Save Me The Waltz (Vintage Classics)

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Tate, Mary Jo (1998) [1997], F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work, New York: Facts On File, ISBN 0-8160-3150-9– via Internet Archive She installed a large mirror and a barre at home where, in addition to the time spent at the studio, she would practice for hours. Cline, Sally (2003), Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise, New York: Arcade Publishing, ISBN 1-55970-688-0– via Internet Archive

The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, University of Alabama Press, 1997 (3rd ed) Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900 – 1948) is best known for two things: as the wife of celebrated writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and for being the first true Jazz Age flapper and an icon of the new post-World War One era. However, she was also a talented writer, painter, and dancer in her own right. Here, we’ll explore Save Me the Waltz and other writings of Zelda Fitzgerald, which certainly deserve a fresh look.A portrayal of the marriage of Alabama Beggs and David Knight, Save Me the Waltz highlights the trials and tribulations both went through in their attempts to discover their own identities, separately and in the context of one another. Using place and setting, Fitzgerald manages to portray the nuanced, multifaceted lives of the Knights. Fitzgerald’s characters are compelling, interesting and multi-dimensional, and she makes them extremely likable, despite all their flaws.

French identity cards for the Fitzgeralds circa 1929, the year in which Zelda's mental health deteriorated. Over the next few months, Zelda revised the novel, this time with some input from Scott — although how much he influenced the revisions is unclear, as the original drafts have been lost. His own opinion of the novel varied dramatically, sometimes feeling that it was “perhaps a very good novel” and other times claiming that it was “a bad book.”

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Upon learning that Zelda had submitted her manuscript to Perkins, Scott became perturbed that she had not shown her manuscript to him beforehand. [25] After reading the manuscript, he objected to her novel's plagiarism of the character of Amory Blaine, the protagonist in his first novel This Side of Paradise. [26] He was further surprised to learn that Zelda's novel used the very same plot elements as his upcoming novel, Tender Is the Night. [27] Here is Zelda's novel. It is a good novel now, perhaps a very good novel—I am too close to tell. It has the faults and 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 Hemingway. It should interest the many thousands in dancing. It is about something and absolutely new, and should sell." [30] Divided into four chapters, each of which is further divided into three parts, the novel is a chronological narrative of four periods in the lives of Alabama and David Knight, names that are but thin disguises for their real-life counterparts. The four chapters loosely follow four distinct phases of the author’s life up to the death of her father: her childhood filled with romantic dreams of escape from the increasingly stifling family; her exciting escape via marriage to a painter and their early life together in Connecticut, New York, France, and Switzerland; the increasing emptiness of that life; and a final escape into ballet training, concluding with the return to Alabama for her father’s final illness.