F scott fitzgerald essay

F scott fitzgerald essay

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Letters and Essays,Part II: Pasting It Together

WebFitzgerald saw his writing as a reflection of his own life. His works are closely based on his experiences at Princeton, in World War 1 and his love life. Although he was not overly WebThe Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In case you are 14 years old, keeping a diary and harboring ambitions to literary fame, you do not need to worry if your journal entries lack WebOct 10,  · Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald once said “Mostly we authors must repeat ourselves–that’s the truth. We have two or three experiences in our lives– experiences WebF. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author who was known for his novels that generally take place during the Jazz Age after World War I. His use of similes add deeper imagery WebJan 7,  · Research Paper F. Scott Fitzgerald. As Florence King once said, “People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a ... read more

There is another one coming. Except this exchange, much quoted ever since, never occurred. No doubt Hemingway was glad to offload the exchange onto Fitzgerald and adopt for himself the memorable zinger. His inclination is toward megalomania and mine toward melancholy. In the eyes of his friends, Fitzgerald may have broken decorum. But his essays kindled a narrative revolution that continues to simmer in American writing—in the rise of memoir and the appeal of personal essays in daily newspapers, to name only two obvious shape-shifters in publishing.

And it is publishing, not only writing, that is at stake here. His misery was native to his time and place. It was cultural. It was very distinctly not modern—yet I saw it in others, saw it in a dozen men of honor and industry since the war. But no cultural change happens in a vacuum. Something in the air links change to change, later making evident a pattern, a fundamental shift. Yet these two cultural or spiritual occasions, which began their public lives at the same time, in the depths of the Great Depression, are linked in the way that history alone can make obvious, displaying a shared landscape, creating or simply recognizing coherence.

Who needed yet more splintering of the great, beloved form? Especially by those scrappy little pieces. In fact, the essay inhabits an intermediate territory between story and poem. That may be its fundamental appeal. Tell a story and then think about it—all in the same work. Fitzgerald feels squeamish about personal disclosure just as Hemingway and Dos Passos do. Psychologists and AA call it detachment. But if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? By the second essay he is smarting under the criticism he has received from his literary friends. As he did at the end of the first essay, he adopts in the second the language of spirituality to describe the quality of his desolation and despair, doing a turn on St.

In the third, as he moves beyond description of his condition toward a solution, he retains the same figure of speech, but turns it inside out. None of this sounds genuine. He wrote his lament. Fitzgerald's Montgomery sojourn was interrupted briefly in November when he was transferred northward to Camp Mills , Long Island. Upon his discharge on February 14, , he moved to New York City, where he unsuccessfully begged the editors of various newspapers for a job. Seeking his fortune in New York, Fitzgerald worked for the Barron Collier advertising agency and lived in a single room in Manhattan's West Side. Still aspiring to a lucrative career in literature, he wrote several short stories and satires in his spare time. With dreams of a lucrative career in New York City dashed, Fitzgerald could not convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, and she broke off the engagement in June In July, Fitzgerald quit his advertising job and returned to St.

While revising his novel, Fitzgerald took a job repairing car roofs at the Northern Pacific Shops in St. Paul and flagged down random automobiles to share the news. Fitzgerald's debut novel appeared in bookstores on March 26, and became an instant success. This Side of Paradise sold approximately 40, copies in the first year. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. Mencken hailed the work as the best American novel of the year, [79] and newspaper columnists described the work as the first realistic American college novel. Magazines now accepted his previously rejected stories, and The Saturday Evening Post published his story " Bernice Bobs Her Hair " with his name on its May cover.

Fitzgerald's new fame enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, [82] and Zelda resumed their engagement as Fitzgerald could now pay for her accustomed lifestyle. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. 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. Scott Fitzgerald in "Echoes of the Jazz Age" [92]. Living in luxury at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, [93] the newlywed couple became national celebrities, as much for their wild behavior as for the success of Fitzgerald's novel. At the Biltmore, Scott did handstands in the lobby, [94] while Zelda slid down the hotel banisters.

Everyone wanted to meet him. As Fitzgerald was one of the most celebrated novelists during the Jazz Age, many admirers sought his acquaintanceship. He met sports columnist Ring Lardner , [99] journalist Rebecca West , [] cartoonist Rube Goldberg , [] actress Laurette Taylor , [] actor Lew Fields , [] comedian Ed Wynn , [] and many others. Mencken, the influential co-editors of The Smart Set magazine who led an ongoing cultural war against puritanism in American arts. Fitzgerald's ephemeral happiness mirrored the societal giddiness of the Jazz Age, a term which he popularized in his essays and stories. During this hedonistic era, alcohol increasingly fueled the Fitzgeralds' social life, [] and the couple consumed gin-and-fruit concoctions at every outing.

