The review, which was published in the New York Tribune in 1922, seems to have a joking, lighthearted tone. But F. Scott Fitzgerald really did use his wife’s words in his writing. It was a source of tension between them and, from what I’ve read, has led to some heated debate among academics. However, I haven’t found anything that references contemporary public responses.
Did the public take this accusation seriously? If so, did it in any way impact their opinions on the book or the author? F. Scott Fitzgerald seemed to feel entitled to use his wife’s words without crediting her—was this unusual for the time, or was Zelda’s resentment and public callout the outlier?
The public loved it.
More accurately, they loved her. Or even more accurately, they loved their fantasy of her. And Fitzgerald's review, complete with plagiarism accusation, did a brilliant job accomplishing exactly the task she had accepted. It sold books by selling newspapers by selling the treasured image of Zelda, Scott, and Zelda-and-Scott as lady and lord of the flapper era.
No, copying Wikipedia for your term paper does NOT embody the Jazz Age. To wit, the relevant passage:
It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar.
In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald--I believe that is how he spells his name--seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
Letters and diaries weren't always necessarily the private documents we think of them as today. But they were, or at least gave the facade of being, personal. Fitzgerald isn't saying her "friend husband" ripped off a chapter of her own novel draft, or stole a plot; she's not claiming any literary skill or even ambition. He plagiarized her words, sure, but more to the point, he plagiarized her.
And indeed, Fitzgerald does a brilliant job in the rest of the review--"review"--constructing herself as a real-life equivalent of BatD's flighty, beautiful, immature, self-centered heroine Gloria.
She implores readers to buy the book so she can afford a new dress, or even new jewelry, or even a new coat for her husband...or nah, his current one'll do just fine. (She, however, NEEDS that fancy new dress and ring.) She can appreciate BatD for its tips on how to live, and certainly for its pretty-colored cover that makes it the season's hot fashion accessory to carry around. But as literature? Pfft.
The other things that I didn't like in the book--I mean the unimportant things--were the literary references and the attempt to convey a profound air of erudition. It reminds me in its more soggy moments of the essays I used to get up in school at the last minute by looking up strange names in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The pretty flighty girl doesn't understand literature and doesn't care about writing. It's the man's job to do that. She is ephemeral and nonthreatening, and so is her accusation of plagiarism.
And she is, according to Fitzgerald's review, equally embodied in Gloria Gilbert:
I find myself completely fascinated by the character of the heroine...Her birthday is in one place given as occurring in February and in another place May and in the third place in September. But there is a certain inconsistency in this quite in accord with the lady's character.
I would like to meet the lady.
And thus it goes, with the tone of Fitzgerald's "review" as the star of the show. The one aspect of Gloria that she cannot herself claim and still come across as charming is beauty. And there, the newspaper editor steps up to the plate. Despite the amount of space Fitzgerald devotes to the book's jacket, illustration, and color--and it is A LOT--the column's own accompanying illustration is...a headshot of Fitzgerald all dolled up.
Plagiarism begins at home...and reactions begin with the editor. Whether the idea of using the photo belonged to Fitzgerald or Burton Rascoe (which has got to be the most 1920s name ever), his decision to run it shows his awareness and approval of her "self"-portrayal as the real subject of the review.
It's important to keep in mind that public reactions to an individual article, especially something like a single book review, are a very 21st-century interest. The global accessibility of texts online and the Twitter-driven culture of #hottakes were not part of the public sphere in 1922.
That doesn't mean we can't or don't get to study them. (In point of fact--I do.) It just means we don't usually have the same kinds of sources. So in this case, the "what happens next" can sketch out the picture.
And the what happens next was pretty impressive.
Fitzgerald married Scott in 1920. On April 1, 1922, her husband was an established writer, and she was known to the public as part of Zelda-and-Scott--his model and muse. But she was no author.
On April 2, the New York Tribune ran her review.
In May, McCall's asked her to write a "Where Do Flappers Go?" essay.
In June, Metropolitan Magazine published her "Eulogy on the Flapper."
The BatD review was such a hit, even with the limited number of eyes that could see a 1922 newspaper, that it brought Fitzgerald into the, yes, literary realm. And it was the Fitzgerald she constructed in the review--the Fitzgerald she claimed her husband plagiarized as Gloria Gilbert: flirtatious, materialistic, and content with her place as a princess.
People loved the review because they loved their fantasy of her.
~~
...Of course, people missed--or ignored--the part where Fitzgerald told them it was just a fantasy.
I have an intense distaste for the melancholy aroused in the masculine mind by such characters as Jenny Gerhardt, Antonia, and Tess (of the D'Urbervilles). Their tragedies, redolent of the soil, leave me unmoved. If they were capable of dramatizing themselves they would no longer be symbolic, and if they weren't--and they aren't--they would be dully, stupid, and boring, as they inevitably are in life.
We might note that she is in fact dropping those literary references she claimed to find pretentious and distracting (Willa Cather? Thomas Hardy?). But her sharper, almost bitter? criticism is a refutation of the entire review. Women on the page aren't real women; we can only enjoy their stories because they are fantasies. Real women are normal just like us.
Fitzgerald is normal, just like us. "Gloria" is plagiarism of a tiny selection of her words, not of her.
~~
And of course, when Fitzgerald's words were accompanied with her literary talent and ambition...Scott threw a tantrum, because the only one who should use them was him.
Flapper-era men are so immature and self-centered, don't you think?