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F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author of the 1920s
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He told the things as they were with the use of satire and elegance. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem. Fitzgerald’s first writing to appear in print was a detective story in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. On academic probation and unlikely to graduate from college, Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the war, he rapidly wrote the novel, The Romantic Egoist; the letter of rejection from Charles Scribner’s Sons praised the novel’s originality and asked that it be resubmitted when revised. In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery Alabama. There he fell in love with eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda broke their engagement. In July 1919 Fitzgerald quit his job and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel This Side of Paradise. In September it was accepted through agent Harold Ober. Fitzgerald interrupted work on his novels to write moneymaking popular fiction. The Saturday Evening Post is Fitzgerald’s best story market, and he is regarded as a “Post writer.” On May 26, 1920 the publication of This Side of Paradise, made the 24-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. Zelda became pregnant and gave birth to their only child, Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald moved to Long Island to try to write Broadway plays, but it did not work out because it was just too distracting in the big city. He could not work on his third novel and during this time his drinking increased. There were frequent domestic troubles, usually triggered by drinking bouts. It was said the chief theme of Fitzgerald’s work is aspiration of the idealism he regards as defining American character. As an author, Fitzgerald could identify with the times. In his book Echoes of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald writes, “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.” Seeking tranquility for his work the Fitzgeralds went to France in the spring of 1924. He wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Rapheal, but his marriage with Zelda was damaged by her involvement with a French naval aviator. The extent of the affair was not known. Fitzgerald’s life was very similar to that of the characters in The Great Gatsby. The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were in route to Paris when the novel was published in April of that year.
It was said that The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view. The Fitzgeralds remained in France until the end of 1926, alternating between Paris and the Riviera. Fitzgerald made little progress on his fourth novel, a study of American expatiates in France. During these years Zelda’s unconventional behavior became increasingly eccentric. In April of 1930 she suffered her first break down. She spent some time in a mental institute. Work on his novel was again stopped so he could write short stories to pay for her treatment. Fitzgerald was one of the highest paid writers of his time. Zelda suffered a relapse in February of 1932. She spent the rest of her life in and out of mental institutes. From 1936-1937 Fitzgerald was ill, drunk, and in dept. In 1937, while in Hollywood doing some screen writing, he fell in love with a movie columnist Sheilah Graham. After he was dropped from his screenwriting option, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote stories for Esquire magazine. In 1939 he stated to write one last novel, but he died in 1940 of a heart attack before it was finished. Zelda died eight years later in a fire at the Highland Hospital. Fitzgerald influenced the 1920’s with his pretrial of the time period in an honest and right to the point writing and he is a permanent figure of his time.
Sources: www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography
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