American short-story writer and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his turbulent personal life and his famous novel 'The Great Gatsby. "[322] Gertrude Stein posited that Fitzgerald had surpassed contemporary writers such as Hemingway due to his masterful ability to write in natural sentences. "[258] Fitzgerald died of a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis at 44 years old. [234] During the next two years, Fitzgerald rented a cheap room at the Garden of Allah bungalow on Sunset Boulevard. By Robert Westbrook. [175] At one party they outraged guests Ronald Colman and Constance Talmadge by a prank: They requested their watches and, retreating into the kitchen, boiled the expensive timepieces in a pot of tomato sauce. Afraid that he might die in World War I with his literary dreams unfulfilled, in the weeks before reporting to duty, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a novel called The Romantic Egotist. Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure, since none of his works received more than modest commercial or critical success during his lifetime. [301] They highlighted the fact that the work had "almost every fault and deficiency that a novel can possibly have,"[302] and a consensus soon emerged that Fitzgerald's prosemanship left much to be desired. Lanahan has poured her creative energy into visual storytelling. [246][247], During this last phase of his career, Fitzgerald's screenwriting tasks included revisions on Madame Curie (1943) and an unused dialogue polish for Gone with the Wind (1939)a book which Fitzgerald disparaged as unoriginal and an "old wives' tale". After two years lost to alcohol and depression, in 1937 Fitzgerald attempted to revive his career as a screenwriter and freelance storywriter in Hollywood, and he achieved modest financial, if not critical, success for his efforts before his death in 1940. [287], More so than most contemporary writers of his era, F. Scott Fitzgerald's authorial voice evolved and matured over time,[288] and his each successive novel represented a discernible progression in literary quality. [m][263] Among the attendees were his only child, Scottie, his agent Harold Ober, and his lifelong editor Maxwell Perkins. It was in an English course at Sarah Lawrence College. [126][127] Although Fitzgerald admired the rich, he possessed a smoldering resentment towards them. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, in Hollywood, California. As an adult, Lanahan has read her grandfathers work extensively. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24th, 1896, in St. Paul, the first surviving child of Edward Fitzgerald and Mary McQuillan Fitzgerald. His earliest short stories were cinematically adapted as flapper comedies such as The Husband Hunter (1920), The Chorus Girl's Romance (1920), and The Off-Shore Pirate (1921). September 24, 1896. [96] Fitzgerald likened their juvenile behavior in New York City to two "small children in a great bright unexplored barn. "[289], After Fitzgerald's death, writers such as John Dos Passos assayed Fitzgerald's gradual progression in literary quality and posited that his uncompleted fifth novel The Last Tycoon could have been Fitzgerald's greatest achievement. After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton University. [364] Although fundamental conflict occurs between entrenched sources of socio-economic power and upstarts who threaten their interests,[366] Fitzgerald's fiction shows that a class permanence persists despite the country's capitalist economy that prizes innovation and adaptability. [66] Rejected over 120 times, he sold only one story, "Babes in the Woods", and received a pittance of $30. Remember? Magazines now accepted his previously rejected stories, and The Saturday Evening Post published his story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" with his name on its May 1920 cover. [141] She spent afternoons swimming at the beach and evenings dancing at the casinos with him. I didn't know till 15 that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty. She was sweet enough that you could see why Gatsby loved her. [119] Fitzgerald wished to halt the show and disavow the production. Jared Paul Stern. [403] Fitzgerald frequently re-read Ginevra's story, and scholars have noted the plot similarities between Ginevra's story and Fitzgerald's novel. for sale by owner From Toy Cars to PEZ Dispensers to Oil Lanterns, Vermonters Love Their Unusual Collections, 6. Fitzgerald went to another school in New Jersey and eventually went to Princeton University in 1913. "[140], Work on The Great Gatsby slowed while the Fitzgeralds sojourned on the French Riviera, where a marital crisis developed. [389][390], Fitzgerald partly justified the perceived lack of political and intellectual substance in his fiction by arguing that he was writing for a new, largely apolitical, generation "dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. One week later, he married the woman he loved and his muse, Zelda Sayre. [110] After their eviction from the Commodore Hotel in May 1920, the couple spent the summer in a cottage in Westport, Connecticut, near Long Island Sound. [328] Nevertheless, a minority opinion praised the work as the best American novel since The Great Gatsby. 7. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is thought of as one of the great American novelists. I never at any one time saw [Gatsby] clear myselffor he started as one man I knew and then changed into myselfthe amalgam was never complete in my mind. A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing."[355]. Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy. Zelda Fitzgerald (July 24, 1900 - March 10, 1948), known for her beauty and personality, made a name for herself as a socialite, novelist, dancer, and painter. He was married . He had written all but two of the stories before 1920. [304] His works skewered those "who take all of the privileges of the European ruling class and assume none of its responsibilities". Lanahan, who prefers not to reveal her age but coyly admits shes over 60, is one of two trustees of the Fitzgerald estate, meaning she has a say in who is granted rights to works such as The Great Gatsby and that she has a financial stake in its reproduction and licensing. [g][198] Despite his annoyance, he insisted upon few revisions to the work,[h] and he persuaded Perkins to publish Zelda's novel. [405] His lifelong editor Max Perkins described this particular technique as creating the impression for the reader of a railroad journey in which the vividness of passing scenes blaze with life. "[194] He regretted Fitzgerald could not write novels, as he had to write magazine stories to pay for Zelda's psychiatric treatment. [222] By 1935, alcoholism disrupted Fitzgerald's writing and limited his mental acuity. Fitzgerald began work on his last novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939. As you might imagine, Lanahan has experienced The Great Gatsby in many forms: Garrison Keillors all-day reading of the book at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn.; Gatz, a seven-hour theatrical take on the novel; even a glittering, all-female, Rockettes-style interpretation by Tokyos Takarazuka Opera. He is unconcerned about the sweating and suffering of the nether herd". According to biographer Andrew Turnbull, "one day, drinking martinis in the upstairs lounge, [Fitzgerald] announced that he was going to jump out of the window. [190] They returned to America in September 1931. Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald (October 26, 1921 - June 18, 1986) was an American writer and journalist and the only child of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.She worked for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Northern Virginia Sun, and others, and was a prominent member of the Democratic Party.She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1992. What do you want? [205] The novel did not sell well upon publication, with approximately 12,000 sold in the first three months,[206] but, like The Great Gatsby, the book's reputation has since grown significantly.[207]. [19] As the semesters passed, he formed close friendships with classmates Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop, both of whom would later aid his literary career. Fitzgerald had to climb two flights of stairs to his apartment, while Graham lived on the ground floor. When he was 13, he saw his first piece of writing appear in print: a detective story published in the school newspaper. When Fitzgerald was 12, Edward lost his job with Procter & Gamble, and the family moved back to St. Paul in 1908 to live off of his mother's inheritance. [192], In April 1932, when the psychiatric clinic allowed Zelda to travel with her husband, Fitzgerald took her to lunch with critic H. L. Mencken, by then the literary editor of The American Mercury. [249] His failure in Hollywood pushed him to return to drinking, and he drank nearly 40 beers a day in 1939. [182], The Fitzgeralds rented "Ellerslie", a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware, until 1929. [28] Her return home ended Fitzgerald's weekly courtship. He attended the St. Paul Academy. Upon his discharge, he moved to New York City hoping to launch a career in advertising lucrative enough to convince his girlfriend, Zelda, to marry him. He is named after Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the "Star-Spangled Banner" and is a distant relative. "[272] His New York Times obituary deemed his work forever tied to an era "when gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession". Then I found I needed liquor too. The Red Cross distributed the novel to prisoners in Japanese and German POW camps. [127] While the couple were living on Long Island, one of Fitzgerald's wealthier neighbors was Max Gerlach. [141] Zelda became infatuated with a French naval aviator, Edouard Jozan. Isn't she smartshe has the hiccups. I was able to drink and enjoy it. [13] Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy from 1908 to 1911. The Great Gatsby is coming to television. [172] In December 1926, after two unpleasant years in Europe which considerably strained their marriage, the Fitzgeralds returned to America. He moved in the major artistic circles of his day but failed to garner widespread critical acclaim until after his death at the age of 44. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). [330] Whereas he composed his novels with a conscious artistic mindset, money became his primary impetus for writing short stories. 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. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. [193] A year later, when Mencken met Zelda for the last time, he described her mental illness as immediately evident to any onlooker and her mind as "only half sane. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. [385] Wilson argued that Fitzgerald's early works such as This Side of Paradise suffer from the defects of being meaningless and lacking intellectual substance. Fitzgerald was a bright, handsome and ambitious boy, the pride and joy of his parents and especially his mother. [282], Seven years later, Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson remarked that he now received copious letters from female admirers of Fitzgerald's works and that his flawed alcoholic friend had posthumously become "a semi-divine personage" in the popular imagination. [337], Commenting upon this tendency in Fitzgerald's short stories, Dos Passos remarked that "everybody who has put pen to paper during the last twenty years has been daily plagued by the difficulty of deciding whether he's to do 'good' writing that will satisfy his conscience or 'cheap' writing that will satisfy his pocketbook. A great deal of Fitzgerald's own life was made a hell by this sort of schizophrenia."[338]. [273] In retrospective reviews that followed after his death, literary critics such as Peter Quennell dismissed his magnum opus The Great Gatsby as merely a nostalgic period piece with "the sadness and the remote jauntiness of a Gershwin tune". All Rights Reserved. F. Scott Fitzgerald has a family connection to the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner.". [67], With dreams of a lucrative career in New York City dashed, Fitzgerald could not convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, and she broke off the engagement in June 1919. [178] Fitzgerald was 31 years old and past his prime, but the smitten Moran regarded him as a sophisticated, handsome, and gifted writer. [111] On October 26, 1921, Zelda gave birth to their daughter and only child Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald. Scribner's later reissued the book under Fitzgerald's preferred title, Adaptations and portrayals of F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Jay Gatsby, Failed Intellectual: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Trope for Social Stratification", "F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lois Moran, and the Mystery of Mariposa Street", "Fitzgerald and Leacock Write Two Funny Books", "New Fitzgerald Book Proves He's Really a Writer", "Review of 'Redefining the American Dream: The Novels of Willa Cather', "The Younger Generation: Its Young Novelists", "The Real Jay Gatsby: Max von Gerlach, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Compositional History of 'The Great Gatsby', "Short Stories From the Maturing Pen of Scott Fitzgerald", "Exile and the City: F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Lost Decade', "Fitzgerald, the Stylist, Challenges Fitzgerald, the Social Historian", "The Passing of Jay Gatsby: Class and Anti-Semitism in Fitzgerald's 1920s America", "Fitzgerald and Cather: The Great Gatsby", "The Structure Of The Outsider In The Short Fiction Of Richard Wright And F. Scott Fitzgerald", "Willa Cather's 'A Lost Lady': The Paradoxes of Change", "Mastering the Story Market: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Revision of 'The Night before Chancellorsville', "Scott Fitzgerald's Latest Novel is Heralded As His Best", "Almost a Masterpiece: Scott Fitzgerald Produces a Brilliant Successor to 'The Great Gatsby', "Why 'The Great Gatsby' is the Great American Novel", "Theatre: Study of 'The Disenchanted'; Writer on Downgrade Shown at Coronet", "Decoding Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris', "Garrison Keillor Hospitalized for Minor Stroke", "Takarazuka: Japan's Newest 'Traditional' Theater Turns 100", "F. Scott Fitzgerald Thought This Book Would Be the Best American Novel of His Time", "Tracing F. Scott Fitzgerald's Minnesota Roots", "Scott Fitzgerald and L.I.
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