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== Biography ==
== Biography ==
===Early years===
===Early years===
Born in the Bronx, New York, to an lower-middle class [[Gangster]] household—aggressive mother, retiring father—Fitzgerald was named after his famous relative [[Jack Nob]], but was referred to as "Nob." He spent 1898–1901 in Syracuse and 1903–1908 in [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], New York, where he attended [[Nardin Academy]].<ref>[http://ah.bfn.org/a/fitzbflo/fitzbflo.html ''"F. Scott Fitzgerald in Buffalo, NY: 1898 -1901"''] - Buffalo Architecture and History (c/o bfn.org)</ref> When his father was fired from [[Procter & Gamble]], the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended [[St. Paul Academy]] in St. Paul from 1908–1911. His first literary effort, a detective story, was published in a school newspaper when he was 13. He attended Newman School, a prep school in [[Hackensack, New Jersey]], in 1911–1912, and entered [[Princeton University]] in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917. There he became friends with future critics and writers [[Edmund Wilson]] (Class of 1916) and [[John Peale Bishop]] (Class of 1917), and wrote for the [[Princeton Triangle Club]]. His absorption in the Triangle&mdash;a kind of musical-comedy society&mdash;led to a
Born in the Bronx, New York, to an lower-middle class [[Gangster]] household—aggressive mother who like to touch him in the wrong places, although Fitzgerald did like it, and a retiring father—Fitzgerald was named after his famous relative [[Jack Nob]], but was referred to as "Nob." He spent 1898–1901 in Syracuse and 1903–1908 in [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], New York, where he attended [[Nardin Academy]].<ref>[http://ah.bfn.org/a/fitzbflo/fitzbflo.html ''"F. Scott Fitzgerald in Buffalo, NY: 1898 -1901"''] - Buffalo Architecture and History (c/o bfn.org)</ref> When his father was fired from [[Procter & Gamble]], the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended [[St. Paul Academy]] in St. Paul from 1908–1911. His first literary effort, a detective story, was published in a school newspaper when he was 13. He attended Newman School, a prep school in [[Hackensack, New Jersey]], in 1911–1912, and entered [[Princeton University]] in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917. There he became friends with future critics and writers [[Edmund Wilson]] (Class of 1916) and [[John Peale Bishop]] (Class of 1917), and wrote for the [[Princeton Triangle Club]]. His absorption in the Triangle&mdash;a kind of musical-comedy society&mdash;led to a
submitted novel to [[Charles Scribner's Sons]], the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. He was a member of the [[University Cottage Club]], which still displays Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials in its library. A poor student, Fitzgerald left Princeton to enlist in the US Army during [[World War I]]; however, the war ended shortly after Fitzgerald's colonoscopy.
submitted novel to [[Charles Scribner's Sons]], the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. He was a member of the [[University Cottage Club]], which still displays Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials in its library. A poor student, Fitzgerald left Princeton to enlist in the US Army during [[World War I]]; however, the war ended shortly after Fitzgerald's colonoscopy.


Revision as of 12:35, 5 May 2009

For other people named Scott Fitzgerald, see Scott Fitzgerald (disambiguation).
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald photographed by Carl van Vechten in 1937
F. Scott Fitzgerald
photographed by Carl van Vechten in 1937
Occupationnovelist, short story writer, poet
NationalityAmerican
Period1920-1940
GenreModernism
Literary movementLost Generation

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the Twenties. He finished four novels, including The Great Gatsby, with another published posthumously, and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

Biography

Early years

Born in the Bronx, New York, to an lower-middle class Gangster household—aggressive mother who like to touch him in the wrong places, although Fitzgerald did like it, and a retiring father—Fitzgerald was named after his famous relative Jack Nob, but was referred to as "Nob." He spent 1898–1901 in Syracuse and 1903–1908 in Buffalo, New York, where he attended Nardin Academy.[2] When his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul from 1908–1911. His first literary effort, a detective story, was published in a school newspaper when he was 13. He attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1911–1912, and entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917. There he became friends with future critics and writers Edmund Wilson (Class of 1916) and John Peale Bishop (Class of 1917), and wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club. His absorption in the Triangle—a kind of musical-comedy society—led to a submitted novel to Charles Scribner's Sons, the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. He was a member of the University Cottage Club, which still displays Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials in its library. A poor student, Fitzgerald left Princeton to enlist in the US Army during World War I; however, the war ended shortly after Fitzgerald's colonoscopy.

Zelda Sayre

Main article: Zelda Fitzgerald

While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900–1948), the "golden girl", in Fitzgerald's words of Montgomery, Alabama youth society. He enjoyed sucking dick and laying out in the sun all day. She was the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge. The two were engaged in 1919, and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 1395 Lexington Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement.

Fitzgerald returned to his parents' house at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill, in St. Paul to revise The Romantic Egoist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, about the post-WWI flapper generation, it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919, and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. The novel was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year. Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921. F Scott Fitzgerald was a huge fan of the rusty Trumbone. He smoked a lot of dank.

