An Aoit Webpage Assignment
By: Brandon Fournier
The dominant
influences on F. Scott Fitzgerald were
aspiration, literature, Princeton, Zelda Sayre
Fitzgerald, and alcohol.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul,
Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and
second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem.
Fitzgerald’s given names indicate his parents’ pride in his father’s
ancestry.
His father, Edward, was from Maryland,
with an allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s
mother, Mary
(Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became
wealthy
as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul.
Both were Catholics.
Edward Fitzgerald failed as a manufacturer of wicker
furniture in St. Paul, and
he
became a salesman for Procter & Gamble in upstate New
York. After he was dismissed in 1908, when his
son
was twelve, the family returned to St. Paul
and lived comfortably on Mollie Fitzgerald’s inheritance. Fitzgerald
attended
the St. Paul Academy;
his first writing to appear in print was a detective story in the
school
newspaper when he was thirteen.
During 1911-1913 he attended the Newman
School, a Catholic prep
school in New Jersey,
where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who
encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. As a
member
of the Princeton Class of 1917, Fitzgerald neglected his studies for
his
literary apprenticeship. He wrote the scripts and lyrics for the
Princeton
Triangle Club musicals and was a contributor to the Princeton Tiger
humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. His college
friends
included Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. On academic probation and
unlikely to graduate, Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917 and was
commissioned a
second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the
war, he
rapidly wrote a novel, “The Romantic Egotist”; the letter of rejection
from
Charles Scribner’s Sons praised the novels originality and asked that
it be
resubmitted when revised.
In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp
Sheridan, near Montgomery,
Alabama. There he fell in love with
a
celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter
of an
Alabama Supreme Court judge. The romance intensified Fitzgerald’s hopes
for the
success of his novel, but after revision it was rejected 
by
Scribers for a
second time. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas;
after his
discharge in 1919 he went to New York City
to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while
Fitzgerald
succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his
small
salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement.
Fitzgerald quit his job in July 1919 and returned to St.
Paul to rewrite his novel as This Side of Paradise.
It was accepted by Editor Maxwell Perkiness of Scribers in
September. Set
mainly at Princeton and described by its author
as “a
quest novel,” This Side of Paradise traces the career
aspirations and
love disappointments of Amory Blaine.
In the fall-winter of 1919 Fitzgerald commenced his
career as a writer of stories for the mass-circulation magazines.
Working
through agent Harold Ober, Fitzgerald interrupted work on his novels to
write
moneymaking popular fiction for the rest of his life. The Saturday
Evening
Post became Fitzgerald’s best story market, and he was regarded as
a “Post
writer.” His early commercial stories about young love introduced a
fresh
character: the independent, determined young American woman who
appeared in
“The Offshore Pirate” and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Fitzgerald’s more
ambitious
stories, such as “May Day” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” were
published
in The Smart Set, which had a small circulation.
The publication of This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920, made the
twenty-four-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week
later he
married Zelda Sayre in New York.
They embarked on an extravagant life as young celebrities. Fitzgerald
endeavored to earn a solid literary reputation, but his playboy image
impeded
the proper assessment of his work.
After a riotous summer in Westport, Connecticut,
the Fitzgeralds took an
apartment in New York City;
there
he wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, a
naturalistic
chronicle of the dissipation of Anthony and Gloria Patch. When Zelda
Fitzgerald
became pregnant they took their first trip to Europe
in
1921 and then settled in St. Paul
for the birth of their only child, Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald,
who was
born in October 1921.
The Fitzgeralds expected to become affluent from his
play, The Vegetable. In the fall of 1922 they moved to
Great Neck,
Long Island, in order to be near Broadway. The
political
satireòsubtitled
“From
President to Postman”òfailed
at its tryout in November 1923, and Fitzgerald wrote his way out of
debt with
short stories. The distractions of Great Neck and New
York prevented Fitzgerald from making progress
on his
third novel. During this time his drinking increased. He was an
alcoholic, but
he wrote sober. Zelda Fitzgerald regularly got “tight,” but she was not
an
alcoholic. There were frequent domestic rows, usually triggered by
drinking
bouts.
Literary opinion makers were reluctant to accord
Fitzgerald full marks as a serious craftsman. His reputation as a
drinker
inspired the myth that he was an irresponsible writer; yet he was a
painstaking
reviser whose fiction went through layers of drafts. Fitzgerald’s
clear,
lyrical, colorful, witty style evoked the emotions associated with time
and
place. When critics objected to Fitzgerald’s concern with love and
success, his
response was: “But, my God! It was my material, and it was all I had to
deal
with.” The chief theme of Fitzgerald’s work is aspiration the idealism he
regarded as
defining American character. Another major theme was mutability or
loss. As a
social historian Fitzgerald became identified with the Jazz Age: “It
was an age
of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was
an age
of satire,” he wrote in “Echoes of the Jazz Age.”
