“We have always had a next one, after all, and there’s no good reason we shouldn’t start this one now. If only people could travel as easily as words. Wouldn’t that be something? If only we could be so easily revised.”
So begins Therese Anne Fowler’s historical novel Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, following the quotation of what appears to be a letter from Zelda to Scott from her sanatorium in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to hear Fowler speak about her book when I was teaching at University of Mary Washington. I think it is interesting the relationship between a wife and her husband when the husband is very successful. Many men have power/intellect but don’t know how to use it. A good woman shows them.
If the quoted letter that begins Fowler’s novel is true, Zelda was a good writer too (I haven’t read her novel). She speaks of “you with your bad heart, me with my bad head.” The letter is entirely affectionate. I don’t know enough of their lives to understand why their marriage ended so badly.
I have more to say on this but want to make an irrelevant statement. A classmate from my youth who tried but failed to stop me from making a fatal error died recently. Requiescat in pace.