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.   

Reflections on The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats

One of my favorite books as a child was The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats. This 1962 classic follows a little boy, Peter, as he explores outside after a huge snowfall. The Snowy Day was one of the first children’s books to show a Black main character, although I was unaware of the historic nature of the book when I was a kid.  

The Snowy Day was one of my Dad’s favorite books to read to me, and I remember reading other Ezra Jack Keats books with him featuring Peter, like Whistle for Willie and Goggles. I enjoyed all three of those Keats books, and I loved the illustration style. I don’t remember my Dad and I ever talking about the fact that Peter was Black. And that was typical of both my parents—I learned empathy, kindness, and respect from them not through lessons or lectures, but simply through observing the way they treated people, the way they interacted with the world.  

Last night, I went with my family to a preview of the Minnesota Opera’s performance of The Snowy Day, and that brought back happy memories of reading that book with my Dad. Both of my parents read a lot to me when I was growing up, and I was lucky to always have a lot of books around. But The Snowy Day was on a list of books that my Dad seemed to love as much as I did. Some of his other favorites were Drummer Hoff, The Mystery at Number 7, Rue Petite, Tin Lizzy, and anything by Richard Scarry or Bill Peet. Other books might lose some of their charm through repeated readings, but Dad was always excited to read any of those favorites.  

Watching The Snowy Day last night, I was thinking more about what drew my Dad to the book. Obviously, it’s an excellent children’s book, with vivid, beautiful illustrations. But I wonder if The Snowy Day brought back memories of his own childhood. My Dad grew up in Bemidji, Minnesota, in a very different environment than Peter’s city in The Snowy Day. But what they have in common was a freedom to explore their environment. My Dad’s stories of his childhood in Bemidji featured lots of nature exploration, and very little adult supervision. When he was about 5 or 6, he and a couple of his friends set out across frozen Lake Irving to go visit his friend’s father, who worked at the woolen mills. They made it across the lake safely, blissfully ignorant of the panic they had caused their parents.  

It was delightful to watch The Snowy Day and be reminded of such happy memories of my Dad.  

Book review: If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland (1938)

My copy of If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland, first published in 1938. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Brenda Ueland was a Minnesotan author who published two books during her lifetime: Me: A Memoir, in 1939, and If You Want to Write in 1938. Ueland’s mother was Clara Ueland, a suffragette leader. I took a class in high school about Minnesota history, and we read a biography of Clara Ueland, Gentle Warriors: Clara Ueland and the Minnesota Struggle for Woman Suffrage, by Barbara Stuhler. We also took a field trip to visit the Ueland’s home, which still stands near Lake Harriet and Bde Maka Ska. As I was reading If You Want to Write I looked up Brenda Ueland, as I wondered if she was related to Clara Ueland. And then I had one of those fun moments where the circle connects.  

If You Want to Write has been recommended by authors I respect, and I found it to be a fascinating read. It ended up being a good contrast to the macho sensibility of The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield, which I read in December.  

Ueland’s thesis is that we all can create. The title of the first chapter is “Everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say.” I love that title, and I firmly agree with it. Ueland taught writing classes for many years, and she sprinkles the book with stories and examples from her classes.  

A quote that stood out to me was this one: “Inspiration does not come like a bolt...but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing.” (p.49) It’s so important to remember that inspiration will come if you give it a chance, but it may not strike like that proverbial bolt of lightning, or a light bulb over your head.  

Ueland’s stories of students in her class finding their voices are inspiring. They are a useful lesson to remember that you have to find your own voice in writing, you cannot simply imitate someone else’s voice and style and subject matter. Of course, that’s easier said than done.  

But I do have to quibble with Ueland on a few points in her book. She gives us a few excerpts from her student Sarah McShane’s writing. Ueland then compares McShane’s writing to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. “The writing is different from Sarah McShane’s but it is no better, no more convincing or alive. It has more vocabulary. But as a matter of fact my compassion for the people in it does not seem to turn over at all.” (p.78) Ueland admits that she might be biased in favor of her student. And there are many novels from 1937 that she could have picked to compare her student’s work to that no one would think twice about. Had she claimed Sarah McShane’s writing was as good as James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy, no one in 2025 would bat an eye. But Ueland had the misfortune to choose Of Mice and Men, which has become a revered classic, read by generations of students.  

Ueland really lost me with this sentence: “Tolstoy, Ibsen, Blake, Goethe, Thomas Mann and all great men, known or unknown, famous or obscure—they are great men in the first place and so they cannot say anything that is not important, not a single word.” (p.130) Okay, I get that it was 1938 and the “Great Man” theory of history was very prevalent. But still, this is just ridiculous. It’s useless to worship idols so completely. You will like some things an author writes, and some things they write you won’t like. You don’t have to take every word as though it was a drop of gold from the hand of a master. Writers are human. Their output will vary.  

I’m a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I am under no illusion that every single word he wrote was brilliant. Fitzgerald wrote almost 200 short stories. Needless to say, they vary greatly in quality. What I like to say about Fitzgerald is that even in his worst short stories, there are still two or three sentences that will take your breath away. For me, that’s a more useful measurement of artistic achievement than just saying “Everything he wrote was great. End of discussion.”  

What if someone asked me which Tom Wolfe book I would recommend to them? It wouldn’t be very useful if I said to them “Everything he wrote was perfect, start anywhere.” Wolfe’s books covered a wide range of the American experience—if the person was more inclined to non-fiction, I’d recommend The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or The Right Stuff. If they wanted a novel, I’d say The Bonfire of the Vanities.  

Sometimes it’s more valuable to think about what doesn’t work about a novel, short story, play, or film than what does work. I’m not advocating for being critical just for the sake of being critical, but there are times when it’s useful to say, “This didn’t quite work for me, for the following reasons.”  

Those are small quibbles compared to the value of If You Want to Write as a whole. If you’re interested in the creative process, or writing specifically, it’s a useful book. And it’s pretty amazing how well it holds up, 87 years after it was published.  

As I was reading If You Want to Write, I reflected on how lucky I am to have an outlet for my writing. If I was one of Brenda Ueland’s students taking her writing class in 1938, what would I have done with my writings? Sent them off to various magazines in the vain hope that they might accept something? I suppose so. I’m grateful that I’m able to just click a few buttons and poof, my thoughts are out there for the world to read. I’m not under any illusions that I’m reaching a huge mass audience with my book reviews and articles, but it is very gratifying to me to just have my writings out there where they might find an audience. Thinking about this made me happy to live in the modern world.