Painting Critical-Creative Writing: J. M. Barrie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zelda
About
Did Jay Gatsby read Peter and Wendy (1911)? While F. Scott Fitzgerald certainly was interested in Peter Pan’s creator, scholars have completely ignored J. M. Barrie’s influence despite the evidence found in the American author’s personal and literary writings. One presents a boy refusing to grow up by staying in Neverland. The other, a young man trying to repeat the past in the fantastical mansion created for his pre-war love. 2025 being the centenary of The Great Gatsby (1925), highlighting parallels between these iconic, endlessly revisited works will transform the debates on a text commonly cited as the Great American Novel.
This unexplored influence will be investigated and interrogated beyond Gatsby and Fitzgerald through the innovative critical-creative approach of this project. Three disciplines will be employed: an essay collection both within and without traditional academic conventions, a novel of artistic formation or Künstlerroman, and its accompanying art. While in a symbiotic relationship during their production, all outputs will be read as companions and as stand-alone contributions to knowledge. As the inherent self-reflective nature of the Künstlerroman implies, the study of creative processes—or, in this case, critical-creative—will be paramount. All disciplines will muse on methodology as they disclose my discoveries on Barrie and Fitzgerald.
These authors’ conception of creativity as performance has shaped the novel’s male protagonist and a creative method that leads him to undertake writing “as a woman”—which brings Zelda Fitzgerald’s little-known art to the forefront. As Zelda and female creatives progressively take over the plot and critical threads, the Barrie-Fitzgerald dialectic will be challenged. Writing “as a woman” eventually transforms into a quest towards creative androgyny that will accentuate my position as the novel’s external witness. Consequently, this literary investigation led by academic and creative methods will also reflect on my very own journey with my Barrie-Fitzgerald project and its evolution into a critical-creative PhD.
