Save Me The Waltz (Part 3)

Depending on who you talk to, this book is out of print but that was not always the case.









The boy in the middle of this undated yearbook photograph is Allan Stewart Konigsberg. He was born three years after SAVE ME THE WALTZ was published. I am willing to bet the house that he read the book before changing his name to Woody Allen.



When I was the same age as the boys in this photo, I asked my father "Who is the Great Gatsby?" He told me that Gatsby was a second baseman for the Pittsburg Pirates.
Then I heard stand-up comic Woody Allen tell this joke:

Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald came home from their wild New Year's Eve party. It was April.

Woody was one year away from becoming a film-maker but the comedic seeds of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS were sprouting in this 1964 stand-up routine.


To quote this 1932 novel:

The sign above the woman's head said "Do Not Touch The Looking Glass" in French, English, Italian and Russian. Madame stood with her back to the huge mirror and gazed at the far corners of the room. There was no music as they began.

Wasn’t any art the expression of the inexpressible? And isn’t the inexpressible always the same, though variable–like the X in physics? It may represent anything at all but at the same time, it’s always actually X.

Blogger's Note
I would be remiss in my duties if I did not recommend three books about Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald: Matthew Bruccoli's SOME EPIC SORT OF GRANDEUR, Nancy Milford's ZELDA, and Budd Schulberg's THE DISENCHANTED.