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Scott Fitzgerald
A bio of Scott Fitzgerald by Andrew Turnbull
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1962
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
May 18, 2019
I've been an avid fan of Fitzgerald's work since I was in my late teens and, as a young aspiring writer, I wanted desperately to be able to write like him, a dream that sadly did not come to fruition, although I have developed my own quirky style, such as it is. Anyway, enough about me. I read Turnbull's biography in college and I was amazed and delighted at how vividly it brought Scott and Zelda to life. I've read many biographies since then and the only one that comes close to Turnbull's is Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." One can really tell when a biographer loves writing about his or her subject and Turnbull clearly has great affection and admiration for F. Scott. One totally irrelevant side note---I played Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto while reading this excellent book and today, forty years later, that music always reminds me of Fitzgerald and the highs and lows of his fascinating, romantic life. If you happen to be a Fitzgerald fan, my advice would be to read this bio first. It's the gold standard, as they say.
August 19, 2016
Turnbull is a good basic biography of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and it was only the 2nd ever published in 1962 (following Arthur Mizener's The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald from 1951). Both of them and others since have been superseded by Matthew J. Bruccoli's Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (orig. 1981, 2nd edition paperback 2002) which is considered the standard work to date and is still in print. The Mizener and Turnbull are likely hard to find in 2016. I only found a used copy of the 1971 paperback of the Turnbull completely by chance.
Turnbull has a small personal connection due to the fact that in 1932-33 Fitzgerald and his daughter Scottie stayed at a rented house on the La Paix estate of Turnbull's parents near Baltimore, Maryland where Zelda Fitzgerald was undergoing treatment for her recurring mental health issues. This adds the benefit of some warm-hearted anecdotes of the games that Fitzgerald organized for Scottie and the 3 Turnbull children. Fitzgerald also seems to have taken 11-year old Andrew under a fatherly wing taking him to football games and introducing him to boxing.
Any Fitzgerald biography will be read with great deal of sadness but it is the warm family moments like those in the company of the Turnbulls and the stories of the final possible turnaround under Sheilah Graham's care in Hollywood that still help to lift the spirit.
Stray Observations
- Andrew Turnbull was also the editor of the first collection of letters: The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald from 1963.
Turnbull has a small personal connection due to the fact that in 1932-33 Fitzgerald and his daughter Scottie stayed at a rented house on the La Paix estate of Turnbull's parents near Baltimore, Maryland where Zelda Fitzgerald was undergoing treatment for her recurring mental health issues. This adds the benefit of some warm-hearted anecdotes of the games that Fitzgerald organized for Scottie and the 3 Turnbull children. Fitzgerald also seems to have taken 11-year old Andrew under a fatherly wing taking him to football games and introducing him to boxing.
Any Fitzgerald biography will be read with great deal of sadness but it is the warm family moments like those in the company of the Turnbulls and the stories of the final possible turnaround under Sheilah Graham's care in Hollywood that still help to lift the spirit.
Stray Observations
- Andrew Turnbull was also the editor of the first collection of letters: The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald from 1963.
May 3, 2012
Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull was well-researched, thoughtful, and quickly paced. After getting about a hundred pages into it, I realized that I already had a pretty good understanding of Fitzgerald's life. I expected a huge ego and unbridled ambition. I expected embarrassing tales of public drunkenness and excess. I expected a sad end to a meteoric beginning. And I got all of these.
There were some surprises though. It came as a surprise to me just how unhinged Zelda became. Some of the stories of his and Zelda's drunken exploits were so embarrassing and sad that it's a wonder there is now such a cult of idealism surrounding them. Also, I didn't realize that Fitzgerald and Hemingway were such intimates. (I always imagined them bumping into one another in a bar on the Seine in 1925, sharing a drink, and inspiring a million fantasies by romantically-minded readers. But they were close friends for a time and bitter ex-friends for even longer.)
Finally, I was surprised by how large a part football played in young Scott's ambitions. He played running back and had a second-string quarterback position for a while, and the write up of one of his games credit's Fitzgerald's "snap and bang runs." (Turnbull) He was too scrawny for the sport, though, and turned to his second love of writing. As a former skinny kid who had his athletic aspirations crushed, I sympathized.
I was finishing the book while proctoring the ACT test for my students. Now, if you have never administered the ACT, you must know that it is not a day off! In fact, it's the most tedious, excruciating three and a half hours you will ever spend in your life. You're not supposed to read, be on the computer, check your phone, or do anything other than walk around and monitor your students, and there are dire consequence for anyone who does. There is intense pressure on teachers to stand there and watch kids take a test. Nowhere in my life have I experienced such enforced boredom, and just about any teacher I know would rather be teaching a lesson than doing that.
