, had some advice for Perkins: “Ernest told me once he would ‘never publish a book in the same season with me,’ meaning it would lead to ill-feeling. I advise you, if he is in New York, (and always granting you like Zelda’s book) do not praise it, or even talk about it to him!...There is no possible conflict between the books but there has always been a subtle struggle between Ernest & Zelda & any opposition might have curiously grave consequences—curious, that is, to un-jealous men like you and me.” (p.176) This letter just makes me laugh, thinking about poor Scott, trying to keep both his friend and his wife happy, wanting to avoid the “curiously grave consequences.” As it happened, Save Me the Waltz was released just two weeks after Hemingway’s non-fiction book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon.  

Save Me the Waltz was not a sales success. The first printing was roughly 3,000 copies, and slightly fewer than half of them were sold: 1,392, according to Nancy Milford’s biography. (p.264) The novel was out of print for many years, before finally being reissued in 1967. Save Me the Waltz remains essential reading for anyone interested in the life stories of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.  

Book Review: Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad (1904)

Paperback cover of the 2004 Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, originally published in 1904. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor) 

Joseph Conrad’s 1904 novel Nostromo is long, dense, complicated, and brilliant. Set in the fictional South American republic of Costaguana, Nostromo follows a large cast of characters. Conrad masterfully shifts between many points of view in the novel, and it’s a stunning example of an artist working at the height of his powers. The frequent shifts in point of view and time make reading Nostromo a challenge, but the reader’s efforts are rewarded by Conrad’s beautiful prose and his insights into human nature. 

The Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Nostromo features an excellent introduction by Brent Hayes Edwards, who writes “Nostromo is not just a single novel, but a stunning orchestration of many novels at once.” (p.xiii) Hayes Edwards then goes on to list the many themes and plotlines of the novel.  

One of the main plotlines in Nostromo deals with the San Tome silver mine. Charles Gould, a Costaguanero of English heritage, has inherited the mine from his father. It has never turned much of a profit in the past, but Charles Gould is determined to change that. Gould succeeds, and the silver that the mine produces becomes central to the fate of many characters and to Costaguana itself. (Side note: my father’s cousin is named Charles Gould, a coincidence that I enjoyed. And I was constantly reminded of this as Conrad almost always calls the character “Charles Gould,” never “Charles” or “Gould.”)  

The novel begins with a detailed physical description of Costaguana, and although Conrad had only been to South America once during his sailing career, he was able to conjure up a thoroughly believable landscape. (Conrad went ashore during the voyage for just three and a half days.) The action of Nostromo occurs in the port town of Sulaco, which is a somewhat sleepy place as the novel opens.  

Conrad was an insightful political thinker. An American tycoon who invests in the San Tome mine has a jingoistic monologue in which he says, “We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not.” (p.75) A prophetic statement to make in 1904.  

There are many beautiful passages in Nostromo. One of my favorite lines is in a letter that Martin Decoud writes to his sister: “All this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream.” (p.205)  

Several of my favorite lines in Nostromo are about the character Colonel Sotillo: “Like most of his countrymen, he was carried away by the sound of fine words, especially if uttered by himself.” (p.233) Conrad shows off his wit with this line: “Sotillo had spent the morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions.” (p.350) Now that’s a burn, Joseph Conrad style.  

Late in the novel, there’s a wonderful line about Emilia Gould: “It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.” (p.410) 

Class and status play important roles in the novel, and Nostromo, who is unable to hold onto money, has a great line: “It seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich.” (p.347)  

Nostromo is a novel about outsiders. Charles Gould is born in Costaguana, but he comes from an English family, and he was educated in England. His wife, Emilia, is also British, as is Captain Mitchell. Nostromo and the Viola family are Italian. Martin Decoud has spent much of his life in France. And much of the elite of Sulaco is of Spanish descent. The fascinating mix of ethnicities in South America was a perfect subject for a novelist like Conrad, who traveled around the world as a sailor. Conrad’s own life found him living in many different cultures. Conrad was born in the city of Berdychiv, which had been part of Poland, was in the Russian Empire when Conrad was born in 1857 and is now in Ukraine. Conrad’s heritage was Polish, he moved to France to begin his career at sea. He eventually moved to England, and wrote his novels in English, his third language.  

It wouldn’t be a Joseph Conrad novel without some time spent on the water, and one of the most dramatic parts of the novel is when Nostromo and Martin Decoud are tasked with sailing a lighter (small barge) full of silver out of the Placid Gulf that surrounds Sulaco, in the hopes of keeping it away from the military, who have overthrown the president of Costaguana.  

Nostromo has a bad premonition about transporting the silver from the beginning, and it’s certainly not an envious job. Conrad builds the tension with a night so dark that nothing can be seen. Catastrophe occurs when the lighter is struck by the ship bringing the soldiers to occupy Sulaco. Knowing the lighter is slowly sinking, Nostromo and Decoud bury the silver on one of the small islands in the gulf. Decoud stays on the island with a small rowboat, while Nostromo deliberately sinks the lighter and swims back to shore.  

The passages describing Decoud’s time on the island are beautiful and sad: “Solitude from mere outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of irony and skepticism have no place...In our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.” (p.393)  

One of the many admirers of Nostromo was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote in a 1923 article that Nostromo was “the great novel of the past fifty years.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship, p.86) High praise indeed.  

Silver tarnishes when it comes into contact with sulfur, and the silver of the San Tome mine tarnishes everyone in the novel who comes into contact with it. Perhaps that is the lesson of Nostromo.