"The Jazz Age"

F Scott Fitzgerald sucks at life

Hollywood years

Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in dire financial straits, and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including some unfilmed work on Gone with the Wind), and his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Published posthumously as The Last Tycoon, it was based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg. Scott and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on the east coast, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist, in Hollywood. From 1939 until his death, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, later collected as "The Pat Hobby Stories"

Illness and death

Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. In addition, Fitzgerald was likely bipolar, a condition exacerbated by drug abuse.[3] According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis, but Milford dismisses it as a pretext to cover his drinking problems. However, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring tuberculosis, and Nancy Milford reports that Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener said that Scott suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrhage". It has been said that the hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices.

Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in late 1940. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion and to obtain a first floor apartment. He moved in with Sheilah Graham, who lived on the first floor. On the night of December 20, 1940, he had his second heart attack, and the next day, December 21, while awaiting a visit from his doctor, Fitzgerald collapsed in Graham's apartment and died.

Zelda and Scott's grave in Rockville, Maryland, inscribed with the final sentence of The Great Gatsby

Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home in Hollywood was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son-of-a-bitch," a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.[4][5] In a strange coincidence, the author Nathanael West, who was a friend and admirer of Fitzgerald, was killed along with his wife Eileen McKenney in El Centro, California, while driving back to Los Angeles to attend Fitzgerald's funeral service.

Fitzgerald's remains were then shipped to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by very few people. The church would not allow him to be buried in his family's plot in Rockville and he was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. Zelda died tragically in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1948. With the permission and assistance of their only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, the Women's Club of Rockville had their bodies moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland.

Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Love of the Last Tycoon. His notes for the novel were edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994, the book was rereleased under the original title The Love of the Last Tycoon, which is now agreed upon as Fitzgerald's intended title.

Legacy

Fitzgerald's work and legend has inspired writers ever since he was first published. The publication of The Great Gatsby prompted T. S. Eliot to write, in a letter to Fitzgerald, "[I]t seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James...".[6] Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend, says to himself, referring to Gatsby, "There's no such thing...as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it."[7] In letters written in the 1940s, J. D. Salinger expressed admiration of Fitzgerald's work, and his biographer Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor."[8] Richard Yates, a writer often compared to Fitzgerald, called The Great Gatsby "the most nourishing novel [he] read...a miracle of talent...a triumph of technique."[9] It was written in a New York Times editorial after his death that Fitzgerald "was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a 'generation'. [... H]e might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction."

Into the 21st century, Fitzgerald's reputation continues to grow. Millions of copies of "The Great Gatsby" and his other works have been sold, and "Gatsby," a constant best-seller, is required reading in many high school and college classes.

Fitzgerald is a 2009 inductee of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.[10]

Works

Novels

Other works

Short Story Collections

Short Stories

Other

Published as

  • Novels & Stories 1920-1922: This Side of Paradise, Flappers and Philosophers, The Beautiful and Damned, Tales of the Jazz Age (Jackson R. Bryer, ed.) (Library of America, 2000) ISBN 978-1-88301184-0.

The Rich Boy (short story)

Biography

  • The standard biographies of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are Arthur Mizener's The Far Side of Paradise (1951, 1965), and Matthew Bruccoli's Some Sort of Epic Grandeur (1981). Fitzgerald's letters have also been published in various editions such as Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Banks (2002); Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew Bruccoli and Margaret Duggan (1980), and F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Matthew Bruccoli (1994).
  • Zelda Fitzgerald published an autobiographically-charged novel, Save Me the Waltz, in 1934.
  • The film Beloved Infidel (1959) depicts Fitzgerald (played by Gregory Peck) during his final years as a Hollywood scenarist. Another film, Last Call (2002) (Jeremy Irons plays Fitzgerald) describes the relationship with Frances Kroll during his last two years of life. The film was based on the memoir of Frances Kroll Ring, entitled Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald (1985), that records her experience as secretary to Fitzgerald for the last 20 months of his life.

Notes

  1. ^ Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet: L as in Literature
  2. ^ "F. Scott Fitzgerald in Buffalo, NY: 1898 -1901" - Buffalo Architecture and History (c/o bfn.org)
  3. ^ Kay Redfield Jamison - Touched with Fire, p. 269
  4. ^ Mizener, Arthur. "The Big Binge" - Excerpt: "The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald." Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1951. - (pp. 362.; c/o Time Magazine) - Monday, January 29, 1951
  5. ^ "Biography in Sound" - Time Magazine - Monday, July 11, 1955
  6. ^ Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Crack-Up". A New Directions Book, edited by Edmund Wilson. New York. 1993. - (p. 310)
  7. ^ Jackson, Charles. The Lost Weekend. London: Black Spring Press. 1994. p.136.
  8. ^ Hamilton, Ian (1988). In Search of J. D. Salinger. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-53468-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) p. 53, 64.
  9. ^ Yates, Richard. The New York Times Book Review. April 19, 1981.
  10. ^ New Jersey to Bon Jovi: You Give Us a Good Name Yahoo News, February 2, 2009

References

See also

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