Fitzgerald and the War Between the Sexes

Five smart essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald come together in this thoughtful posthumous collection from scholar and critic Donaldson (The Paris Husband). The piece “Scott and Dottie” considers whether Fitzgerald had an affair with Dorothy Parker, “Gatsby and the American Dream” examines Fitzgerald’s depiction of money and class in The Great Gatsby, and “A Fitzgerald Autobiography” explores the novelist’s failed attempt to write an autobiographical volume in the 1930s and considers what such a volume might contain. “Tender Is the Night: The War Between the Sexes” is a close reading of Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel in which Donaldson applies the narrative’s WWI imagery to marital struggles: “The conflict he powerfully depicted in that book concentrated on the struggle for dominance... a kind of warfare he hadn’t missed at all and was deeply involved in.” What sets these essays apart is Donaldson’s vast knowledge of Fitzgerald’s world and the surfeit of vivid details, such as a delightful image of Parker’s “first sight of the couple... of Zelda riding on the hood of a taxicab with Scott on the roof.” Animated by both scholarship and passion, these essays are well worth a look for Fitzgerald fans and literature students more generally. (Nov.)