Save Me the Waltz is a 1932 novel by American writer Zelda Fitzgerald. The novel's plot follows the privileged life of Alabama Beggs, a Southern belle who grows up in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era and marries David Knight, an aspiring painter. After engaging in a carefree life of hedonistic excess during the riotous Jazz Age, an aging Alabama aspires to be a prima ballerina, but an infected blister from her pointe shoe leads to blood poisoning and ends her dream of fame. Much of the semi-autobiographical plot reflects Zelda Fitzgerald's own life and her marriage to writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Following the decline of her mental health in Europe, Zelda wrote the novel in January–February 1932 while at home in Montgomery, Alabama, and then as a voluntary patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital's Phipps Clinic in Baltimore. She sent the manuscript to Maxwell Perkins, an editor at Scribner's. Unimpressed by her manuscript, Perkins published the novel at the urging of her husband in order for the couple to repay financial debts incurred by Zelda's voluntary stays at luxury clinics.
Although Scott Fitzgerald praised the novel's quality, literary critics panned the novel for its lush prose and weak characterization. The book sold approximately 1,300 copies, and Zelda earned a grand total of $120.73. Its critical and commercial failure dispirited Zelda and led her to pursue other interests as a playwright and a painter. After investors declined to produce her play, her husband arranged an exhibition of her paintings, but the critical response proved equally disappointing.
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' marriage based on Save Me the Waltz as the semi-fictional novel merely presents the glamorous fantasy that Zelda and Scott created about their lives. Wilson stated that acquaintance Morley Callaghan's 1963 memoir That Summer in Paris provides a more accurate depiction of the Fitzgeralds' marriage while in Europe.
In 1970, Nancy Milford's biography Zelda fostered a number of myths about the novel, including false speculation that Zelda's husband rewrote the work. Scholarly examinations of Zelda's drafts debunked Milford's speculation. Archival evidence shows that Scott Fitzgerald did not rewrite the novel, and the revised galleys show nearly all marks to be in Zelda's hand. Despite such scholarly refutations, myths persist that Scott rewrote Zelda's novel or tried to suppress its publication. Her husband, in fact, played a crucial role in securing the novel's publication by Scribner's.
Plot summary
Alabama Beggs, a pampered Southern belle "incubated in the mystic pungence of Negro mammies",: "Alabama Beggs, a coddled Southern belle..." comes of age in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era. She marries David Knight, a 22-year-old Irish Catholic artist and a United States Army officer stationed near her town during World War I.
David becomes a famous painter, and the newlywed couple moves to New York. They enjoy constant revelries of hedonistic excess and dissipation amid the riotous Jazz Age. Alabama and David relocate to the French Riviera where a French aviator, Jacques Chevre-Feuille, romances Alabama. In retaliation, David abandons Alabama at a dinner party and spends the night with a dancer.
A dissatisfied and restless Alabama becomes estranged from her alcoholic husband and their young daughter, Bonnie. Obsessed with fame, an aging Alabama aspires to be a renowned prima ballerina and devotes herself to this ambition. She receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dance a featured part with the prestigious San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples. Alabama journeys to the city alone, and she dances her solo debut in the opera Faust. A blister, infected by glue in her pointe shoe box, leads to blood poisoning, and Alabama can never dance again.
The unhappy couple returns to Alabama's beloved Deep South during the Great Depression to see her dying father. She searches for meaning in her father's death but finds none. Though outwardly successful to the general public, both Alabama and David remain miserable. In the final passages, the unhappy Knights sit motionless, a dissipated couple contemplating the aftermath of a wild party and the wreckage of their lives.
Major characters Alabama BeggsA Southern belle from Alabama based on Zelda Fitzgerald. David KnightAn aspiring young painter based on Zelda's husband F. Scott Fitzgerald. Jacques Chevre-FeuilleA French aviator who romances Alabama, based on Edouard Jozan. Bonnie The daughter of Alabama and David based on Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald.
Background and composition
Mental deterioration
In the winter of 1929, while a 29-year-old Zelda Fitzgerald and her 33-year-old husband Scott sojourned in France, Zelda's mental health deteriorated. Sara Mayfield, one of Zelda's confidants, stated that Zelda underwent three abortions in the preceding years, and Zelda's sister Rosalind speculated the effects of these procedures exacerbated her mental deterioration. During this period, Zelda became obsessed with dreams of fame as a prima ballerina. According to her daughter Scottie, Scott Fitzgerald supported Zelda's ambitions and paid for her ballet lessons.
In September 1929, after receiving an invitation to dance with the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, Zelda undertook a grueling daily practice of up to eight hours a day. This intense regimen destroyed her physical health and precipitated a nervous breakdown. One evening, her husband returned home to find an exhausted Zelda, unable to speak, collapsed on the floor and entranced with a pile of dust. After summoning a French physician, the doctor examined an incommunicable Zelda and posited that she suffered a collapse of her mental health.