Time moves slowly on ACT day.
I finished this book while my kids were taking their tests, and the last quarter of it was terribly depressing. Zelda's mind was gone and Scott was trying to rekindle his fading talents while drinking himself to death. I wished more than once for him to go ahead and die, putting us both out of our misery. Finally, he obliged.
August 19, 2012
Andrew Turnbull actually knew and interacted with Fitzgerald and his family from the time he was eleven years old when Fitzgerald rented a house from Turnbull's father. To me, this made his insights on Fitzgerald all the more meaningful in this well-researched and beautifully written biography. Fitzgerald was, as many of his protagonists, a tragic figure. I am strongly reminded of Millay's oft-quoted poem, "My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-- It gives a lovely light!" (Millay, by the way, grew tired of being identified by her most famous poem.)
It's time for me to re-read one of my favorite books, "The Great Gatsby" and Fitzgerald's other works.
It's time for me to re-read one of my favorite books, "The Great Gatsby" and Fitzgerald's other works.
August 23, 2015
This biography comes from a unique perspective due to the fact that Andrew Turnbull actually knew Fitzgerald from when Fitzgerald rented a house on his family's land during his childhood. That gives us a unique perspective and some charming anecdotes about Fitzgerald's doting on the children in what was otherwise a low point of his life. I'm not sure whether he differs in his assessment than other more contemporary biographers, but Fitzgerald sounds like a wreck from the beginning to me. The period of the jazz age he writes about was so short and eclipsed by all its elements. I don't think I would have wanted to know him at all but I'm glad he found some time to write amidst his chaotic life.
December 17, 2023
One of the better biographies I’ve read of an author. However, the dates are hidden in the back of the book and at times it was confusing. Also, the author dangled participles often - also causing some hiccups in the reading. All that being said, it was hard to put down.
August 12, 2025
In 1932, F. Scott Fitzgerald rented a house from the Turnbull family. Located in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore, “La Paix” was a beautiful, sprawling old Victorian home. Fitzgerald lived there for 18 months with his wife Zelda and their daughter Scottie. The Turnbulls lived in a newer house on their sprawling property, where they raised their three children: two daughters, Frances and Eleanor, and an 11-year-old son, Andrew.
Andrew Turnbull was fascinated by Fitzgerald, who took a paternal interest in the boy. Fitzgerald played tennis, tossed footballs, and shot .22 rifles with Andrew. He also encouraged Andrew’s interest in words, writing him letters filled with obscure words that would send Andrew to the dictionary. Andrew attended Princeton, as did Fitzgerald. Andrew was a better student, as he actually graduated from Princeton, then earned a master’s and doctorate from Harvard in European history. Turnbull wrote the second biography of Fitzgerald. Titled simply Scott Fitzgerald, it was published in 1962. The following year, Turnbull edited the first collection of Fitzgerald’s letters.
One of my favorite descriptions of Fitzgerald was written by Andrew Turnbull: “There was always something of the magician in Fitzgerald. He was the inventor, the creator, the tireless impresario who brightened our days and made other adult company seem dull and profitless. It wasn’t so much any particular skill of his as a quality of caring, of believing, of pouring his whole soul and imagination into whatever he did with us.” (p.231) I just love this passage, and it makes Fitzgerald come to life. You can imagine his sparkling wit enlivening Great Neck, the French Riviera, Saint Paul, Baltimore, and all the other places he lived.
Turnbull understood Fitzgerald’s complicated personality, and his admiration for Fitzgerald comes across strongly in the text. But his book is no mere hagiography of Fitzgerald. Turnbull interviewed many people who knew Fitzgerald, and there are numerous accounts of his behavior, both good and bad.
Fitzgerald exhibited a strong personal charisma, and Turnbull wrote of him: “Fitzgerald focused on you—even riveted on you—and if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that whatever you happened to be talking about was the most important matter in the world. A further seduction was his smile—quick, tight, and very appealing. It was not so much a smile as a flash of confidence in you and your mortal possibilities.” (p.226-7) There was more than a touch of Jay Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald.
Turnbull masterfully chronicles Fitzgerald’s life, from the glamour and fame of the 1920’s to the crash of the 1930’s, and his final attempt to remake himself in Hollywood. Brad Hayden wrote of Turnbull in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: “His speculations concerning Fitzgerald are filled with poetic insight and fidelity to the romantic spirit of his subject.” I read this quote grateful that someone summed up the book so well, and wishing that I had come up with such an elegant sentence.
