“The Salamander in the last analysis is a little atom possessed of a brain, thrown against the great tragic luxury of New York, which has impelled her to it as the flame the moth. She comes roving from somewhere out of the immense reaches of the nation, revolting against the commonplace of an inherited narrowness, passionately adventurous, eager and unafraid, neither sure of what she seeks nor conscious of what forces impel or check her“.
She has no salon to receive her guests—she turns her bedroom at noon into a drawing-room, not inviting every one, but to those to whom she extends the privilege fiercely regulating the proprieties. She may have a regular occupation or an occasional one, neither must interfere with her liberty of pleasure. She needs money—she acquires it indirectly, by ways that bear no offense to her delightfully illogical but keen sensibilities. With one man she will ride in his automobile, far into the night—to another she will hardly accord the tips of her gloves. She makes no mistakes. Her head is never dizzy. Her mind is in control and she knows at every moment what she is doing. She will dare only so far as she knows she is safe. She runs the gamut of the city, its high lights and its still shadows. She enters by right behind its varied scenes.
…thrown against the great tragic luxury of New York, which has impelled her to it as the flame the moth. She comes roving from somewhere out of the immense reaches of the nation, revolting against the commonplace of an inherited narrowness, passionately adventurous, eager and unafraid, neither sure of what she seeks nor conscious of what forces impel or check her.
She may have a regular occupation or an occasional one; neither must interfere with her liberty of pleasure. She needs money—she acquires it indirectly, by ways that bear no offense to her delightfully illogical but keen sensibilities. With one man she will ride in his automobile, far into the night—to another she will hardly accord the tips of her gloves. She makes no mistakes. Her mind is in control and she knows at every moment what she is doing. She will dare only so far as she knows she is safe. She runs the gamut of the city, its high lights and its’ still shadows. She enters by right behind its varied scenes. “
Owen Johnson: The Salamander.
The domestic deity that Plato said could pass through a fire unscathed the mythical Salamander was able to live in fire and endure it without harm. (1). As a child in Montgomery one of Zelda’s favorite pranks was to call out the fire department on false alarms (2). Zelda in Westport was reputed to have pointed to her breast and told the visiting fire department during a false alarm that Scott and Zelda had set that ‘the fire is here’. In April of 1920 while visiting The Cottage Club at Princeton she poured applejack over the clubs eggs and ignited them (3).In New York she burned her clothes in a bathtub. At their home “La Paix” in Maryland Zelda set fire to papers and perhaps paintings in a fireplace not meant for use (4) which caused a larger fire that resulted in considerable damage. And perhaps not ironically she perished in a fire at an asylum in Asheville, North Carolina. After moving from Westport to New York City Scott and Zelda’s favorite speakeasy was The Jungle Club, popularized by Owen Johnson in The Salamander (5). Zelda’s nickname for Scott, “Dodo” may have come from The Salamander (6) Indeed Zelda wrote to Scott from Prangins “I believed I was a salamander and it seems I am nothing but an impediment.”( 7).
Stover at Yale by Owen Johnson is a novel describing undergraduate life at Yale at the turn of the 20th century. The book was described by F. Scott Fitzgerald as the “textbook of his generation” (8). Not only was FSF an admirer of OJ’s popular Stover At Yale, but the scenes in TSOP devoted to undergrad bull sessions in the dormitory and the the behavior of Princeton students at the movies, as well as the device of listing periodically all the books Amory had read had their sources in Owens novel (9).
1. Milford, 176.
2. SMIW, p.19.
3. Ibid., 68.
4. C&B, 247.
5. SMIW, 102.
6. Taylor, 97.
7. Milford, p.176.
8. “Colleges: An Endangered Species? by Andrew Delbanco | The New York Review of Books”. Nybooks.com. Retrieved 2011-12-22.
9. HDP, 49-50.
Boats Against the Current 