I had long been aware that F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda had a happy marriage that, somehow, went wrong. After many years of happy-go-lucky, flamboyant living, Zelda lost her sanity. I always wondered about this but never investigated further until I found Kendall Taylor’s biography “Sometimes Madness is Wisdom.” Taylor provides considerable detail about Zelda’s life with her famous husband. She gives the biographical dates: when they met, their successes, their failures, and when they died. More than that, she gives enough detail for one to draw independent opinions of both Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. Most biographies display the spin of the author, in Taylor’s case, a slightly feminist viewpoint, but Taylor provides enough detail for the reader to see beyond anyone’s opinions and draw ones own opinion.

Scott and Zelda were both very talented and ambitious. Both wanted recognition. Scott got wide recognition with his famous novel “The Great Gatsby,” but his friend, Ernest Hemingway, soon achieved greater fame. This spurred Scott on to write other novels like “This Side of Paradise,” but he never caught up to Hemingway who became one of the major English-speaking authors of the early twentieth century. In spite of his fame, as we all know, Hemingway became very despondent in his latter years and finally committed suicide. Scott and Zelda also had sad endings to their lives. Scott died suddenly of a heart attack in 1936, still a young man in his forties, but broke, his career behind him, and bearing the unmistakable scars of alcoholism. Zelda, already in a hospital for mental disorders and undergoing shock treatments and other remedies felt effective at that time, died, tragically, in 1948 at age 47, when the hospital caught fire. The person I feel most compassion for is Zelda because, after such a happy and frolicking youth, she somehow became mentally ill. What happened that could make her lose all that joy?

Zelda’s illness probably was hereditary and may have been unavoidable, but Taylor brings up something else that happened to Zelda. It appears that Zelda was a very talented writer herself. She wrote extensive diaries that recorded her observations and feelings. Scott borrowed from her diaries to lend, as Taylor puts it, the soul of the Jazz and Flapper age to his novels. Taylor thinks that it was Zelda’s words that put life into Scott’s novels. Zelda had writing ambitions of her own, but, according to Taylor, Scott did not support her ambitions because Scott felt that, although Zelda was good with words, she did not have the talent to construct a novel. Zelda also had ambitions to become a ballet dancer, but never realized this ambition either.

One wonders what effect this constant frustration and lost opportunities had on Zelda and how much she held her husband responsible for it. I think, had they worked together, they might have co-authored even better novels than Scott wrote alone. Early in their marriage, Zelda and Scott were both offered leading roles in a movie based on his “This Side of Paradise.” Scott turned it down. I see this as a blunder on Scott’s part. Zelda would have felt closer to Scott and far less frustrated had they been in the movie.

Early in their marriage, Scott and Zelda spent their energies looking for fulfillment in the trendy ways of the liberated twenties. They were influenced by Freudian advice against frustrated sex and were emboldened by alcohol that was made more attractive by prohibition. They both pursued an exciting, uninhibited, fun-filled life that, for a short while, was the envy of their friends, including Hemingway. But life has a way of catching up with us, and new trends, no matter how attractive they seem, may not be in our own best interest.

Taylor’s book contains photographs of Scott and Zelda when they were young and vivacious. Looking at the photographs, I could not help feeling compassion for both of them. I think you might get something out of reading this biography also.