★ 03/13/2017
[An] insightful history of Fitzgerald’s main characters and themes.
[An] excellent book… Paradise Lost …conjures up an entirely different portrait from the one painted by previous biographers… Brown’s book,…in its breadth of perspective and seriousness of intent, makes most biographies seem to consist mainly of tittle-tattle and random gossip.
New York Review of Books - John Banville
The book is rich with detailed historical, philosophical, and sociological examples that place Fitzgerald’s work within a historical situation that isn’t simply the stereotype of ‘Jazz Age Excess.’…Brown re-shapes the standard understanding of the Fitzgeralds as rapacious consumers into something more nuanced…By writing this respectful yet critical biography, David S. Brown has done much to add to the now-prodigious legacy of a man who, like Jay Gatsby, died alone despite having done so much for so many.
Looks beyond Gatsby and the famous stories of Fitzgerald’s excesses, and instead explores his correspondence with the Progressive intellectuals of his day to show that—if his prose left any doubt—Fitzgerald held a dim view of the decadent world in which he found himself trapped.
New Criterion - Mene Ukueberuwa
Brown gets closer to a real Fitzgerald than anyone else.
The Herald - Brian Morton
[An] enjoyable biography…Brown’s Paradise Lost is welcome in that it filters some of the poor-boy-in-life-and-love consensus.
A worthy and readable addition to the always-widening shelf of Fitzgerald biographies.
Open Letters Monthly - Steve Donoghue
David Brown provides the kind of context that other biographers, caught up in the myths that Scott and Zelda created about themselves, have not provided. A pleasure to read.
Paradise Lost accomplishes much in its aim to contextualize Fitzgerald within both American historical and literary historical parameters. This new biography manages to get past the trappings of Fitzgerald’s boozy flapper-era persona and to credit his talent for taking the pulse of the America in which he lived.
What I admire about Paradise Lost is that it moves well beyond the hackneyed images in which the author lives in the prison house of his own fragile dreams, a sybaritic social climber who squanders his talent by drinking…This biography seems wildly relevant in a time when raw wealth has again taken on such an emblematic value…More than any biographer before him, Brown reveals the degree to which Fitzgerald understood the politics of his era…A splendid biography.
Literary Review - Jay Parini
Sometimes when a historian turns to a literary figure the results are refreshing. Think of David Donald writing about Thomas Wolfe and now David S. Brown on Fitzgerald… What sets this biography apart from the others is its emphasis on Fitzgerald's ‘historical sensibility.’
New Criterion - Carl Rollyson
[A] thorough biography.
London Review of Books - Alex Harvey
Brown’s book is a useful corrective to the figure of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a hopeless drunk and unrestrained reveler—diving into the fountain at the Plaza and all that—which has been vastly overdone…One of the splendid services rendered by Brown is to have convincingly made the case that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an original in a way much grander than he himself realized.
Wall Street Journal - Joseph Epstein
In this masterful book, Brown brings an extensive knowledge of American cultural, social, and political history to the details of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and works. The result is a study that allows the reader to consider Fitzgerald from a new perspective.
Brown produces the most clearly written biography of his subject.
Paul Gottfriedn Conservative
Brown’s biography strives to forgo the well-known anecdotes to instead reinsert Fitzgerald into his historical context.
Financial Times - Carl Wilkinson
With a surer sense than more gossipy writers, [Brown] fits Fitzgerald's life into the broader American history.
New Republic - Sam Tanenhaus
[An] incisive biography.
Brown has delivered an insightful, thought-provoking and at times entertaining rendering of [Fitzgerald’s] life…For fans of The Great Gatsby , there is much to like in Paradise Lost .
Dallas Morning News - James McGrath Morris
Brown produces the most clearly written biography of his subject.
American Conservative - Paul Gottfried
[An] incisive biography.
2017-03-07
"Carefully researched and a pleasure to read, Brown's persuasive, original account will entice Fitzgerald fans and cultural historians alike." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Narrator David Colacci’s voice is always sonorous, but the energy and verve he normally brings when reading fiction seems absent in this biography of noted American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. The author’s reputation has waxed and waned over the decades, and Brown's biography is the latest attempt to set his life and work in a historical context. Fitzgerald lived a remarkable, if short and frequently unhappy, life. He published his first novel at the age of 23 as the nation entered the Jazz Age (a name he coined) and eventually succumbed to alcoholism at the age of 44 in 1940. Brown’s comprehensive biography gives a lot of attention to the author’s complicated relationship with his wife, Zelda. Colacci’s narration is too languid, doing little to enliven the text. D.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile
