I am consistently drawn in, and consistently disappointed, by bio-novels about women made unhappy by famous men. I read The Paris Wife, about Hadley Hemingway. I read Loving Frank, about Frank Lloyd Wright’s mistress. I read the diaries of Sofya Tolstoy. And now I’ve read Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. I put each of them aside a heavy sigh when I’ve finished. I’m not disappointed in the books, but in the lives of the women. The point of these books is to tell their side of the story, but in reality, and definitely in Zelda’s case, they didn’t get their own side of the story.
The Museum of Unhappy Women by Janet Potter
“Paradoxically, this is the reason to write and read about Zelda [Fitzgerald], because she deserved a life much more interesting than the one that she got. Interesting to her, that is, a life she could have given her energy and talents to, not just a life made interesting by famous friends and European capitals.” - Janet Potter
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“Paradoxically, this is the reason to write and read about Zelda [Fitzgerald], because she deserved a life much more interesting than the one that she got. Interesting to her, that is, a life she could have given her energy and talents to, not just a life made interesting by famous friends and European capitals.” - Janet Potter

There is a certain type of book, well-represented in 20th- and 21st-century American literature, that is about Men Handling Things. I can’t define the precise requirements of this genre, but I know that I’ve read this type of book many times over, by anyone from Fitzgerald and Hemingway to the Richards Yates and Ford. And let me be clear, I’ve just named four of my favorite authors. I’m not going to rant against Men Handling Things novels. I mean to say that there are a lot of them.
Men Handling Things: On Stuart Nadler’s Wise Men by Janet Potter
“Unironically loving a cat when you are a single woman is not socially savvy. Sometimes, when I would mention Zoe, I could see people wince as they tallied the facts in their head: bookish, lives alone, knits a lot, watches Charlie Rose. There’s a moment in an old MST3K episode where a cop in his squad car is dubbed to say, ‘Ehh, if I stop and get donuts I’ll just be reinforcing the stereotype.’ That’s what it was like when I got a cat.” - Elegy for a Grey Cat: On Grief, Books, and His Dark Materials by Janet Potter
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“Unironically loving a cat when you are a single woman is not socially savvy. Sometimes, when I would mention Zoe, I could see people wince as they tallied the facts in their head: bookish, lives alone, knits a lot, watches Charlie Rose. There’s a moment in an old MST3K episode where a cop in his squad car is dubbed to say, ‘Ehh, if I stop and get donuts I’ll just be reinforcing the stereotype.’ That’s what it was like when I got a cat.”

- Elegy for a Grey Cat: On Grief, Books, and His Dark Materials by Janet Potter