Book Reviewed: West of Sunset, by Stewart O'Nan

Book Reviewed: West of Sunset, by Stewart O'Nan

The troubled life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is partly a fictional biography of one of the greatest American writers of 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book incorporates many real stories about his life, his struggling career and life in Hollywood during the "golden era." With his wife Zelda in a mental institution and Sheilah Graham, his girlfriend on the other, he struggled with booze, sex and writing screen plays for movies. He was once regarded as a great novelist and short-story writer, and some of his fans thought his writing was better than papa Ernst Hemingway himself.

His career began with a battle with alcoholism and obscurity, and then he moved to Hollywood in a desperate attempt to write for movies. He was hired by MGM Studios, and later he met many celebrities in movie business including Sheilah Graham, a British expatriate, and a Hollywood gossip columnist. Much of the book is devoted to his relationship with Graham; some of the stories narrated in this book are fairly accurate and it resonates with other literary work. The Fitzgerald-Graham love story is peppered with scintillating anecdotes about the movie stars and writers with whom they rubbed elbows at the trendy Sunset Blvd's apartment complex "Garden of Allah," a playground for rich and famous, and other trendy bars in its immediate vicinity.

After Fitzgerald's death, Sheilah Graham wrote about her romance with him in her book "Beloved Infidel," and a movie was also made with Deborah Kerr and Gregory Peck. There is a good deal of history in this book and I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the life of Scott Fitzgerald and the history of Hollywood.