Published by Penguin Books, 1967, softcover, 187 pages, condition: very good.
The story of a unique two-year liberal arts course--the student: Sheilah Graham; the teacher: F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The moving story of how F. Scott Fitzgeraldwashed up, alcoholic and illdedicated himself to devising a heartfelt course in literature for the woman he loved.
In 1937, on the night of her engagement to the Marquess of Donegall, Sheilah Graham met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a party in Hollywood. Graham, a British-born journalist, broke off her engagement, and until Fitzgerald had a fatal heart attack in her apartment in 1940, the two writers lived the fervid, sometimes violent affair that is memorialized here with unprecedented intimacy.
When they met, Fitzgeralds fame had waned. He battled crippling alcoholism while writing screenplays to support his daughter and institutionalized wife. Grahams star, however, was rising, to the point where she became Hollywoods highest-paid, best-read gossip columnist. But if Fitzgerald had lived out his "crack-up" in public, Graham kept her demons secretsuch as that she believed herself to be "a fascinating fake who pulled the wool over Hollywoods eyes."
Most poignantly, she keenly felt her lack of education, and Fitzgerald rose to the occasion. He became her passionate tutor, guiding her through a curriculum of his own design: a College of One. Graham loved him the more for it, writing the book as a tribute. As she explained, "An unusual mans ideas on what constituted an education had to be preserved. It is a new chapter to add to what is already known about an author who has been microscopically investigated in all the other areas of his life."
Sheilah Graham ( 1904 1988) was an English-born, nationally-syndicated American gossip columnist during Hollywood's "Golden Age". Along with Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Graham came to wield sufficient power to make or break Hollywood careers prompting her to describe herself as "the last of the unholy trio."
Graham was also known for her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, a relationship she played a significant role in immortalizing, through her autobiographical account of that period, Beloved Infidel, a best-seller, which was also made into a film. In her youth, she had been a showgirl, and a freelance writer for Fleet Street in London, and had published several short stories and two novels. These early experiences would converge in her career in Hollywood, that spanned nearly four decades, as a successful columnist and author.