Turnbull wrote a beautiful summation of the eighteen months when Fitzgerald lived at La Paix. It’s one of my favorite passages in the book. “My mother was grateful she knew Fitzgerald when she did, for he must have been more impressive then than at almost any other time—because more tragic, and therefore more profound...My mother became for a brief season a listener to and therefore a sharer of his thoughts, and they blotted out the surface lights and carried her, as the poetry of his books has carried others, down into the depths. And not the depths of weakness and illness alone. They were there, but also the angels.” (p.248)
After editing the collection of Fitzgerald’s letters, Turnbull also edited the 1965 volume Letters to His Daughter, which collected his letters to Scottie. Turnbull also wrote an acclaimed biography of Fitzgerald’s contemporary, and fellow Scribner’s author Thomas Wolfe, published in 1967. I’m lucky enough to have a signed copy of Turnbull’s Wolfe biography.
In addition to his own memories of Fitzgerald, Turnbull interviewed and corresponded with many people who knew Fitzgerald. In “A Note on Method and Sources” at the end of the book, the list of people Turnbull talked to about Fitzgerald is six pages long. It’s a great loss for Fitzgerald and Wolfe studies that Turnbull’s papers do not survive, as “Turnbull’s files were destroyed when his widow left her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered, p.x)
I knew that Andrew Turnbull died young, at age 48 in 1970, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned he committed suicide. I’m always saddened by any mention of suicide, and it’s hard for me to say exactly why I feel such sadness at the passing of someone I never met, someone who died 11 years before I was born. Part of the sadness is that I’ve always loved the connection that Fitzgerald had with Andrew Turnbull—how his friendship with this boy turned into a literary conversation, with Turnbull becoming his biographer, and editing the first collection of Fitzgerald’s letters. I’ve used the quote about Fitzgerald being “the inventor, the creator” numerous times on my Fitzgerald walking tours. I don’t know that the quote ever evoked in my audiences the same warm feeling I always had upon reading it, but I loved sharing it with people. I’ve moved away from reading direct quotes on my tours, unless I’m quoting from Fitzgerald himself. But when I talk about Fitzgerald’s personality, I always paraphrase what Turnbull wrote about how “Fitzgerald focused on you—even riveted on you— and if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that whatever you happened to be talking about was the most important matter in the world.” In that tiny way, I know my words are paying a little tribute to Andrew Turnbull’s work in researching and writing such a finely woven portrait of a talented writer who also happened to be his friend.
Andrew Turnbull was fascinated by Fitzgerald, who took a paternal interest in the boy. Fitzgerald played tennis, tossed footballs, and shot .22 rifles with Andrew. He also encouraged Andrew’s interest in words, writing him letters filled with obscure words that would send Andrew to the dictionary. Andrew attended Princeton, as did Fitzgerald. Andrew was a better student, as he actually graduated from Princeton, then earned a master’s and doctorate from Harvard in European history. Turnbull wrote the second biography of Fitzgerald. Titled simply Scott Fitzgerald, it was published in 1962. The following year, Turnbull edited the first collection of Fitzgerald’s letters.
One of my favorite descriptions of Fitzgerald was written by Andrew Turnbull: “There was always something of the magician in Fitzgerald. He was the inventor, the creator, the tireless impresario who brightened our days and made other adult company seem dull and profitless. It wasn’t so much any particular skill of his as a quality of caring, of believing, of pouring his whole soul and imagination into whatever he did with us.” (p.231) I just love this passage, and it makes Fitzgerald come to life. You can imagine his sparkling wit enlivening Great Neck, the French Riviera, Saint Paul, Baltimore, and all the other places he lived.
Turnbull understood Fitzgerald’s complicated personality, and his admiration for Fitzgerald comes across strongly in the text. But his book is no mere hagiography of Fitzgerald. Turnbull interviewed many people who knew Fitzgerald, and there are numerous accounts of his behavior, both good and bad.
Fitzgerald exhibited a strong personal charisma, and Turnbull wrote of him: “Fitzgerald focused on you—even riveted on you—and if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that whatever you happened to be talking about was the most important matter in the world. A further seduction was his smile—quick, tight, and very appealing. It was not so much a smile as a flash of confidence in you and your mortal possibilities.” (p.226-7) There was more than a touch of Jay Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald.
Turnbull masterfully chronicles Fitzgerald’s life, from the glamour and fame of the 1920’s to the crash of the 1930’s, and his final attempt to remake himself in Hollywood. Brad Hayden wrote of Turnbull in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: “His speculations concerning Fitzgerald are filled with poetic insight and fidelity to the romantic spirit of his subject.” I read this quote grateful that someone summed up the book so well, and wishing that I had come up with such an elegant sentence.