A month later, in October 1929, during an automobile trip to Paris along the mountainous roads of the Grande Corniche, Zelda seized the car's steering wheel and tried to kill herself, her husband, and their 9-year-old daughter Scottie by driving over a cliff. After this homicidal and suicidal incident, doctors diagnosed Zelda with schizophrenia and psychopathic tendencies. Dr. Oscar Forel wrote in his psychiatric diagnosis: "The more I saw Zelda, the more I thought at the time [that] she is neither [suffering from] a pure neurosis nor a real psychosis—I considered her a constitutional, emotionally unbalanced psychopath—she may improve, [but] never completely recover." At the nadir of her mental health struggles, she engaged in coprophagia, the compulsive consumption of feces.: "These documents also detail [Zelda's]... coprophagia (the consumption of feces), catatonia (immobility in various forms), and infrequent violent outbursts."
Writing and production
After the initial observations of psychopathic tendencies, Zelda received further care at expensive psychiatric institutions. Following the Fitzgeralds' return from Europe and after another severe mental health episode, Zelda insisted—over her husband's financial objections—that she be admitted as a voluntary patient to the exclusive Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The Phipps Clinic granted admission to Zelda on February 12, 1932. Dr. Adolf Meyer, a schizophrenia expert, oversaw her care and psychiatric evaluations. As part of her recovery routine, she spent several hours leisurely writing each day.
Having begun writing a novel in January 1932 while at home in Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda finished the work in February during her voluntary stay at the luxurious Phipps Clinic. She wrote to Scott: "I am proud of my [unfinished] novel, but I can hardly restrain myself enough to get it written. You will like it—It is distinctly École Fitzgerald, though more ecstatic than yours—perhaps too much so." In a rush of enthusiasm, Zelda hastily finished the novel on March 9, 1932, and she sent the unaltered manuscript to editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's.
Surprised to receive a novel in the mail from Zelda without prior notice, Perkins perused her original and unaltered manuscript. Perkins discerned "a slightly deranged quality" in the prose that gave the impression that Zelda could not separate "fiction from reality." Despite his long experience as an editor, Perkins found many of Zelda's sentences to be awkward in their construction, as she chose words for their sound rather than their meaning and favored numerous garish metaphors that drew attention to themselves instead of making effective comparisons. Underwhelmed by the work, Perkins deemed the manuscript's overall tone to be hopelessly "dated" and evocative of the bygone Jazz Age hedonism in Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 work, The Beautiful and Damned. Perkins hoped that her husband, Scott, as a thrice published novelist, might be able to improve the novel's overall quality with his guidance.
Minor revisions
Learning that Zelda submitted a manuscript to his editor, Scott—consumed with writing his forthcoming work, Tender Is the Night—became angry that she had not shown a draft to him beforehand. Perusing the manuscript, he objected to her plagiarism of his character Amory Blaine, the protagonist of This Side of Paradise, and her use of the very same autobiographical plot as his forthcoming novel.
After receiving Scott's letter outlining these objections, Zelda replied that "we might have touched the same material." Despite his initial angry reaction,: "Fitzgerald was initially angry..." a debt-ridden Scott soon concluded that Zelda's book might improve their financial situation, and the couple speedily resolved their disagreements.
Contrary to later speculation, Zelda did not significantly revise the novel in response to Scott's guidance, and the galleys show nearly all revisions to be in Zelda's hand. Scott neither partially rewrote nor extensively edited the manuscript. After minor edits, Scott effusively praised the novel. He wrote to Perkins in an attempt to persuade the editor of the novel's improved quality and saleability:
Perkins did not share Scott's enthusiasm for Zelda's novel. Although still unimpressed by her revised manuscript, Perkins—suffering from intense depression—consented to publish the work regardless as a way for the couple to repay their financial debt to Scribner's. At the time, much of this financial debt resulted from Zelda's bills for her voluntary stays at the Phipps Clinic and other expensive institutions.: "Her prolonged convalescence only increased Fitzgerald's expenses, and he was obliged to make up for the interruptions of 1930 by writing even more Post stories than usual during 1931." Perkins arranged for half of the couple's book royalties to be applied against their debt to Scribner's until they repaid at least $5,000 ().
On June 14, 1932, Zelda signed a contract with Charles Scribner's Sons to publish the book, and Scribner's published the work on October 7 with a printing of 3,010 copies—typical for a first novel amid the Great Depression—on cheap paper, with a green linen cover. According to Zelda, the novel's title derived from a Victor record catalog, evoking the glamorous lifestyle that the couple enjoyed during the riotous Jazz Age.
Contemporary reception
Following its publication on October 7, 1932, Save Me the Waltz received overwhelmingly negative reviews from literary critics. The critics savaged Zelda's prose as overwritten, attacked her characterization as weak, and declared her tragic scenes to be unintentionally comedic. Although some praised her writing as "always vibrant and always sensitive", other critics faulted the "exaggerated" and "atrocious" prose as "words gone wild" to the point of unintelligibility.