Seeking tranquility for his work the Fitzgeralds went to France
in the spring of 1924. He wrote The Great Gatsby during the
summer and
fall in Valescure near St. Raphael, but the marriage was damaged by
Zelda’s
involvement with a French naval aviator. The extent of the affair if it was in fact
consummatedòis
not known. On the Riviera
the Fitzgeralds formed a close friendship with affluent and
cultured
American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy.
The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome,
where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris
when the novel was published in April. The Great Gatsby marked
a
striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex
structure and a
controlled narrative point of view. Fitzgerald’s achievement received
critical
praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the
stage and
movie rights brought additional income.
In Paris Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemingway then unknown
outside the
expatriate literary circle with
whom he formed a friendship based largely on his admiration for
Hemingway’s
personality and genius. The Fitzgeralds remained in France
until the end of 1926, alternating between Paris
and the Riviera.
Fitzgerald made
little progress on his fourth novel, a study of American expatriates in
France
provisionally titled “The Boy Who Killed His Mother,” “Our Type,” and
“The
Worlds Fair.” During these years Zelda Fitzgerald’s unconventional
behavior
became increasingly eccentric.
The Fitzgeralds returned to America
to escape the distractions of France.
After a short, unsuccessful stint of screen writing in Hollywood,
Fitzgerald rented “Ellerslie,” a mansion near Wilmington,
Delaware, in the spring of 1927. The
family
remained at “Ellerslie” for two years interrupted by a visit to Paris
in the summer of 1928, but Fitzgerald was still unable to make
significant
progress on his novel. At this time Zelda Fitzgerald commenced ballet
training,
intending to become a professional dancer. The Fitzgeralds returned to France
in the spring of 1929, where Zelda’s intense ballet work damaged her
health and
contributed to the couples estrangement. In April 1930 she suffered
her first
breakdown. She was treated at Paragons clinic in Switzerland
until September 1931, while Fitzgerald lived in Swiss hotels. Work on
the novel
was again suspended as he wrote short stories to pay for psychiatric
treatment.
Fitzgerald’s peak story fee of $4,000 from The
Saturday Evening Post may have had in 1929 the purchasing power of
$40,000
in present-day dollars. Nonetheless, the general view of his affluence
is
distorted. Fitzgerald was not among the highest-paid writers of his
time; his
novels earned comparatively little, and most of his income came from
160
magazine stories. During the 1920s his income from all sources averaged
under
$25,000 a year good
money
at a time when a schoolteacher’s average annual salary was $1,299, but
not a
fortune. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald did spend money faster than he
earned it;
the author who wrote so eloquently about the effects of money on
character was
unable to manage his own finances.
The Fitzgeralds returned to America
in the fall of 1931 and rented a house in Montgomery.
Fitzgerald made a second unsuccessful trip to Hollywood
in 1931. Zelda Fitzgerald suffered a relapse in February 1932 and
entered Johns Hopkins
Hospital
in Baltimore. She spent
the rest of
her life as a resident or outpatient of sanitariums.
In 1932, while a patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda
Fitzgerald rapidly wrote Save Me the Waltz. Her
autobiographical novel
generated considerable bitterness between the Fitzgeralds, for he
regarded it
as pre-empting the material that he was using in his novel-in-progress.
Fitzgerald rented “La Paix,” a house outside Baltimore,
where he completed his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night.
Published in
1934, his most ambitious novel was a commercial failure, and its merits
were
matters of critical dispute. Set in France
during the 1920s, Tender Is the Night examines the
deterioration of Dick
Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist, during the course of his
marriage to
a wealthy mental patient.
The 1936-1937 period is known as “the crack-up” from the
title of an essay Fitzgerald wrote in 1936. Ill, drunk, in debt, and
unable to
write commercial stories, he lived in hotels in the region near Asheville,
North Carolina, where in 1936 Zelda
Fitzgerald entered Highland Hospital.
After Baltimore Fitzgerald did not maintain a home for Scottie. When
she was
fourteen she went to boarding school, and the Obers became her
surrogate
family. Nonetheless, Fitzgerald functioned as a concerned father by
mail,
attempting to supervise Scottie’s education and to shape her social
values.
Fitzgerald went to Hollywood
alone in the summer of 1937 with a six-month Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
screenwriting
contract at $1,000 a week. He received his only screen credit for
adapting Three
Comrades (1938), and his contract was renewed for a year at $1,250
a week.
The $91,000 he earned from MGM was a great deal of money during the
late
Depression years when a new Chevrolet coupe cost $619; but although
Fitzgerald
paid off most of his debts, he was unable to save. His trips east to
visit his
wife were disastrous. In California
Fitzgerald fell in love with movie columnist Sheilah Graham. Their
relationship
endured despite his benders. After MGM dropped his option at the end of
1938,
Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short-short
stories
for Esquire. He began his Hollywood novel, The
Love
of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had written more than half of a
working
draft when he died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment on December 21, 1940. Zelda
Fitzgerald
perished at a fire in Highland
Hospital
in 1948.
F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. The
obituaries were condescending, and he seemed destined for literary
obscurity.
