Looking Back at the "Wild and Elusive" Poet March 17, 2021 In 1970 Nancy Milford published a famous biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, one of the fabled bad girls of American literary bohemia. The book is remarkable for the power with which it brings to life the romantic disorder that plagued the Fitzgeralds—how loved they were for it!—and also for revealing how much more trapped in it was Zelda than Scott. While he could make literature out of their shared circumstance she, his raw material, could only be consumed by it. She had been adored for the chaos within: it was her gift and her karma. There was nothing for it but to go on being outrageous to the truly bitter end.