Save Me The Waltz (Vintage Classics)

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The rich prose style has also been connected to Surrealism, in its attempts to disrupt realism by creating unexpected connections. In the novel, Alabama’s first kiss with David becomes a deep, nightmarish dive into the frontal cortex of his brain:

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. Svrluga, Susan (February 22, 2016), "Calls to change U. of Alabama building name to honor Harper Lee instead of KKK leader", The Washington Post, Washington, D.C. , retrieved December 8, 2021 Indeed, Scott used lines from Zelda’s letters and diaries throughout his writing career, most notably in This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.Zelda wanted desperately to be taken seriously as a writer, and for the first time wanted her work to be evaluated on its own merits, without her husband’s intervention, opinion, or the use of his name.

Save Me the Waltz was republished by Southern Illinois Press in 1967 (it required some 550 spelling and grammar corrections), and then again by the University of Alabama in 1991 in The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald. Save Me the Waltz was finally published in 1932 in a print run of likely no more than 3,000 copies. Only around 1,200 sold, and the novel went out of print after this first run. 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. It is not only that her publishers have not seen fit to curb an almost ludicrous lushness of writing but they have not given the book the elementary services of a literate proofreader." [40]She talked with so spontaneous a color and wit — almost exactly in the way that she wrote — that I very soon ceased to be troubled by the fact that the conversation was in the nature of the free association of ideas and one could never follow up anything. I have rarely known a woman who expressed herself so delightfully and freshly; she had no ready-made phrases on the one hand and made no straining for effect on the other.” A shooting star, an ectoplasmic arrow, sped through the nebulous hypothesis like a wanton hummingbird. From Venus to Mars to Neptune it trailed the ghost of comprehension, illuminating far horizons over the pale battlefields of reality."

When Scott did see the novel soon after, he was furious. He wrote to Zelda’s doctor accusing her of plagiarizing several ideas from his current novel-in-progress, which would become Tender Is the Night — “literally one whole section of her novel is an imitation of it, of its rhythm, materials…” — and of exposing too much of his private life.Zelda and Scott had lived glory days as the most famous couple of the Jazz Age in New York, following the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise. Save Me the Waltz is based on their time together in the France, which represented the beginning of the decline of their marriage. The novel reflects Zelda’s anxieties to do something for herself and move out of the shadow of her husband’s accomplishments. 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