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Jeffrey Meyers, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has written fifty-two books, including Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, Orwell: Life and Art, John Huston: Courage and Art, Remembering Iris Murdoch, and Thomas Mann's Artist-Heroes. His books have been translated into fourteen languages and seven alphabets, and published on six continents.
Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography
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$9.49
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ISBN-13:
9780062316967
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 11/12/2013
- Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 480
- File size: 3 MB
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Scott Fitzgerald, a romantic and tragic figure who embodied the decades between the two world wars, was a writer who took his material almost entirely from his life. Despite his early success with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald battled against failure and disappointment.
This book, by the acclaimed biographer of Hemingway, is the first to analyze frankly the meaning as well as the events of Fitzgerald's life and to illuminate the recurrent patterns that reveal his inner self. Meyers emphasizes Fitzgerald's alcoholism, Zelda's illnesses and her doctors, Fitzgerald's love affairs both before and after her breakdown, and his wide-ranging friendships, from the polo star Tommy Hitchcock to the Hollywood executive Irving Thalberg. His writer friends included Ring Lardner, John Dos Passos, James Joyce, Edith Wharton, and Dorothy Parker. His friend and lifelong hero, Ernest Hemingway, was a harsh critic of both his behavior and his novels, but Fitzgerald accepted this with remarkable humility. Meyers portrays the volatile connection between these two writers and Fitzgerald's marriage to the schizophrenic Zelda with insight and poignancy. Meyers also discusses Fitzgerald's fascinating relationship with his daughter, Scottie. Exercising a fine critical balance, he details Fitzgerald's weaknesses but ultimately reveals a man capable of fierce loyalty and great moral courage.
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Donna Seaman
Although this is the first in-depth biography of the tragically great American writer Scott Fitzgerald to be published in several decades, it tells the same old sad story. Not to say that Meyers, an accomplished literary biographer who has written about D. H. Lawrence and Hemingway, hasn't unearthed fresh material. He has, but it all substantiates our image of Fitzgerald as beautiful and damned, a genius forced by circumstance and temperament to squander his talent. Indeed, Meyers provides us with a dizzying number of anecdotes about Fitzgerald's dismaying behavior, profligacy, and fear of sexual intimacy and inadequacy, but it is Meyers' compassionate interpretation of Fitzgerald's weaknesses and appreciation for his achievements that make this an invaluable and unforgettable portrait. Meyers explores all the ramifications of Fitzgerald's complex and destructive marriage to the once vivacious, later incurably mad Zelda, concluding that when it came down to it, Fitzgerald demonstrated admirable loyalty and compassion. Torn between the need for money and the demands of serious art, and saddled with an overwhelming sense of inferiority that drove him to drink--a habit his hypoglycemic body couldn't handle--Fitzgerald did the best he could, ultimately enriching our lives with his achingly original and enduring fiction.Booknews
Meyers (fellow of the Royal Society of Literature) illuminates the recurrent patterns that reveal Fitzgerald's inner self, and portrays the volatile connection between Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Meyers emphasizes Fitzgerald's alcoholism, his wife Zelda's schizophrenia, and the writer's wide-ranging friendships with important literary figures of his day. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The Toronto Star
[A] culmination of decades of biographical exploration....Meyers is particualrly interested in those areas of Fitzgerald's life that other biographers have not sufficiently covered.Paul Theroux
Marvelous—clear-sighted, humane and appreciative.Booklist
Meyers provides us with a dizzying number of anecdotes about Fitzgerald’s dismaying behavior, profligacy, and fear of sexual intimacy and inadequacy, but it is Meyers’ compassionate interpretation of Fitzgerald’s weaknesses and appreciation for his achievements that make this an invaluable and unforgettable portrait.Toronto Star
[A] culmination of decades of biographical exploration....Meyers is particularly interested in those areas of Fitzgerald’s life that other biographers have not sufficiently covered.