As their quarrels worsened, the couple accused each other of marital infidelities. In Winter , his wife became pregnant as Fitzgerald worked on his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned , and the couple traveled to his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, to have the child. Mark Twain. Isn't she smart—she has the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool. After his daughter's birth, Fitzgerald returned to drafting The Beautiful and Damned. The novel's plot follows a young artist and his wife who become dissipated and bankrupt while partying in New York City. Scribner's prepared an initial print run of 20, copies. It sold well enough to warrant additional print runs reaching 50, copies. He had written all but two of the stories before Following Fitzgerald's adaptation of his story " The Vegetable " into a play, in October , he and Zelda moved to Great Neck, Long Island , to be near Broadway.

Despite enjoying the Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald disapproved of the extravagant parties, [] and the wealthy people he encountered often disappointed him. In May , Fitzgerald and his family moved abroad to Europe. This theme comes up again and again because I lived it. Work on The Great Gatsby slowed while the Fitzgeralds sojourned on the French Riviera , where a marital crisis developed. After six weeks, Zelda asked for a divorce. Following this incident, the Fitzgeralds relocated to Rome, [] where he made revisions to the Gatsby manuscript throughout the winter and submitted the final version in February Eliot , and Edith Wharton praised Fitzgerald's work, [] and the novel received generally favorable reviews from contemporary literary critics.

After wintering in Italy, the Fitzgeralds returned to France, where they alternated between Paris and the French Riviera until During this period, he became friends with writer Gertrude Stein , bookseller Sylvia Beach , novelist James Joyce , poet Ezra Pound and other members of the American expatriate community in Paris, [] some of whom would later be identified with the Lost Generation. In contrast to his friendship with Scott, Hemingway disliked Zelda and described her as "insane" in his memoir, A Moveable Feast. Hemingway alleged that Zelda sought to destroy her husband, and she purportedly taunted Fitzgerald over his penis' size. In , film producer John W. Considine Jr. invited Fitzgerald to Hollywood during its golden age to write a flapper comedy for United Artists. While attending a lavish party at the Pickfair estate, Fitzgerald met year-old Lois Moran , a starlet who had gained widespread fame for her role in Stella Dallas Jealous of Fitzgerald and Moran, an irate Zelda set fire to her own expensive clothing in a bathtub as a self-destructive act.

The Fitzgeralds rented "Ellerslie", a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware , until In April , when the psychiatric clinic allowed Zelda to travel with her husband, Fitzgerald took her to lunch with critic H. Mencken, by then the literary editor of The American Mercury. During this time, Fitzgerald rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland , and worked on his next novel, which drew heavily on recent experiences. Fitzgerald's own novel debuted in April as Tender Is the Night and received mixed reviews. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Amid the Great Depression , Fitzgerald's works were deemed elitist and materialistic. Scott Fitzgerald as an age rather than a writer, and when the economic stroke of began to change the sheiks [i] and flappers into unemployed boys or underpaid girls, we consciously and a little belligerently turned our backs on Fitzgerald. He relied on loans from his agent, Harold Ober , and publisher Perkins. As he had been an alcoholic for many years, [j] [] Fitzgerald's heavy drinking undermined his health by the late s. Bruccoli contends Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring TB. Fitzgerald's deteriorating health, chronic alcoholism, and financial woes made for difficult years in Baltimore.

His friend H. Mencken wrote in a June diary entry that "the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance. His wife, Zelda, who has been insane for years, is now confined at the Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, and he is living in Park Avenue with his little daughter, Scottie". By that same year, Zelda's intense suicidal mania necessitated her extended confinement at the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Fitzgerald's dire financial straits compelled him to accept a lucrative contract as a screenwriter with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer MGM in that necessitated his relocation to Hollywood.

In an effort to abstain from alcohol, Fitzgerald drank large amounts of Coca-Cola and ate many sweets. Estranged from Zelda, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with his first love Ginevra King when the wealthy Chicago heiress visited Hollywood in Soon after, a lonely Fitzgerald began a relationship with nationally syndicated gossip columnist Sheilah Graham , his final companion before his death. Fitzgerald had to climb two flights of stairs to his apartment, while Graham lived on the ground floor. Throughout their relationship, Graham claimed Fitzgerald felt constant guilt over Zelda's mental illness and confinement.