Turnbull wrote a beautiful summation of the eighteen months when Fitzgerald lived at La Paix. It’s one of my favorite passages in the book. “My mother was grateful she knew Fitzgerald when she did, for he must have been more impressive then than at almost any other time—because more tragic, and therefore more profound...My mother became for a brief season a listener to and therefore a sharer of his thoughts, and they blotted out the surface lights and carried her, as the poetry of his books has carried others, down into the depths. And not the depths of weakness and illness alone. They were there, but also the angels.” (p.248)
After editing the collection of Fitzgerald’s letters, Turnbull also edited the 1965 volume Letters to His Daughter, which collected his letters to Scottie. Turnbull also wrote an acclaimed biography of Fitzgerald’s contemporary, and fellow Scribner’s author Thomas Wolfe, published in 1967. I’m lucky enough to have a signed copy of Turnbull’s Wolfe biography.
In addition to his own memories of Fitzgerald, Turnbull interviewed and corresponded with many people who knew Fitzgerald. In “A Note on Method and Sources” at the end of the book, the list of people Turnbull talked to about Fitzgerald is six pages long. It’s a great loss for Fitzgerald and Wolfe studies that Turnbull’s papers do not survive, as “Turnbull’s files were destroyed when his widow left her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered, p.x)
I knew that Andrew Turnbull died young, at age 48 in 1970, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned he committed suicide. I’m always saddened by any mention of suicide, and it’s hard for me to say exactly why I feel such sadness at the passing of someone I never met, someone who died 11 years before I was born. Part of the sadness is that I’ve always loved the connection that Fitzgerald had with Andrew Turnbull—how his friendship with this boy turned into a literary conversation, with Turnbull becoming his biographer, and editing the first collection of Fitzgerald’s letters. I’ve used the quote about Fitzgerald being “the inventor, the creator” numerous times on my Fitzgerald walking tours. I don’t know that the quote ever evoked in my audiences the same warm feeling I always had upon reading it, but I loved sharing it with people. I’ve moved away from reading direct quotes on my tours, unless I’m quoting from Fitzgerald himself. But when I talk about Fitzgerald’s personality, I always paraphrase what Turnbull wrote about how “Fitzgerald focused on you—even riveted on you— and if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that whatever you happened to be talking about was the most important matter in the world.” In that tiny way, I know my words are paying a little tribute to Andrew Turnbull’s work in researching and writing such a finely woven portrait of a talented writer who also happened to be his friend.
August 3, 2022
Published in 1962 I was surprised it wasn't a member sucking hero making piece of junk. Pretty honest about Fitzgerald's less than admirable qualities. Dilettante sums him up perfectly. Revealingly, I found qualities in myself that mirror SF and am entering here:
pg 46 "He wanted to see, to know, to be, to experience, to explore. He wanted to do everything and have everything..."
pg 62 "...he fell in love with the things he read and wanted to foist then on others in a breathless way."
pg 63 "he was a button-holer who preferred a tête-à-tête to general debate."
pg 69 "At Princeton Fitzgerald knew boys who picked up girls at Bustanoby's and spent the night with them, but he would have none of it, for he was romantic and uncynical in his view of the opposite sex."
pg 75 "From the outset, Fitzgerald adhered to the Renaissance and Romantic conception of the writer as a man of action who experiences his material at first hand--not from lack of imagination, but so he can write about it more intensely. It is a perilous doctrine, even for the strong, and Fitzgerald would not always be as fortunate as the Shakespeare of his yarn.
pg 187 "He drank the way Baudelaire describes Poe drinking--not as an epicure 'but barbarously, with a speed and dispatch altogether American, as if he were performing a homicidal function, as if he had to kill something inside himself, a worm that would not die.'"
pg 228 "Also, he had no sense of proportion...Whenever he discovered some new old master, that master seemed to him greater than any other: he would hear of no other."
He wrote what he knew and alcoholism basically killed him and his wife died in an institution. Pretty sad, but a solid lesson for those of us needing it.
pg 46 "He wanted to see, to know, to be, to experience, to explore. He wanted to do everything and have everything..."
pg 62 "...he fell in love with the things he read and wanted to foist then on others in a breathless way."
pg 63 "he was a button-holer who preferred a tête-à-tête to general debate."
pg 69 "At Princeton Fitzgerald knew boys who picked up girls at Bustanoby's and spent the night with them, but he would have none of it, for he was romantic and uncynical in his view of the opposite sex."
pg 75 "From the outset, Fitzgerald adhered to the Renaissance and Romantic conception of the writer as a man of action who experiences his material at first hand--not from lack of imagination, but so he can write about it more intensely. It is a perilous doctrine, even for the strong, and Fitzgerald would not always be as fortunate as the Shakespeare of his yarn.
pg 187 "He drank the way Baudelaire describes Poe drinking--not as an epicure 'but barbarously, with a speed and dispatch altogether American, as if he were performing a homicidal function, as if he had to kill something inside himself, a worm that would not die.'"
pg 228 "Also, he had no sense of proportion...Whenever he discovered some new old master, that master seemed to him greater than any other: he would hear of no other."
