In my grandfather's book Second Thought, published 1945, he critiques Fitzgerald's entire career up unto his death. He groups him with Dos Passos and Hemingway in a chapter called Tenderly Tolls the Bell. Here are a few of his comments: "Fitzgerald never found his way at all, but ended his life in the quicksands of half knowledge." . . . ""His habit of juvenility which was so attractive in the beginning, had betrayed him as it betrays all bright, spoiled children." . . ."Yet though the light of publicity always illuminated Fitzgerald's decorative person sympathetically, he never felt secure in his possession of that glittering stage devoted to the drama's of the very rich." . . ."he was the most masochistic of writers, publishing to the world all the intimacies of his self-doubt." . . . "Fitzgerald's chief fault is his facility. It makes him clutter his pages with a tremendous amount of amusing and entirely unimportant material . . ." My grandfather thought The Great Gatsby was his best book and very good at that. His other writings he thought were ungainly, melodramatic and undisciplined. However, he recognized Fitzgerald's gift for brilliant writing within all his books. I agree. Fitzgerald turned out incomparably lovely sentences and phrases that still make one sigh in appreciation. He should have stuck with short stories.

Hi Virginia, your connection to the Fitzgerald's is very interesting. I didn't keep a list of sources, I'm afraid, but all my material came from reading their work and biographical pieces. It was my understanding that, though Zelda spent her last years away from Scott and in institutions, it was because he put her there. What she would have done if he hadn't, I don't know.

My grandfather, James Gray, and actually my father as a young boy also, and the Fitzgeralds lived on Green Street in St. Paul, Minnesota. Anecdotal tidbit, unconfirmable, of course--my grandparents once lent money to Fitzgeralds during the depression. My grandfather was an author and literary critic who obligingly critiqued Scott's work at that time. His critique of Zelda's book, A Couple of Nuts, is included in the biography Zelda. by Nancy Milford. He called her novel "a companion piece to the Great Gatsby." I was under the impression that Zelda stopped drinking since she chided Scott for his excess. And from what I have read she seems to have suffered from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia--maybe Scott induced. She really didn't stay with him since she spent her last years institutionalized. I would be interested in knowing what sources have led you to your conclusion--especially the plagiarism part. Since my relatives hobnobbed at cocktail parts with the Fitzgeralds I am understandably interested in the subject.