Readers & Writers: ‘The Dead Fitzgeralds’ celebrates Zelda, books, writers and a St. Paul era
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This madcap, full-speed-ahead book isn’t just about Fitzgerald. It’s about the crazy passion that is literature. It’s about being buzzed by reading and writing, and it’s about the sacred friendships of the word-besotted lovers of poems and stories, of gossip, and the music underlying how we speak to each other. Or how we fall silent, letting the mystery, full of stars, overwhelm us. — Patricia Hampl on “The Dead Fitzgeralds”
Danny Klecko felt the presence of Zelda Fitzgerald when he stayed in her elegantly restored bedroom in the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald museum and Airbnb in Montgomery, Ala.
Klecko, St. Paul baker/poet and sometimes-impresario, was in Montgomery last weekend to launch his book “The Dead Fitzgeralds,” in the city where Zelda was born. The local folks were interested in this Yankee who wore a chef’s uniform when he signed copies of his book. Later, he presided at a Zelda tribute show at a nearby bar
“I have visited the Hemingway house (in Florida), and that was interesting,” Klecko recalls. “But I have to tell you, I slipped into bed about 1 a.m. and when you spend a night where Zelda slept, there’s a sense of intimacy.”
Klecko, who refers to himself in the third person (as in “Nobody on three planets loves Klecko the way I love Klecko”), is on a mission to bring renewed focus to the Fitzgeralds, especially Zelda. The daughter of wealthy parents married St. Paul native Scoot Fitzgerald at the beginning of his career. They were the darlings of two continents, the embodiments of the Jazz Age.
“In St. Paul, we know a lot about Scott, who wrote ‘This Side of Paradise’ at 599 Summit Ave., but in Montgomery it’s Zelda all the way,” Klecko says. “Many of the people I met there wanted perspective on St. Paul and on Scott. But you can’t understand him without understanding her because their lives were so enmeshed.”
Klecko is working with Friends of the St. Paul Public Library to do events around the Fitzgeralds and perhaps a reading club focused on Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories.
“The Dead Fitzgeralds,” written in free-form poetry that has a surreal feel, is part memoir and part homage to St. Paul and to Klecko’s mentor and best friend, St. Paul poet laureate Carol Connolly.
We stroll with Klecko down four miles of Summit Avenue mansions as he shares interesting information about the big houses by address. He recalls how the Fitzgeralds lived in the city, which they left forever in 1921 after their daughter, Scottie, was born.
“My book smells more like St. Paul than any other book written,” Klecko says in his not-humble way.
“It’s about the Golden Age of poetry in the Capital City. There is no city in the nation as unique as St. Paul. I am the most undeserving character in this book but nobody else would write it, so I did. My goal is that, when I die, there will be a literary Mount Rushmore in St. Paul I want two of the faces to be me and Carol Connolly. The other two can be fought over.” (That’s the kind of comment that alarms people who don’t understand Danny Klecko.)
Klecko, who grew up “a tough Polish kid” in California, has been a baker his entire adult life. Former owner of St. Agnes Bread Co., he’s production manager for Grandma’s Bakery in White Bear Lake. One of his previous books, “Hitman-Baker-Casketmaker: Aftermath of an American’s Clash with ICE,” won a Midwest Book Award. His most recent books are “3 a.m. Austin Texas” and “Lincolnland.”
This new book, though, is special to him because it explains the importance in his life of his friendship with Connolly, who died in 2020.
“I didn’t write ‘The Dead Fitzgeralds’ — Connolly did,” said Klecko, who refers to Connolly in the book only as “the Duchess.”
“The thing about my role in Connolly’s life is that she took me to be her protector,” he recalls. “Our relationship was unique. She loved me differently than any other person in my life, understood me better than my mother, wife, children. I wanted people to know how wonderful she was.”
Kecko, who had never taken a writing class, credits his mentor with opening the doors of writing and literature to him by forcing him to participate in her writing group and attend her long-running University Club reading series, where he first became interested in the Fitzgeralds.
The first part of “The Dead Fitzgerald” is about Klecko’s adventures with Connolly, who was old enough to be his mother, but that didn’t matter. They rocketed around in Klecko’s bread delivery truck and attended literary events together.
After presiding at her Readings by Writers series for almost 20 years, Connolly had wise advice for Klecko about how to do a good set (reading) and capture an audience.
“Keep your glance on a swivel,” she ordered. “Use your entire range of volume. Frame yourself with confidence. Don’t talk to audience members before a show. Make it obvious that you have come prepared. There’s nothing worse than a poet fumbling with his book at the podium trying to decide what to read.”
Klecko, who eulogized Connolly at her funeral, didn’t cry after her death. Until now.
“I was trained to keep my emotions inside,” he said. ” When I read my book after it was finished, there was nobody home and I put a blanket over my head and howled. I missed her so much.”
Connolly, who was friends with people in politics, the writing community and women’s rights organizations, also gave Klecko what could be called marketing advice.
She told him if he wanted to be a writer he had to be in the right place — Summit Avenue. So he sold his house and moved into a mansion kitty-corner to the building where Ftizgerald wrote his first novel.
Klecko’s neighbor is MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and bestselling author Patricia Hampl, a St. Paul native who lives in the Laurel Avenue building where Fitzgerald was born and who writes a generous tribute to “The Dead Fitzgeralds” that is printed on the back of the book.
Klecko admits he took the Duchess’ advice about what we’d call creative nonfiction.
“She’d tell me I am allowed to lie if it is more interesting,” he said. “Nobody did more gossiping than she and I. My book is about 80 percent true and 20 percent Kleckoisms.”
The Duchess and Klecko talked a lot about the Fitzgeralds and their work, especially that iconic green light on Daisy’s dock in “The Great Gatsby” that Connolly saw as a symbol of the energy connected to writing.
“She made me understand there was good and bad energy,” Klecko said. “In every one of my chapters I had to stop and take inventory about energy around the people and events I was writing about and try to capture it. That is not always easy to do.”
Another trait Klecko learned from the Duchess was to write quickly.
“It’s better to have a quick process,” he says. “I learned from the baking industry that if something is left on the table too long people get bored with it. I had to get my story about the Duchess out while she was still floating around here, seeing admirers enjoying her.”
LAUNCHING “THE DEAD FITZBERALDS”
Why did Danny Klecko launch his new book in Montgomery, Ala.?
“Because they have a Fitzgerald museum and we don’t,” he replies. “Every time Klecko launches something, he raises the bar.”
The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum is the only museum in the world dedicated to the Fitzgeralds, drawing fans from as far as Japan. The couple lived in the historic house from October 1931 to February 1932, when their days of high living were behind them.
During the couple’s time in the house, where the museum is now on the main floor, they were both working on projects. Scott Fitzgerald finished a significant portion of “Tender is the Night” and Zelda outlined her only novel, “Save Me the Waltz.” The well-known picture of Zelda wearing a tutu, holding her cat, was shot in one of those rooms.
Scott didn’t stay very long. They were in bad financial shape because of Zelda’s mental hospital bills and poor spending decisions, so Scott left for Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. The couple who symbolized youth and gaiety would never live in the same house again.
Klecko says Montgomery could be a sister city to St. Paul. “The neighborhood where I was staying had the same architecture as Summit Avenue,” he says, “the same commitment to fountains, greenery, statues.”
He liked the quote from the museum’s executive director, Alaina Doten: “I always viewed the Fitzgeralds as America’s sweethearts.”
‘DEAD FITZGERALDS’ LAUNCH
WHAT: St. Paul launch of Danny Klecko’s “The Dead Fitzgeralds” celebrating F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 127th birthday and the centenary of his novel “The Beautiful and Damned.”
WHEN/WHERE: 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul
ADMISSION: Free
PUBLISHER/PRICE: Paris Morning Publications ($15)
AN ODE TO SCOTT BY KLECKO
I don’t know why it bothered me, but it did
I wanted to know how to thank dead people
Not that I wanted to thank all the dead people
Just F. Scott Fitzgerald
Over the years Scott has placed
Treasure upon treasure in the midst of my path
I pick them up, each and every one
And I marvel at their splendor
I marvel how each one of his stories
Appears to be written exclusively
For my enjoyment.
I wanted to have a chance to say thank you
To even the score
But Scott was dead, and I was alive
I wanted to know how to thank dead people
Not that I wanted to thank all the dead people
Just F. Scott Fitzgerald