He wrote what he knew and alcoholism basically killed him and his wife died in an institution. Pretty sad, but a solid lesson for those of us needing it.
January 4, 2021
Not a great read for a biography. There were many relevant, new and worth repeating data; however the style of reporting it left me feeling unfilled. Frankly, I believe the author chose the style of reflection rather than research and reporting.
I felt that the author, Andrew Turnbull used a singular, perhaps proven (to him) method of writing a bibliography; but for me it didn’t work. I believe that Turnbull missed an opportunity to open up the richness of Scott Fitzgerald’s life and those colourful characters from the Paris of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Ernie; of the cubists, Romantics and everything indelible to Montparnasse and the ‘left Bank’. I simply did not feel as if the author painted us his audience into the picture he could have captured. Bluntly, too much emphasis on the acquaintances of Fitzgerald and not enough on his friends and loved ones, especially the passions within which they must have flooded his life. Yes, that is perhaps my take on the book: it does read with anywhere near the passion, nor the depression that affected the artist. I cannot give more than Three Stars. Nor would I recommend this biography. There are so many more opportunities to get know the lives and feelings of Scott Fitzgerald.
I felt that the author, Andrew Turnbull used a singular, perhaps proven (to him) method of writing a bibliography; but for me it didn’t work. I believe that Turnbull missed an opportunity to open up the richness of Scott Fitzgerald’s life and those colourful characters from the Paris of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Ernie; of the cubists, Romantics and everything indelible to Montparnasse and the ‘left Bank’. I simply did not feel as if the author painted us his audience into the picture he could have captured. Bluntly, too much emphasis on the acquaintances of Fitzgerald and not enough on his friends and loved ones, especially the passions within which they must have flooded his life. Yes, that is perhaps my take on the book: it does read with anywhere near the passion, nor the depression that affected the artist. I cannot give more than Three Stars. Nor would I recommend this biography. There are so many more opportunities to get know the lives and feelings of Scott Fitzgerald.
October 5, 2024
3.5 stars but leaning more towards 4 than 3. I love books about authors and potentially would’ve loved to see a little more of his process. But Fitzgerald kind of depresses me. He was so lost, seeking validation in all the wrong places and always coming up empty and needing to drown himself in alcohol to make up for it. I also didn’t know all the tragedy in his and Zelda’s story. The biography is definitely interesting while simultaneously depressing.
January 30, 2017
A beautifully written biography benefiting from Turnbull's acquaintance with Fitzgerald. Not the most detailed biography, but certainly insightful and written with a sense of the triumph and tragedy that was Fitzgerald's life.
June 29, 2025
Moving and insightful and free of the fat one finds in some literary biographies.
May 20, 2016
This biography didn't really talk about his work as an author but more of what he did growing up. It was very detailed and a great story to read but I was more interested in the books he wrote. It wasn't a terrible book, I did enjoy parts of it and finding out interesting facts about Fitzgerald, but I probably won't recommend this book to anyone. If you're looking for the drawn out full story of Fitzgerald, this is the one for you. (Didn't mean to make it sound like that was a bad thing.)
March 1, 2016
The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andrew Turnbull, Editor. HB-B, @ 1963. Read from 7/92 to 3/93, off and on. Interesting, makes me want to read F. Scott and many others. Not an easy book to get through (605 pages). Not always clear becausse you only get one side...his letters to people...not their answers. Okay.
August 29, 2014
I really enjoyed this biography. The author Andrew Turnbull had the experience of personally knowing Fitzgerald so the biography has some personal anecdotes that make the man very real. It's not a flowery book or slanted. It was a long read, but I thought it was very good.
August 11, 2009
This is the only book I have read about FSF, I think I should read more before forming an opinion.
January 20, 2011
Good for drunk stories. Bad for critical detail. Author seems to have zero sympathy for Zelda.
April 19, 2013
Завидую господину Тернбуллу страшно.
Read
May 25, 2009Reading and gasping at the power of the writing, as well as the crazy life of F. Scott!!
March 30, 2013
Why I love Gatsby.
November 18, 2013
High score for the amount of quotes and how they are incorporated into the narrative.
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