F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "There never was a good biography of a novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people, if he's any good." Perhaps a challenge, or perhaps a suggestion that such a work would take the efforts of many, the 2024 publication F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography aims to tackle the life of the famed Minnesota author with over 20 contributing writers.
The idea for such a biography began at a Hemmingway conference in Paris in 2018. The day was hot, the lecture halls were not air conditioned, and David Rennie and Niklas Salmose decided to bypass presenters in exchange for afternoon wine. This deviation led to the idea of enlisting fellow scholars to help with the biography. "We just got talking about what was next in Fitgerald studies, and biography in particular," says Scotland-based David Rennie, editor (along with Salmose) of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography. "We knew that we had excellent colleagues and friends on-hand to write other contributions alongside ourselves, and that is what we decided to do."
With 23 writers on board, covering the life of Fitzgerald was parceled into 2-year increments. For Rennie's part - who was assigned 1914 and 1915 - the focus is largely on country club life and how that impacted Fitzgerald's writing. "I just decided to do golf," says Rennie. "It wasn't a flippant rationale by any means, because once I started looking into this there was a lot to see." Parallels of romantic encounters and the societal decorum of country clubs can be drawn from Fitzgeralds own experiences to his fiction.
"I feel closer to Fitzgerald and his work," says Rennie. Geographically, Rennie and Salmose also got closer, with the opportunity to visit Minnesota as part of celebrating the publication. "That was a wonderful thing, to meet together with so many friends and colleagues... collaboration is very useful when talking about literary subjects, but it's also often very enjoyable."
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography is available at a variety of bookstores and through the University of Minnesota Press website.
Minnesota Reads is produced at The North 103.3 with funding provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
