Lexington Books The Romance of Regionalism in the Work of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: The South Side of Paradise

The Romance of Regionalism in the Work of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: The South Side of Paradise explores resonances of "Southernness" in works by American culture's leading literary couple. At the height of their fame, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald dramatized their relationship as a romance of regionalism, as the charming tale of a Northern man wooing a Southern belle. Their writing exposes deeper sectional conflicts, however: from the seemingly unexorcisable fixation with the Civil War and the historical revisionism of the Lost Cause to popular culture's depiction of the South as an artistically deprived, economically broken backwater, the couple challenged early twentieth-century stereotypes of life below the Mason-Dixon line. From their most famous efforts (The Great Gatsby and Save Me the Waltz) to their more overlooked and obscure (Scott's 1932 story "Family in the Wind," Zelda's "The Iceberg," published in 1918 before she even met her husband), Scott and Zelda returned obsessively to the challenges of defining Southern identity in a country in which "going south" meant decay and dissolution. Contributors to this volume tackle a range of Southern topics, including belle culture, the picturesque and the Gothic, Confederate commemoration and race relations, and regional reconciliation. As the collection demonstrates, the Fitzgeralds' fortuitous meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1918 sparked a Southern renascence in miniature. Review This valuable collection of new essays is a long overdue detailed examination of the role the South played in the lives and writings of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It not only complicates our understanding of how they depicted the region in their works, but also enables fifteen experienced and knowledgeable Fitzgerald scholar-critics to provide authoritative and informed close readings of previously under-studied, or in some cases totally overlooked, novels or short stories by both Fitzgeralds. It is a major contribution to the study of two important figures in American literary history which significantly widens our understanding of their careers.--Jackson R. Bryer, University of Maryland, and President, F. Scott Fitzgerald SocietyThe contributors to this collection about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald adopt a new perspective, looking at them both from the American South. The results are excellent. We don't normally think of the Fitzgeralds as regionalist writers, but perhaps they were --- in the best sense.--James L. W. West III, General Editor Emeritus, Cambridge Fitzgerald EditionThe Curnutt and Kosiba collection moves our definition of regionalism into new territories: in these essays geography becomes economics and gender, and what we think we know about the Fitzgeralds expands usefully. Providing new perspectives on the fiction and non-fiction of both Zelda and Scott, The Romance of Regionalism also showcases a new range of brilliant critics.--Linda Wagner-Martin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill About the Author Kirk Curnutt is professor and chair of English at Troy University.Sara A. Kosiba holds a PhD in English from Kent State University.