Scott Fitzgerald. You've read my books. You've read The Great Gatsby, haven't you? During this last phase of his career, Fitzgerald's screenwriting tasks included revisions on Madame Curie and an unused dialogue polish for Gone with the Wind —a book which Fitzgerald disparaged as unoriginal and an "old wives' tale". Director Billy Wilder described Fitzgerald's foray into Hollywood as like that of "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job". Esquire originally published the Pat Hobby Stories between January and July This is my immediate duty—without this I am nothing. Fitzgerald achieved sobriety over a year before his death, and Graham described their last year together as one of the happiest times of their relationship.

The following day, as Fitzgerald annotated his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly , [] Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, and collapse on the floor without uttering a sound. On learning of her father's death, Scottie telephoned Graham from Vassar and asked she not attend the funeral for social propriety. Zelda eulogized Fitzgerald in a letter to a friend: "He was as spiritually generous a soul as ever was It seems as if he was always planning happiness for Scottie and for me. Books to read—places to go. Life seemed so promising always when he was around. Scott was the best friend a person could have to me". Fitzgerald was buried instead with a simple Protestant service at Rockville Union Cemetery.

It has been the greatest credo in my life that I would rather be an artist than a careerist. I would rather impress my image upon the soul of a people I would as soon be as anonymous as Rimbaud if I could feel that I had accomplished that purpose. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter to H. Mencken, []. At the time of his death, Fitzgerald believed his life a failure and that his work was forgotten. Surveying these posthumous attacks, John Dos Passos opined that many literary critics in popular newspapers lacked the basic discernment about the art of writing. Within one year after his death, Edmund Wilson completed Fitzgerald's unfinished fifth novel The Last Tycoon using the author's extensive notes, [l] [] and he included The Great Gatsby within the edition, sparking new interest and discussion among critics.

The Red Cross distributed the novel to prisoners in Japanese and German POW camps. By the 21st century, The Great Gatsby had sold millions of copies, and the novel is required reading in many high school and college classes. If you want to know about the South, you read Faulkner. If you want to know what America's like, you read The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald is the quintessential American writer. The Great Gatsby ' s popularity led to widespread interest in Fitzgerald himself. Seven years later, Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson remarked that he now received copious letters from female admirers of Fitzgerald's works and that his flawed alcoholic friend had posthumously become "a semi-divine personage" in the popular imagination. Decades after his death, Fitzgerald's childhood Summit Terrace home in St.

Paul became a National Historic Landmark in Scott Fitzgerald Society, which later became an affiliate of the American Literature Association. Paul—home of the radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion —was renamed the Fitzgerald Theater. More so than most contemporary writers of his era, F. Scott Fitzgerald's authorial voice evolved and matured over time, [] and his each successive novel represented a discernible progression in literary quality. For his first novel, Fitzgerald used as his literary templates H. Wells ' work Tono-Bungay and Sir Compton Mackenzie 's novel Sinister Street , [] which chronicled a young college student's coming-of-age at Oxford University. Although critics praised This Side of Paradise as highly original, they eviscerated its form and construction.

For his sophomore effort, Fitzgerald discarded the trappings of collegiate bildungsromans and crafted an "ironical-pessimistic" [ sic ] novel in the style of Thomas Hardy 's oeuvre. Although critics deemed The Beautiful and Damned to be less ground-breaking than its predecessor, [] [] many recognized that the vast improvement in literary form and construction between his first and second novels augured great prospects for Fitzgerald's future. Weaver predicted in that, as Fitzgerald matured as a writer, he would become regarded as one of the greatest authors of American literature. When composing The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald chose to depart from the writing process of his previous novels and to fashion a conscious artistic achievement.

With the publication of The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald had refined his prose style and plot construction, and the literati now hailed him as a master of his craft. The realization that Fitzgerald had improved as a novelist to point that Gatsby was a masterwork was immediately evident to certain members of the literary world. Eliot believed it represented a turning point in American literature. Nine years after the publication of The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald completed his fourth novel Tender Is the Night in By this time, the field of literature had greatly changed due to the onset of the Great Depression , and once popular writers such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway who wrote about upper-middle-class lifestyles were now disparaged in literary periodicals whereas so-called " proletarian novelists " enjoyed general applause.

Due to this change, although Fitzgerald showed a mastery of "verbal nuance, flexible rhythm, dramatic construction and essential tragi-comedy" in Tender Is the Night , [] many reviewers dismissed the work for its disengagement with the political issues of the era. After Fitzgerald's death, writers such as John Dos Passos assayed Fitzgerald's gradual progression in literary quality and posited that his uncompleted fifth novel The Last Tycoon could have been Fitzgerald's greatest achievement. In contrast to the discernible progression in literary quality and artistic maturity represented by his novels, [] Fitzgerald's short stories displayed the opposite tendency and attracted significant criticism.

