Fitzgerald and Hemingway, p. 181-197

Two thousand and two was a landmark year for Fitzgerald studies, with the appearance of the Fitzgerald Society's new journal, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, ed. William Blazek, Jackson R. Bryer, Michael K. Glenday, Ruth Prigozy, and Susan Wanlass. It was also an exciting year for Hemingway studies, especially for the opening of the papers at the Finca Vigía in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba. Disciplinary emphases in Hemingway and Fitzgerald studies this year imitate a yin-yang symbol: the 1930s are becoming the focus of Hemingway scholarship, although The Sun Also Rises and the early short fiction continue to receive close attention; The Great Gatsby and the short fiction remain the foci of Fitzgerald scholarship, although the first issue of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review devotes a short section to the 1930s. Textual studies, intertextuality, and influence studies add nuance to Hemingway criticism, often eclectically but fruitfully combined with cultural and gender studies and psychoanalytic approaches. In Fitzgerald studies, work in biographical, literary, and cultural areas continues to blossom. The work of younger scholars on both writers indicates the emergent potential of space/place theory in literary criticism. The continued exponential expansion of critical interest in the work of both writers is always welcome news, even for the reviewer faced with the challenge of preparing this chapter.

i Texts, Letters, Archives, Annotations, and Bibliography

a. Fitzgerald

Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks's impeccably edited Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (St. Martin's) establishes a long-needed balance of treatment of the Fitzgerald marriage. The interwoven chronological presentation of their letters documents the ebb and flow of passion and the always breathtaking emotional intensity shared by these two literary figures. Zelda's complicated voice, in particular, is at last rendered clearly audible by this volume, which will doubtless transform critical work on the Fitzgeralds and their individual and mutual contributions to American letters. Invaluable to scholars and aficionados alike, the Bryer-Barks volume will prove especially urgent to scholars working on Save Me the Waltz and Tender is the Night.

James L. West III's excellent edition of Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age (for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald) poses only one problem. Its title, although a reasonable and well-justified editorial decision, is misleading: 7 of the 19 pieces included in West's volume did not appear in the 1922 collection Tales of the Jazz Age, and there is no indication anywhere on the cover or in the Library of Congress catalogue information that they are included. The problem is not that the reader cannot tell which ones they are; West handles that distinction responsibly, as always, in the table of contents and in the body of the edition (although changing the running head from "Tales of the Jazz Age" to "Additional Stories" would be as helpful a change as that to a more inclusive title). The problem is that the title of West's edition masks the true wealth that lies between its boards. The edition provides textual scholars and Fitzgerald scholars, according to their interests, with the opportunity to consider individual texts, the 1922 collection, and Fitzgerald's and Perkins's decision-making processes. It serves diverse populations equally well and as such sets a standard for editions of collected shorter works.

LaVerne Kennevan Maginnis has compiled the first index for Sheilah Graham's College of One: her "name index" (introduced by James L. West III) is printed in full in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (1: 107-21). This index will, as West notes, render College of One more useful and thus attractive to scholars.

b. Hemingway

By far the biggest news in Hemingway studies in 2002 is the announcement of a joint U.S.-Cuban preservation initiative for Hemingway's papers at the Finca Vigía in San Francisco de Paula. Maxwell Perkins's granddaughter, Jenny Phillips, was instrumental in this initiative and recounts its origins, impulse, and early development in "The Finca Vigía Archives: A Joint Cuban-American Project to Preserve Hemingway's Papers...