The first phase of the Fitzgerald resurrectionò“revival”
does not properly describe the process
occurred between 1945 and 1950. By 1960 he had achieved a secure
place
among America’s
enduring writers. The Great Gatsby, a work that seriously
examines the
theme of aspiration in an American setting, defines the classic
American novel.
American
short-story writer and novelist, known for his depictions of the Jazz
Age (the
1920s). With the glamorous Zelda Sayre (1900-48), Fitzgerald lived a
colorful
life of parties and money spending. At the beginning of one of his
stories
Fitzgerald wrote the rich "are different from you and me". This
privileged world he depicted in such novels as THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
(1922)
and THE GREAT GATSBY (1925), which is widely considered Fitzgerald's
finest
novel.
"It
was my
first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers - because
if you
ask a writer anything, you usually get an answer - still it belittled
him in my
eyes. Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a
whole
lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who
try so
pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying - only to
see
their faces in the reflecting chandeliers." (From The Last Tycoon, 1941)
F.
Scott Fitzgerald was born in St Paul, Minnesota
of mixed Southern and Irish descent. He was given three names after the
writer
of The Star Spangled Banner, to
whom he was distantly related. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was a
salesman, a
Southern gentleman, whose furniture business had failed. Mary
McQuillan, his
mother, was the daughter of a successful wholesale grocer, and devoted
to her
only son. The family moved regularly, but settled finally in 1918 in St.
Paul. At the age of 18 Fitzgerald fell in love
with
the 16-year-old Geneva King, the prototype of Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald
started to write at St. Paul
Academy.
His first published story, 'The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage'
appeared in
1909 in Now and Then.
Fitzgerald entered in 1913 Princeton
University,
where he failed to become a football hero. He left his studies in 1917
because
of his poor academic records, and took up a commission in the US Army.
His
experiences during World War I were more peaceful than Hemingway’s - he
never
saw action and even did not go to France.
The Romantic Egoist, a novel started
in Princeton, was returned from Scribner's with
an
encouraging letter.
Demobilized
in 1919, Fitzgerald worked briefly in New York
for an advertising agency. His first story, 'Babes in the Wood,' was
published
in The Smart Set. Fitzgerald
received from it thirty dollars and bought with the money a pair of
white
flannels. The turning point in his life was when he met in 1918 Zelda
Sayre,
herself as aspiring writer, and married her in 1920. In the same year
appeared
Fitzgerald's first novel, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, in which he used
material from
The Romantic Egoist. Its hero,
Armory Blaine, studies in Princeton, serves in
WW I in France.
At the end of the story he finds that his own egoism has been the cause
of his
unhappiness. The book gained success which the Fitzgeralds celebrated
energetically in parties. Zelda danced on people's dinner tables. Doors
opened
for Fitzgerald into literary magazines, such as Scribner's
and The
Saturday Evening Post, which published his stories, among them
'The
Diamond as Big as the Ritz.'
Fitzgerald's
debts started to grow, and Zelda discovered that she was pregnant - the
baby
was born in 1921. Fitzgerald met in Paris Joyce who said: "That young
man
must be mad - I'm afraid he'll do himself some injury."
The Beautiful and Damned,
Fitzgerald's second novel, depicted Anthony Patch, an intelligent,
sensitive
but weak man. He spends his grandfather's money in drinking. In the end
of the
novel he has lost with his wife, Gloria, illusions of beauty and truth.
The
work was less 
well
received and in
1924 Fitzgerald moved to Europe.
There he associated with such writers as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. The Great Gatsby received excellent
reviews but the book did not make the money Fitzgerald expected. He was
drunk
for long periods. Dramatized version of the book opened at the
Ambassador
Theatre in New York on February 2, 1926. The play's
success
made possible the sale of Gatsby
to the movies. The first film adaptation was made in the same year,
directed by
Herbert Brenon.
The
setting of The Great Gatsby is New York City and Long Island
during the 1920s. Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a young Princeton
man, who works as a bond broker in Manhattan.
He becomes involved in the life of his neighbor at Long Island,
Jay Gatsby, shady and mysterious financier, who is entertaining
hundreds of
guests at lavish parties. Gatsby reveals to Nick, that he and Nick's
cousin
Daisy Fay Buchanan, had a brief affair before the war. However, Daisy
married
Tom Buchanan, a rich but boring man of social position. Gatsby lost
Daisy
because he had no money, but he is still in love with her. He persuades
Nick to
bring him and Daisy together again. "You can't repeat the past," Nick
says to him. Gatsby tries to convince Daisy to leave Tom, who, in turn,
reveals
that Gatsby has made his money from bootlegging. "They're a rotten
bunch," Nick shouts to Gatsby. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put
together." Daisy, driving Gatsby's car, hits and kills Tom's mistress,
Myrtle Wilson, unaware of her identity. Gatsby remains silent to
protect Daisy.
Tom tells Myrtle's husband it was Gatsby who killed his wife. Wilson
murders Gatsby and then commits suicide. Nick is left to arrange
Gatsby's
funeral, attended only Gatsby's father and one former guest.
