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The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

(1896-1940)

            F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author known for his novels that depicted the Jazz Age, and for his colorful life of drinking, partying, and excessive spending during the care-free twenties. Although Fitzgerald wrote about the privileged world of glamour, fame, and wealth in a negative light that portrayed the rich as superficial and seemingly cursed because of their social status, the majority of his life he actually envied and admired the rich and famous. At the height of his literary career, Fitzgerald wrote THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED, and THE GREAT GATSBY. Despite the fact that other novels came after his zenith, it is these three for which he is most well-known.

            Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896. He was named after the writer of the Star-Spangled Banner, who was a distant relation. Fitzgerald's parents, Edward Fitzgerald and Mary McQuillan, raised their son in an underprivileged environment that had the young man yearning for more. He spent most of his youth alternating between writing and trying to impress his wealthy peers. When Fitzgerald was thirteen, he had a short story entitled "The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage," published and thus began a lifelong devotion to writing. After leaving St. Paul Academy, the school he had attended in his teenage years, he enrolled at Yale University at age seventeen.

            After a failed attempt at joining Yale's football team, the young author grew disillusioned at the prospect of continuing school and decided on enlisting in the U.S. Army. The year was 1917, and World War I was still raging on in Europe. Unlike his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald never made it out of the United States and never witnessed the horrors of war first-hand. Instead he kept the illusion with him that most men lost in the trenches, that war is a time for heroics. The group of writers who saw what war did to men grew disillusioned with life and expatriated to Europe, among them John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, were known as the "Lost Generation," a term coined by writer Gertrude Stein when in a discussion with Hemingway she said, "you are all a lost generation.” Though Fitzgerald later came to Europe on his own and without resentment for the American way of life, he is still regarded as one of the "Lost," as are Sherwood Anderson, Maddox Ford, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, and the woman that Fitzgerald would come to marry, Zelda Sayre.

            After World War I ended, Fitzgerald submitted a novel to the publishing house Scribner's, who rejected the work. He later used material from the early work in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, which came two years later. In 1918, Fitzgerald met a young southern belle named Zelda Sayre while still enlisted with the U.S. Army. The young man fell hard for this beautiful young woman, who also happened to be an aspiring writer herself. Though she initially rejected his proposals, Zelda eventually agreed to marry Fitzgerald after the publication of THIS SIDE OF PARADISE in 1920. Fitzgerald cited the classic young man's tale, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce, as an inspiration for the novel in a literary discussion with Hemingway years later, but the work was still very much his own. The novel's hero is an egocentric young man named Armory Blaine, who studies at Princeton University, like Fitzgerald, and goes to France to fight during World War I, unlike Fitzgerald. The novel was a great success, receiving rave reviews and selling well, and the Fitzgeralds spent the next five years in a perpetual celebration of dancing, fashion, and alcoholism.

            Suddenly literary magazines began to take an interest in the young writer. Scribner's and The Saturday Evening Post, among other publications, began publishing Fitzgerald's short stories. Though being a prolific short story writer, Fitzgerald only completed several novels during the next five years, which did not save him from debt. The life style that both Fitzgerald and Zelda were then living had left them in a financial crisis, and when in 1922 the publication of his second novel, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED, in received a lackluster reception from both critics and readers, the Fitzgeralds decided to move to Europe. Now considered a classic novel, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED was the story of Anthony Patch who, despite being intelligent, makes bad choices and eventually experiences an epiphany at the very end of the novel, much like the self-realization of Armory Blaine, except more despairing in nature.

            Though he made literary connections in Europe, Fitzgerald's stay was not planned on being a permanent one until he himself fell into the same boat as the "Lost." When THE GREAT GATSBY, considered by many to be his best work, was published in 1925, the reception from readers was underwhelming, although the novel received excellent reviews. Because Fitzgerald had expected the a large sum of money to be a byproduct of the completion of THE GREAT GATSBY he soon grew disappointed and became disillusioned with his literary pursuits, thinking himself a second-rate writer. At this time, Fitzgerald began to seriously hit the bottle, and plunged himself in a river of despair. Now a classic, THE GREAT GATSBY was the story of Jay Gatsby, whose rise and fall are witnessed by Nick Carraway, the narrator. Rich with symbolism and emotional truths, Fitzgerald's third novel is now required reading for many students across the United States and is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

            After rooting themselves in Europe, the Fitzgerald family proceeded to tour Europe, raise a child, and drink themselves to death. Fitzgerald once recalled Zelda being known as a teenage drunk in Montgomery, Alabama, and indeed she had a drinking problem, but it was no where near as severe as her husband's. The two began to work on each other's last nerves, with Fitzgerald growing tired of supporting the rich life style his wife simply had to have with short stories while he really wanted to be writing novels, and with Zelda wanting more and more and more. Fitzgerald published one more novel during the twenties, THE CRACK UP (1924), which depicted his tumultuous relationship with Zelda, before the Jazz Age ended and the Great Depression hit all of the flappers and partying young men, Fitzgerald and his wife included, like a ton of bricks.

            In the 1930s, Zelda began suffering mental breakdowns at frequent intervals, leading Fitzgerald to become more and more dependent on the drink. Eventually Zelda entered a mental institution, leaving Fitzgerald to question divorce. Not wanting to upset Zelda any further, he ended up staying married, but moving in with a female gossip columnist named Sheilah Graham in Hollywood, California. Despite the fact he could never spell her name right, Fitzgerald and Graham had a close relationship that lasted until the day he died.

Short stories and scripts, as well as a novel entitled TENDER IS THE NIGHT (1934), were written during this period, but the majority of these writings were literally produced solely for money. During this period, Fitzgerald once told his daughter in a letter that he was living "the last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and better." Despite this despairing comment, Fitzgerald considered TENDER IS THE NIGHT to be a remnant of his once glorious literary career. The novel centered on a psychiatrist named Dick Diver who falls for one of his own patients, a rich and beautiful woman named Nicole Warren. They eventually marry and Fitzgerald tells autobiographically of the family's troubles, and the crushing of Dick Diver's dreams, while Nicole emerges victorious after living off her husband for ten years.

            Towards the end of the thirties, Fitzgerald began writing a novel about Hollywood entitled THE LAST TYCOON, but the work was never to be completed. On December 21, 1940, in Hollywood, F. Scott Fitzgerald died at the age of forty-four from a heart attack in the apartment of his lover and caretaker, Sheilah Graham. His wife Zelda Sayre later died in a hospital fire in 1948. The marriage ended in tragedy, but a legacy came of it. Today, Fitzgerald is read around the world and is considered to be one of the finest writers of his time, along with Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and William Faulkner. Jay Gatsby has come to be as well-known as characters such as Willy Loman and George Babbitt, and his novels remain timeless classics.

The Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Written by Cyanne Topaum

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