F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald
source
Name	F. Scott Fitzgerald
Caption	Fitzgerald in 1921
Birth name	Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
Birth date	24 September 1896
Birth place	Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Death date	21 December 1940
Death place	Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer
Spouse	Zelda Sayre, 1920, 1940
Children	Frances Scott Fitzgerald
Education	Princeton University (did not graduate)
Notableworks	The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a preeminent American author of novels and short stories, whose works are considered defining documents of the Jazz Age in the United States. His writing captured the essence of the Roaring Twenties, exploring themes of ambition, excess, idealism, and disillusionment with a lyrical and incisive prose style. Although he achieved significant early fame, his personal life, marked by financial struggles and his wife's illness, was often tumultuous. His literary reputation, solidified posthumously, rests on his masterful depiction of the American experience.

Early life and education

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His mother, Mary McQuillan, was from an Irish-Catholic family that had accumulated wealth, while his father, Edward Fitzgerald, struggled in business, leading the family to move between Buffalo and Syracuse before returning to Saint Paul. He was named after his famous distant relative, Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Fitzgerald attended the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his literary ambitions. In 1913, he entered Princeton University, where he dedicated himself more to literary pursuits with the Triangle Club and the Nassau Literary Magazine than to his studies, ultimately leaving in 1917 without a degree to join the United States Army during World War I.

Literary career

While stationed at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald began work on his first novel and met Zelda Sayre, a prominent local debutante. After the war, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in advertising, revising his novel to win Zelda's hand. The publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920 by Charles Scribner's Sons was a sensational success, catapulting him to instant fame and enabling his marriage to Zelda. The couple became icons of the youthful, glamorous excess of the decade, splitting their time between New York, Long Island, Europe, and the French Riviera. Throughout the 1920s, Fitzgerald published numerous short stories in high-paying magazines like The Saturday Evening Post to support their lavish lifestyle, while also producing his major novels. His career faced challenges in the 1930s due to changing public tastes, his own personal crises, and difficulties in completing projects, leading him to take work as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

Major works and themes

Fitzgerald's oeuvre is centrally concerned with the American Dream and its corruption. His debut, This Side of Paradise, vividly portrayed the post-war generation's manners and morals. The Beautiful and Damned (1922) chronicled the dissipative lives of a wealthy couple. His masterpiece, The Great Gatsby (1925), is a critical and symbolic exploration of Jay Gatsby's obsessive pursuit of wealth and love, offering a trenchant critique of American society. His final completed novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), drawn from his experiences with Zelda's mental health struggles, examines the collapse of a brilliant psychiatrist. Common themes across his work include the generational conflict of the Lost Generation, the allure and emptiness of wealth, the passage of time, and the conflict between idealism and reality. His short story collections, such as Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age, further cemented his status as the chronicler of his era.

Personal life and later years

Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda was passionate, chaotic, and creatively influential but ultimately tragic. Their extravagant lifestyle led to constant financial pressure, forcing him to write commercial short stories. Zelda's first major breakdown in 1930 led to her hospitalization for schizophrenia, and she spent much of the remainder of her life in institutions like the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital and Highland Hospital. Fitzgerald battled alcoholism and depression, chronicled in his confessional series of essays, "The Crack-Up," published in *Esquire*. In 1937, he secured a contract as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and began a relationship with columnist Sheilah Graham. He worked on various scripts and dedicated himself to his unfinished novel about Hollywood, The Last Tycoon. He died of a heart attack in Sheilah Graham's apartment in Hollywood in December 1940, believing himself a failure.

Legacy and influence

At the time of his death, Fitzgerald was largely viewed as a relic of a bygone era. A revival of interest, spurred by the efforts of critics like Edmund Wilson and the posthumous publication of The Last Tycoon and the collection The Crack-Up, solidified his place in the American literary canon. The Great Gatsby, initially a modest success, is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American novels, a staple of curricula worldwide and the subject of numerous adaptations, including films by directors like Jack Clayton and Baz Luhrmann. His precise, evocative prose and his profound social insight have influenced countless writers, from J.D. Salinger to John Updike. Fitzgerald is now celebrated as the quintessential poet of the Jazz Age and a timeless analyst of aspiration and loss.

Category:American novelists Category:20th-century American writers Category:Writers from Saint Paul, Minnesota