Realizing that slick magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire were more likely to publish stories which pandered to young love and featured saccharine dénouements, Fitzgerald became adept at tailoring his short fiction to the vicissitudes of commercial tastes. Although a dazzling extemporizer, Fitzgerald's short stories were criticized for lacking both thematic coherence and quality. Commenting upon this tendency in Fitzgerald's short stories, Dos Passos remarked that "everybody who has put pen to paper during the last twenty years has been daily plagued by the difficulty of deciding whether he's to do 'good' writing that will satisfy his conscience or 'cheap' writing that will satisfy his pocketbook A great deal of Fitzgerald's own life was made a hell by this sort of schizophrenia.

Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise []. For much of his literary career, cultural commentators hailed Fitzgerald as the foremost chronicler of the Jazz Age generation whose lives were defined by the societal transition towards modernity. With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon this generation.

Remarking upon the cultural association between Fitzgerald and the flaming youth of the Jazz Age, Gertrude Stein wrote in her memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that the author's fiction essentially created this new generation in the public's mind. Weaver and Edmund Wilson insisted that Fitzgerald imbued the Jazz Age generation with the gift of self-consciousness while simultaneously making the public aware of them as a distinct cohort. Scott Fitzgerald. In case you are 14 years old, keeping a diary and harboring ambitions to literary fame, you do not need to worry if your journal entries lack style or substance. Scott Fitzgerald did not fare much better during this stage of his life as the recently published The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald shows.

However, reading the text will also remind you that, if you do manage to become a famous author, then scholars are going to be interested in anything you ever scribbled down, including your teenage thoughts on girls and gossip. That's why we can now pry into Fitzgerald's private musings on the waxing and waning of his affections, even though they were never meant to be read by anyone but himself. After all, he kept his diary locked in a box under his bed. Perhaps that's where it should have remained, both to spare Fitzgerald any posthumous embarrassment and today's reader an hour of solid boredom. A Short Autobiography , edited by James L. West III. Fitzgerald never worked on an autobiography, but throughout his life - from the start of his career in until shortly before his death in - he published several magazine articles and essays that reflected upon his personal life.

The collection ' A Short Autobiography ' arranges those texts in chronological order so that they trace the arc from the infectious self-assuredness of the successful young author who never fails to regard himself with a sense of irony, though to the somber reflections of a man who has outlived his prime - with the eponymous short piece 'A Short Autobiography' as the tipping point: it's nothing more than a list of different drinks consumed in different locations over the years. That literary prank aside, all of Fitzgerald's different attempts at self-portrayal are as enjoyable to read today as they presumably were to the magazine audiences of the s and s.

It's inspiring how he presents the interaction between his wife and himself, how he showcases them as a good team that enjoys strong camaraderie rather than as the epitome of romantic love.

Fitzgerald lived in an age when, despite the existence of the telephone system, hand-writing letters was still commonplace, so that he left behind an abundance of exchanges between himself and his wife, his editor, his literary agent and his friends that were published in a number of different collections after his death in The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In case you are 14 years old, keeping a diary and harboring ambitions to literary fame, you do not need to worry if your journal entries lack style or substance. Scott Fitzgerald did not fare much better during this stage of his life as the recently published The Thoughtbook of F.

Scott Fitzgerald shows. However, reading the text will also remind you that, if you do manage to become a famous author, then scholars are going to be interested in anything you ever scribbled down, including your teenage thoughts on girls and gossip. That's why we can now pry into Fitzgerald's private musings on the waxing and waning of his affections, even though they were never meant to be read by anyone but himself. After all, he kept his diary locked in a box under his bed. Perhaps that's where it should have remained, both to spare Fitzgerald any posthumous embarrassment and today's reader an hour of solid boredom. A Short Autobiography , edited by James L.

West III. Fitzgerald never worked on an autobiography, but throughout his life - from the start of his career in until shortly before his death in - he published several magazine articles and essays that reflected upon his personal life. The collection ' A Short Autobiography ' arranges those texts in chronological order so that they trace the arc from the infectious self-assuredness of the successful young author who never fails to regard himself with a sense of irony, though to the somber reflections of a man who has outlived his prime - with the eponymous short piece 'A Short Autobiography' as the tipping point: it's nothing more than a list of different drinks consumed in different locations over the years. That literary prank aside, all of Fitzgerald's different attempts at self-portrayal are as enjoyable to read today as they presumably were to the magazine audiences of the s and s.

