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F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered the definitive chronicler of the 1920s. In novels and short stories, Fitzgerald immortalized the era he dubbed the "Jazz Age." The rich, who always fascinated him, were the subjects of his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Even though F. Scott Fitzgerald was impressed with the courage, ebullience, and extravagance of the age, he was always bothered by the immorality that typically accompanied it. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24,1896, F. (Francis) Scott Key Fitzgerald had Irish American, Roman Catholic, upper-middle class parents. He was a middling student at Princeton University. Things never seemed real to Fitzgerald until he put pen to paper. Throughout his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald kept a written record of his experiences and feelings. A romantic, F. Scott Fitzgerald said he melted when he first saw Zelda Sayre, the daughter of a Montgomery, Alabama federal judge. Zelda, beautiful and wildly popular with men, refused to marry Scott until 1920 when he published his first book; This Side of Paradise was Fitzgerald’s detailed portrait of the Flapper generation. In 1921, a daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald was born.
In The Far Side of Paradise, Arthur Mizener explained that F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted "the life of mobility and grace" that was only afforded the rich (138). He and Zelda lived many places, most notably, Manhattan. After the 1922 publication of The Beautiful and the Damned, another "Jazz Age" novel, Scott and Zelda sailed for Europe. After trips to Paris, the French Riviera, and other areas of Europe, Scott and Zelda became American expatriates, part of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. The sensitive Scott and the daring Zelda were as famous as movie stars of the Roaring Twenties. Always living beyond their means, Fitzgerald borrowed throughout his career from his agent, Harold Ober, and his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Although F. Scott Fitzgerald preferred writing novels, he was forced to write short stories for magazines to stay afloat.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s emotional and mental deterioration from alcoholism, combined with Zelda’s onset of schizophrenia in 1930, after ten years of marriage, filled their lives with tragedy and despair. Zelda was in and out of mental institutions the rest of her life. Tender is the Night, published in 1934, was Fitzgerald’s novel set in France about a psychiatrist and his mentally ill wife. Fitzgerald modeled the psychiatrist’s wife after Zelda Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about his own emotional bankruptcy in The Crack-Up, a series of essays and stories.
Though he found writing screenplays demeaning, in 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald went to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to pay his debts to Ober, Perkins, and Scribner’s. Ober helped him succeed in this endeavor by giving him an allowance each month. Eventually, Scott fell in love with the movie columnist, Sheila Graham. After a series of heart attacks, F. Scott Fitzgerald died on December 21,1940 in Hollywood at the age of 44. The Last Tycoon, his unfinished novel about Hollywood producer, Irving Thalberg, was edited and published in 1941. Bibliography The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Author, Edmund Wilson, Editor, New Directions,1945 The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Mizener, Houghton Mifflin, 1951 Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew Bruccoli, Harcourt, 1981 |
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