Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications | 
 enlarge | Author: Marlene Wagman-geller
Publisher: Perigee Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 29329
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0399534628
Dewey Decimal Number: 809.04
EAN: 9780399534621
ASIN: 0399534628
Publication Date: November 4, 2008
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Product Description
BA fascinating look at the stories behind the dedications of 50 literary classics./BBRBRMary Shelley dedicated IFrankenstein/I to her father, her greatest champion. Charlotte Broente dedicated IJane Eyre/I to William Makepeace Thackeray for his enthusiastic review of the books first edition. Dostoyevsky dedicated IThe Brothers Karamazov/I to his typist-turned-lover Anna Grigoyevna. And, as this collections title indicates, F. Scott Fitzgerald dedicated his masterpiece IThe Great Gatsby/I to his wife Zelda.BRBR Often overlooked, a novels dedication can say much about an author and his or her relationship to the person for whom the book was consecrated. IOnce Again to Zelda/I explores the dedications in fifty iconic books that are an intrinsic part of both literary and pop culture, shedding light on the authors psyche, as well as the social and historic context in which the book was first published.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Most Intriguing? My Foot January 8, 2009
While some of the personal relationships behind the dedications are genuinely interesting, they are only mildly so in Wagman-Geller's hands. Her writing style is so cutesy it is difficult to read without wincing, and she spends so little time on each dedication that the reader is never really given a fully satisfying picture of what the dedication reveals about the author and his or her life. She also has a habit of sentimentalizing her subjects which, to me, was rather off-putting. I really love the idea for this book, and I hope someone else will come along and do it better.
 Once again to Zelda January 6, 2009
Very interesting if you ever wondered about the stories behind dedications. It helps if you are savvy about famous authors. It might be a little dry and boring if you are not interested in the book world per say.
 Amazing Book! December 25, 2008
br /br /Turn to any page in Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications by Marlene Wagman-Geller and there will be a story of romance, passion, drama or inspiration. With an international roster of authors, and a list of titles running from the contemporary to the canonical, Once Again to Zelda (the title is taken from the dedication of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) is a delight.br /br /Inspiration for the book came by way of Grace Metalious' Peyton Place. When Wagman-Geller read the dedication, "To George, for all of the reasons he knows so well," she had to learn the story behind the story. One juicy detail led to another, and now Wagman-Geller is what she calls a "Dedication Detective."br /br /In Once Again to Zelda, she reveals how Ayn Rand's husband shares his Atlas Shrugged dedication with his wife's lover, and explains the moving tale behind John le Carre's decision to dedicate The Constant Gardener to "Yvette Pierpaoli who lived and died giving a damn." Each tale is a wonder of literary insight and a whole lot of fun.br /
The Real Story Behind Some Cryptic Dedications; Star Tribune December 20, 2008
Some book dedications are straightforward. (Mark Twain dedicated "Tom Sawyer" to his wife, with affection.) Some are mysterious. ("Peyton Place" was dedicated "To George, for all the reasons he knows so well.") Some are, frankly, bizarre. (Ayn Rand dedicated "Atlas Shrugged" to her husband and her lover. And yes, those were two different men.)br /In this appealing book, Marlene Wagman-Geller tells the stories behind 50 literary dedications, from Mary Shelley to J.K. Rowling.br /Dedications are curious things -- often cryptically private, yet publicly proclaimed. They raise curiosity; we want to know the stories, gossipy though that may seem.br /Wagman-Geller found her interest piqued by Grace Metalious' "Peyton Place" dedication, and she set about finding out who George was and what it was he had done.br /George, as it turns out, was Metalious' husband, twice. Their relationship was stormy, and Grace was not interested in being a housewife. Once, when she started to clean the kitchen table, she reached for what she thought was a Brillo pad but was actually a dead mouse.br /While she wrote her book, George tended house, cooked, and fed and ferried the kids. (Judging by the mouse incident, nobody cleaned.)br /So, yes, I guess he knows what he did: just about everything.br /The other 49 dedication stories are just as intriguing -- some are romantic, some are sad. They're fun to read, and they're better than gossip; they're true.br /
Dedicated to the One I Love: (The New York Times Review) December 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Review: New York Times: December 21br /ONCE AGAIN TO ZELDA br /The Stories Behind Literature's br /Most Intriguing Dedications br /By Marlene Wagman-Geller. br /336 pp. Perigee.br /$16.95. br /br /THE urgency of love letters like these needs little decoding, but what passions lurk within the cryptic references that authors make in the dedications to their books? After reading the steamy novel "Peyton Place," dedicated "TO GEORGE For All The Reasons he knows so well," the longtime English teacher Marlene Wagman-Geller wondered, "Who's George?" Looking into it, she learned that George was the indulgent husband of the book's author, Grace Metalious. Ms. Metalious, a notorious slob, once tried to clean a table with a dead mouse (she mistook it for a Brillo pad). br /In the collection "Once Again to Zelda" -- the title comes from the words F. Scott Fitzgerald inscribed to his wife in the "The Great Gatsby" -- Ms. Wagman-Geller investigates 50 such dedications, in literal-minded yet absorbing chapters that untangle densely knotted lives.br /For instance, in his first novel, "Carrie," Stephen King wrote, "This is for Tabby, who got me into it -- and then bailed me out of it." Was Tabby a cat? No. She's Mr. King's wife, Tabitha, whom he started dating in college, after they both reached for the same copy of "The Joy of Sex" in the library. They married in 1971, and Tabby worked at Dunkin' Donuts to give Mr. King time to write.br /When he threw away a draft of "Carrie," she fished it out of the trash, encouraged him to finish it, and helped him flesh out the girls' locker-room scenes. Ms. Wagman-Geller writes that, when the book sold for $400,000, "Tabitha, who was sitting on a sofa that she had salvaged from a yard sale, put her head in her hands and wept."br /"Love in the Time of Cholera," written, "For Mercedes, of course," honors another devoted wife: the woman Gabriel Garcia Marquez first proposed to when she was 13 (he was a law student), and whom he married 14 years later, when she was old enough to take his proposals seriously. During the year and a half in which Mr. Garcia Marquez obsessively worked on his masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," Ms. Wagman-Geller writes, "Mercedes first sold her jewels and when that money was depleted, they sold their car and later on their household appliances." To scrounge up the postage to mail the manuscript to her husband's editor, she pawned her Mixmaster and hair dryer. br /According to legend, Mr. Garcia Marquez paid his Mercedes to burn his love letters after they were married, but their flights and flourishes survive in his novels, refashioned as fiction. And fiction may be the surest and best place to preserve great loves: less perishable than a letter, less opaque than a dedication, hidden in plain view.br /br /More Articles in Fashion Style A version of this article appeared in print on December 21, 2008, onbr /br /
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