It's inspiring how he presents the interaction between his wife and himself, how he showcases them as a good team that enjoys strong camaraderie rather than as the epitome of romantic love. Perhaps he had already guessed that ultimately it would be loyalty and respect that, in its own strange way, would make their relationship last. Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda , edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. The letters that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald exchanged span more than two decades, from the first love letter she wrote in to his final note from December 19, Nevertheless, their correspondence does not tell a continuous story, but one that is broken into two distinct parts, simply because Scott and Zelda only communicated in writing when they were apart, i.

during their courtship and later when Zelda was hospitalized. There may be nothing special about these letters, except that they were written by two gifted writers. Yet, reading them in chronologial order makes the exuberance of their early days as well as the hardships they had to face during their final years come to life more vividly than the best biography could. Besides, since more of Zelda's than of Scott's letters have survived, her voice comes through loud and clear, so that readers who have turned to the collection because of their interest in Scott and that is likely to be the majority cannot help but acknowledge that Zelda was not just the wife of a famous author, but an equal part in their marriage and that their love survived life because they both felt more at home with each other than with anyone else.

The Crack-Up , edited by Edmund Wilson. The Crack-Up is a collection of essays that Fitzgerald published as he reached his nadir: His latest novel Tender is the Night had been a critical and financial failure, his wife had been institutionalized and the magazine short story market had dried up: " until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. Wir waren furchtbar gute Schauspieler. On May 28, , Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald met in the presence of her doctor Thomas Rennie and a stenographer: Scott had asked for a typescript of the conversation to document the state of affairs between his wife and himself. Based on this protocol, their conversation has now been reenacted as an minute audiobook which is only available in German at this point that will make anyone who is reasonably happily married grateful for not having sunk to the level of distrust and antipathy that seems to have ruled the relationship between Scott and Zelda during this period.

Yet, at the same time, one cannot help but identfy with both of them, especially with how Zelda fights to maintain her own separate identity, but also with Scott's anger at what he perceives as her ungratefulness. In general, he comes across as a broken man at age 36, who is clinging to the emblem's of his worldly success, as he seems to have lost everything else he could have held on to. Listening to Scott and Zelda fighting is a painful reminder how completely lives can unravel, not by a single tragic twist of fate, but gradually, as a matter of course, abetted by too many wrong decisions, each of them insignificant in isolation, but devastating in their cumulative effect.

A Life in Letters: A New Collection , edited and annotated by Matthew J. This correspondence - edited by eminent Fitzgerald scholar Bruccoli - offers an accessible self-portrait of the writer. Early letters to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and friends, Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway, document Fitzgerald's devotion to craft, exemplified by The Great Gatsby , as well as the novelist's ever-present financial problems. Maxwell Perkins was a well-known editor at literary institution Scribner's. He was Fitzgerald's editor, mentor and creditor. Their correspondence offers not only a lot of literary gossip, but also rare insights into Fitzgerald's devotion to his craft.

As Ever, Scott Fitz- , edited by Matthew J. A collection of letters between Fitzgerald and his literary agent Harold Ober. Their correspondence ranges from to

F Scott Fitzgerald,Part I: The Crack-Up

WebF. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author who was known for his novels that generally take place during the Jazz Age after World War I. His use of similes add deeper imagery WebFitzgerald saw his writing as a reflection of his own life. His works are closely based on his experiences at Princeton, in World War 1 and his love life. Although he was not overly WebJan 7,  · Research Paper F. Scott Fitzgerald. As Florence King once said, “People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a WebOct 10,  · Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald once said “Mostly we authors must repeat ourselves–that’s the truth. We have two or three experiences in our lives– experiences WebIn the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the morality of a society is clearly revealed through the choices and consequences its characters experience. The two WebThe Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In case you are 14 years old, keeping a diary and harboring ambitions to literary fame, you do not need to worry if your journal entries lack ... read more

Bryer and Cathy W. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His Work 1st ed. Regis prep School in New England. This preoccupation with the idle lives of America's leisure class in Fitzgerald's fiction attracted criticism. West III. Scott Fitzgerald and Hollywood The Legacy of F. As one of the leading authorial voices of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald's literary style influenced a number of contemporary and future writers.

In Aprilwhen the psychiatric clinic allowed Zelda to travel with her husband, Fitzgerald took her to lunch with critic H, f scott fitzgerald essay. Portals : Biography s. Mencken, by then the literary editor of The American Mercury. Scott Fitzgerald Important information Spouse: Zelda Fitzgerald m. Read More. Not to mention Mr. Fitzgerald F.