Fictionalized biographies of famous people seem to me a risky endeavor. One could drown herself in years of research and still be at a loss when it comes to telling their story first-hand. But I can understand the fascination—especially with the legendary Fitzgeralds.

Told from Zelda’s perspective, Z gives readers an up-close re-imagining of this iconic jazz-age couple. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is often remembered as the “First Flapper,” a rambunctious beauty who traded her Southern roots for a life as the wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, following him to New York, Paris, and through the winding paths of fame. Before his alcoholism and her bouts with schizophrenia, before their marriage lost its spot in the sun– they were the Golden Couple.

If the author’s interpretation of this historical duo is based anything on fact, then F. Scott Fitzgerald was kind of an asshole. Granted, they lived in an era where women were often overlooked. Zelda had to work ten times as hard as her husband to make a name for herself in creative endeavors—in fact, she quite literally had her name replaced with Scott’s in order to merit a higher price for the stories she wrote. Her writing was likely viewed as competition; her devotion to dance and painting merely hobbies. Where her husband was sought professionally and socially, Zelda was expected to step aside. I can’t help but wonder if her mental illness wasn’t the result of a gaping loneliness from a world that didn’t know better than to be against her.

We might take a moment here to cast some of the blame on Ernest Hemingway: his friendship with Scott seemed only to bring out the inconsideration towards Zelda. Part of me wanted to keep Mr. F. Scott in that idealistic slant of literary light, but at several points within the story, I found myself shaking my head in a scolding manner, thinking something to the effect of, “Oh no he didn’t!”

Z’s version of Fitzgerald seems to forget who he’s married to: loyal companion or beautiful fool? We seem to shift all too quickly from the former to the latter, bypassing much of the romance history preserves for us.

We know something caused them to “slip briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered” (This Side of Paradise)—the letters, the writing, and research will uncover evidence of a fierce devotion, despite their troubles. Within their words, there’s an unmistakable passion present, a genuine intimacy. Take, for example, this gem (from a letter to a friend, Scott about Zelda): “I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”

In Z, I found myself wishing for a bit more of that swoon-factor. Especially in their youth, at the time they met, courted, and married—so sure of life needing to be spent with the other. If I could have been convinced of an authentic madness to their love then, I would have been more sympathetic to the madness that later became their downfall.

Maybe it’s because for me, the 1920’s evoke visions of jazz music and dancing nights away, of speakeasies and dizzying surges towards a more modern era–blushing eagerness for what dazzles, an entire generation drunk on liberation–that I wanted so desperately to sway along with this tune, and find Scott and Zelda there in the thick of the scene. We are teased with glimpses of this recklessness, but never did I feel tipped over. The writing style is kept even-tempered throughout, which seems somewhat ironic when addressing Zelda’s visions and spells of unreality. This is not to say there aren’t some good lines. I was intrigued to hear it all straight from Zelda—the narrative “I” an up-close invitation. But at times I wondered if the writing was perhaps too steady for such a roller coaster couple. The story seemed to be saturated in historical accuracy but not as much in romance. I wanted a little more wine and dine; a bit more fox for my trot.

Still, I never questioned staying with the Fitzgeralds of Z’s pages until the end: ultimately fascinated by this iconic pair and the imagined perspective of how Zelda herself might have told the story.

]]> http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?feed=rss2&p=2406 0 http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2386 http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2386#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:19:16 +0000 leighkaisen http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2386

I’m a sucker for stories of unlikely pairs. Especially ones that turn out to be unlikely heroes, and in this case, better because of the other. But not in that predictable teeny-bop way. Far from it: Eleanor and Park are two of the best-drawn characters lifted from teen book pages. I believed them. They’re unique, hilarious, real, and refreshing. They spark their own fires, and together, ignite something beautiful.

Eleanor is the new girl, nicknamed Big Red by the back-of-the-bus kids: she’s got flaming ginger curls and a chubby frame, which she dresses in the most unusual way (fabric swatches pinned to men’s shirts, scarves tied on her wrists), and even though high school can be cruel, it’s better than being in her cramped house with no bathroom door and only a small bedroom for her and the little kids to avoid their stepdad’s watchful eye and hostile temper.

Park is the weird Asian kid who dresses in black and tunes out to his Walkman and comic books by himself on the school bus, until the new girl ends up in the only available seat, right next to Park.

What begins as an awkward, mutually delicate awareness gradually shifts towards friendship and beyond, bonded on shared interests of stories, good music [insert Smiths reference here], and the appreciation of being different.

Only with Park and Eleanor do you get detailed refreshers on just how hot hand-holding can be, and only with them do you get lines like “Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her. That would be awesome.” And: “‘You look like a protagonist.’ She was talking as fast as she could think. ‘You look like the person who wins in the end.’”

Sometimes, the adorable-levels of their romance have a tendency to go off the awwwww charts in a way that might make you roll your eyes, but also secretly want more. You get a sense for that spark, the one that exists in a moment of Yes! You get me. You’re reminded of the beauty of beginnings, of finding and being found, of choosing and being chosen.

You root for these characters and the book makes it easy to do so. Alternating between their perspectives, the flow is seamless, and although the world seems to be against them in so many ways, their loyalty is relentless as they find bravery for and because of each other, harboring as much youth as they can keep against a reality that forces them to grow up. Theirs is a story that you want to keep telling.

Job perk: getting to write book reviews on the clock. My recent review of Sheila Heti’s How Should A Person Be? is currently up on the library’s Staff Picks page. While you’re there, scroll down a bit to check out a review by my fellow friend and AG, Austin, who makes a convincing sell for after the quake, a short story collection by his favorite author Haruki Murakami.

Lately, I’ve been reminded that making time to write a review of the book I’ve just finished, however brief or detailed, really does help lock the book into my brain, perhaps reconciling that thing that happens where, after an amount of time has passed since the reading experience, parts of the plot become hazy and characters’ dialogue not quite as vivid as before. If I compose a response when the story is fresh in my mind, chances of preserving that story are that much better.

A few other  reviews I’ve written for the library in the past:

Flipped

3 Willows

What Happened to Goodbye

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

On the Saturday before Easter, the hubby & I went to the Humane Society to look at puppies. We weren’t planning on getting one that day, but after holding a sweet pup in our arms, we decided definitely soon. We fell for one fluffy little girl in particular (you had me at lick).

Cute attacks were plentiful. (These are preferable over allergy attacks, which the hubby can be prone to). Before leaving the shelter, we even rubbed a few puppies on Joel’s sleeves for just-in-case allergy testing. Because Joel’s allergic to cats (unfortunate), we decided a while ago that we would adopt a dog someday.

Someday was Tuesday, when Joel surprised me by adopting that pup we fell in love with, now named Margot. When I came home, Joel yelled from the backyard, “Come check out my yardwork!” and when I opened the gate and walked in, there she was, looking up at me all puppy-eyed, tail going fwip fwip fwip.

]]> http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?feed=rss2&p=2362 2 http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2349 http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2349#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:58:41 +0000 leighkaisen http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2349

The Sketchbook Project: “It’s like a road trip, but with sketchbooks.” This initiative is just one of the light bulbs floating above the brilliant minds of Art House Co-Op and Brooklyn Art Library. Sign up, get a sketchbook, fill it up, send it back, see it off, share it with the world. And then be inspired by the cool things everyone else comes up with.

The idea is a pretty good one if you ask me: I like things that give me a reason to dabble more in the stuff I to do but don’t do nearly enough, without the pressure–it’s just for funsies. Last year, after road-tripping to Chicago to see my sketchbook rubbing shoulders with thousands of other sketchbooks, I felt like a proud mama and decided I’d go for Round Two. And now, this year’s sketchbook (“Paper Vacation”) is digitized and part of the Digital Library for your perusal (and also serving as my e-consolation as my sketchbook is off galavanting the country. They grow up so fast! : )

Check it out here.

]]> http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?feed=rss2&p=2328 0 http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2322 http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2322#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:12:39 +0000 leighkaisen http://www.lifeisloveleigh.com/?p=2322

Hazel’s lung cancer, diagnosed at age 13, became more manageable after a medical miracle involving tumor-shrinking meds. With her oxygen tank in tow, Hazel is “doing okay,” as she tells her Cancer Support Group, which meets in the Literal Heart of Jesus Christ. There she meets Augustus: handsome, hilarious, missing one leg due to a bout with bone cancer. Now he’s in remission, has a prosthetic, and he gets Hazel: not just because of their Having Cancer; because they get each other:

“May I see you again?” he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.

I smiled. “Sure.”

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Patience, grasshopper,” I counseled. “You don’t want to seem overeager.

“Right, that’s why I said tomorrow,” he said. “I want to see you again tonight. But I’m willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious,” he said.

“You don’t even know me,” I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. “How about I call you when I finish this?”

“But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said.

“I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book.”

He broke out into that goofy smile. “And you say we don’t know each other.”

In their favorite book, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten, the narrator and protagonist is a young girl named Anna, who also has cancer. The book ends in the middle of her sentence. Hazel is one to appreciate this realism:  “That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully.” She is bothered, however, by the fact that readers are left without knowing what happens to any of the other characters, particularly Anna’s mother. Hazel fears being a grenade: a time-bomb set to leave everyone else behind (“That’s the thing about pain… it demands to be felt”).

While Hazel and Augustus are wiser than their youth in matters of life and death, they connect on their own level of clever humor and creative sass; they are themselves apart from their diagnosis. They have real conversations that are fresh and engaging and funny and relatable. They have ridiculously adorable quippy dialog. They’re smart. They see the world in this piercingly honest rawness, yet still participate fully within it: they are each other’s best form of encouragement. And they don’t look back.

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars isn’t just a cancer story; it is a pages-full-of-beauty story, the kind whose invitation is instant and whose heroes are believably honest–fighting for life but mostly fighting for (and alongside) each other.

You know you’ve made it as a writer when Thomas Freaking Pynchon leaves his endorsement on your book’s cover jacket. Which is the case for George Saunders and his latest collection of stories, Tenth of December. Pynchon says Saunders has an “astoundingly tuned voice.” Indeed: Tuned into the layers and intonations of culture and social class and human effort and trying. Attuned to the experience of real, pressed up against the surreal in ways that cause the senses to tip over.

“Victory Lap,” the first story (also: favorite), calls to action the help of a tentative lanky boy who witnesses the abduction of the girl next door. Each teenager is sheltered in a way: he by his overprotective parents with strange rules, she by her own bubble of ballet and cutesy inner narrative (“Hop over thin metal thingie separating hallway tile from living-room rug. Curtsy to self in entryway mirror”).

(Sidenote: Back in early 2011, I saw Saunders speak at Butler University as part of their Visiting Writing Series, and the story he read that night turned out to be this story).

Another that stands out among the collection is “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” in which a dad’s attempts to celebrate his teen daughter’s birthday collide with socio-economic sensitivities involving an usual garden adornment of “SG’s”—underprivileged women in white dresses who are strung up in the yard with advanced microwire and hung on display. Saunders explores the variances of desperation between classes (at one point the father reassures his youngest daughter, “it doesn’t hurt… they applied for it, it helps them take care of the people they love”).

In the collection’s title story, an old man contemplating ending his cancer on his own slips away into the woods, where his path is crossed with a boy treading across thin ice. Both are forced to confront a necessary interruption and save the other. The language of reflection and memory in this story is especially resonant, from self-deprecation (“He was like the bed at a party on which they pile the coats”) to recognition (“Somehow: Molly. He heard her in the entryway. Mol, Molly, oh boy. When they were first married they used to fight. Say the most insane things. Afterward, sometimes there would be tears. Tears in bed? And then they would—Molly pressing her hot wet face against his hot wet face. They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back”).

Saunders is capable of slipping into voices of varying characters and perspectives, and the result feels authentic every time:

Fifteen year old girl (“Victory Lap”): “Sometimes, feeling happy like this, she imagined a baby deer trembling in the woods. Where’s your mama, little guy? I don’t know, the deer said in the voice of Heather’s little sister Becca.”

Middle-aged, middle class dad (“The Semplica Girl Diaries”): “Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.”

Struggling mother (“Puppy”): “So what she’d love, for tonight? Was getting the pup sold, putting the kids to bed early, and then, Jimmy seeing her as all organized in terms of the pup, they could mess around and afterward lie there making plans, and he could do that laugh/snort thing in her hair again.”

Elderly cancer patient (“Tenth of December”): “More and more his words were not what he would hoped. Hope.”

I’ll echo the adjectives Pynchon chooses to describe Saunders’ writing: “graceful, dark, authentic, and funny.”

Although the stories in Tenth of December breach upon heaviness, they pave their way through to a kind of dimly-lit gratitude: shadow puppets of the bizarre, dancing on walls of hard honesties. You’re aware of the darkness but you don’t fully realize it. At least, it doesn’t pierce you completely because the funny parts are just as convincing and lead to a subtle stretch of redemption, often at the ends. Saunders allows for the heavy to be laced with humor in the most believable way possible, and between the ha-ha-has and the glassy eyes, leaves something absolutely stunning.