F.Scott Fitzgerald
In Uniform
- 'He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a "generation" ... he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle yers they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.
- - New York Times Editorial
- F.Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and even as a schoolboy in St. Paul he was writing, and later at Princeton. In 1917 he left Princeton for the army - but didn't get to France - and wrote in his spare moments. Then came This Side of Paradise - the first of his novels - followed by two volumes of short stories, and at last The Great Gatsby, which alone would assure Scott Fitzgerald's place among the writers of major stature. He died in 1941.
Excerpts from F.Scott Fitzgerald - a biography by Jeffrey Meyers:
'Fitzgerald's short life was in many ways a tragic one. He was a legend in his own time, famous for his youth and talent. His early novels, with their sad young men and beautiful young women eager to risk ruin in order to live intensely, were enormously popular. He and Zelda epitomized and publicized a particular era, and were the first literary couple to be glamorous in an egoistic way.'
'His greatest work shows what happens to people who pursue illusory American dreams, and how society (which they have rejected), fails to sustain them in their desperate hour. 'The Great Gatsby' embodies the failure of romantic idealism. In his novels Fitzgerald courageously explored and revealed his own character. He has left us, not a glamorous legend, but a vivid record of self-examination.'
'The dominant influences on F. Scott Fitzgerald were aspiration, literature, Princeton, Zelda Sayre and alcohol.'
'Hemingway, who rarely praised his contemporaries, called 'The Great Gatsby' - 'an absolutely first rate book.' And T.S. Eliot, whose 'Waste Land' had influenced the desolate Valley of Ashes, provided the finest tribute in the chorus of praise: 'it has interested and excited me more than any new novel I have seen, either English or American, for a number of years.'
'Intoxicated by the excitement of money and eager to advertise his success, he would prepare for parties by prominently displaying hundred dollar bills in his vest pockets. He spent his money and his talent as if they would last forever.'
'Fitzgerald helped his generation recover from the war by emphasising and embodying the joyous and hopeful possibilities at the beginning of the 1920's. Zelda felt that Scott's greatest contribution, in both his life and works, was to endow 'a heart-broken and despairing era' with a 'sense of tragic courage.'
'He repeatedly stressed the autobiographical nature of his fiction. 'I never did anything but live the life I wrote about,' he declared. 'My characters are all Scott Fitzgerald. Even the feminine characters are feminine Scott Fitzgeralds.....Mostly we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives.... Whether it's something that happened twenty years ago or only yesterday, I must start out with an emotion - one that's close to me and that I can understand.'
'Fitzgerald's novels portray the restless American middle and upper classes in the early decades of the century. His young heroes are, like himself, fascinated by money and power, impressed by glamour and beauty. Yet they know they can never fully belong to this secure and prosperous world, and that the goal of joining this careless, dominant class is an illusion.'
Student Discussion: The Similarities between Fitzgerald & Edgar Allan Poe