Filled with photographs of herself, her friends and family members, Zelda Fitzgerald's scrapbook is playful, even giddy: one has the impression that Zelda Fitzgerald was always in some kind of flurry of activity — dancing, painting, writing, playing. Even her captions read as though they were intended for dramatic effect — which they probably were. The scrapbook itself was produced during some of Fitzgerald's liveliest and most productive years, but these were also the years in which the tension between her professed wish to be a "new" woman and the fact that her efforts were essentially dwarfed by her husband's career made for extraordinary personal (and interpersonal) conflict. She was hospitalized following a breakdown in 1930, and spent the remainder of her life in and out of psychiatric hospitals. While it is unclear whether she continued to contribute to her scrapbook during these later and difficult years, it is easy to imagine the degree to which she benefited along the way from the incomplete, fragmented nature of scraps.

(Special Collections, Princeton University Library.)

07.01.09     Comments (1)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit