Save Me the Waltz

Save Me the Waltz
The book cover with white title against a beige sky. A dancing couple twirl amid a white field of red flowers.
The cover of the first edition
AuthorZelda Fitzgerald
Cover artistCleonike Damianakes
LanguageEnglish
GenreTragedy
PublishedOctober 7, 1932
PublisherCharles Scribner's Sons
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover & paperback)

Save Me the Waltz is a 1932 novel by American writer Zelda Fitzgerald. It is a semi-autobiographical account of her life in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era and her marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald.[1] The novel recounts the lives of Jazz Age hedonists Alabama Beggs and her husband David Knight, thinly-disguised alter-egos of their real-life counterparts. An aging Alabama aspires to become a prima ballerina, but an infected blister from her pointe shoe leads to blood poisoning, forever ending her dreams of fame.

Following the decline of her mental health in 1929, Zelda wrote the novel while a voluntary patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital's Phipps Clinic in Baltimore.[2] She sent the manuscript to her husband's editor, Maxwell Perkins. Unimpressed by her manuscript,[3] Perkins nevertheless published the novel at the urging of her husband Scott Fitzgerald in order for him to repay his financial debt to his publisher Scribner's,[4][5] much of which resulted from Zelda's medical bills for her voluntary stays in psychiatric institutions.[6][7]

Although F. Scott Fitzgerald touted the novel's quality,[4] the novel garnered negative reviews upon its publication.[8] The book sold approximately 1,300 copies for which Zelda earned a grand total of $120.73.[9] Its critical and commercial failure dispirited Zelda and led her to pursue other interests as a playwright and a painter.[10] After Broadway investors declined to produce her plays,[10] her husband Scott arranged an exhibition of her paintings, but the critical response proved equally disappointing.[11][12]

In 1959, a decade after her death, Zelda's friend and literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote in The New Yorker magazine that readers should not infer too much about the Fitzgeralds' personal lives based on Save Me the Waltz as the semi-fictional novel merely reflects the glamorous fantasy that Zelda and Scott shared together.[13] Wilson later stated that acquaintance Morley Callaghan's 1963 memoir That Summer in Paris provided a more accurate depiction of the Fitzgeralds' marriage while in Europe.[14]

In 1970, forty years after its publication, biographer Nancy Milford speculated that Zelda's husband Scott Fitzgerald rewrote the novel prior to publication.[15][16] However, later scholarly examinations of Zelda's drafts and the published version debunked this speculation.[17] Contrary to Milford's claims, Scott did not rewrite the manuscript, and Zelda herself made only minor editorial revisions.[17][18]

  1. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 328.
  2. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 320.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Perkins Unimpressed was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Fitzgerald 1966, p. 262.
  5. ^ Berg 1978, p. 251.
  6. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 299–300; Mizener 1951, pp. 283–284.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zelda's Medical Bills was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 327.
  9. ^ Milford 1970, p. 264; Bruccoli 2002, p. 328; Berg 1978, p. 252.
  10. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, pp. 343, 362.
  11. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 362.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Artwork Exhibition was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Wilson 1959, pp. 115–23; Wilson 1965, p. 24.
  14. ^ Wilson 1965, p. 517.
  15. ^ Milford 1970, p. 225.
  16. ^ Berg 1978, p. 239.
  17. ^ a b Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2009, p. 164.
  18. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 9.