The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was one of the most celebrated figures of the 1920s. [251] During his work on Winter Carnival (1939), Fitzgerald had an alcoholic relapse and sought treatment by New York psychiatrist Richard Hoffmann. [418], Beyond adaptations of his works, Fitzgerald himself has been portrayed in dozens of books, plays, and films. [323] Echoing this assertion, critics John V. A. 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. [319][320] Readers complimented him that Gatsby "is compact, economical, polished in the technique of the novel,"[300] and his writing now contained "some of the nicest little touches of contemporary observation you could imagineso light, so delicate, so sharp". He returned to Princeton the next fall, but he had now lost all the positions he coveted, and in November 1917 he left to join the army. [123], Despite enjoying the Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald disapproved of the extravagant parties,[124] and the wealthy people he encountered often disappointed him. [171] Zelda found condoms he had purchased before any encounter occurred, and a bitter quarrel ensued, resulting in lingering jealousy. [111] On October 26, 1921, Zelda gave birth to their daughter and only child Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald. [346] "No generation of Americans has had a chronicler so persuasive and unmaudlin" as Fitzgerald, Van Allen wrote in 1934, and no author was so identified with the generation recorded. We had most of them. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. [104] At the peak of his commercial success and cultural salience, Fitzgerald recalled traveling in a taxi one afternoon in New York City and weeping when he realized that he would never be as happy again. "[337] Echoing Hemingway's critique that Fitzgerald ruined his short stories by rewriting them to appease magazine readers,[167] Rosenfeld noted that Fitzgerald debased his gift as a storyteller by transforming his tales into social romances with inevitably happy endings. Updated on August 02, 2019. [229] The sudden death of Fitzgerald's mother and Zelda's mental deterioration led to his marriage further disintegrating. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. I was able to drink and enjoy it. During these years soon after World War I, called the roaring twenties, we saw an increase of emancipated women as well as a swell of emergence of feminism, women suffrage and gender equality. [116] That year, Fitzgerald released an anthology of eleven stories entitled Tales of the Jazz Age. [416] The Last Tycoon has been adapted into a 1976 film,[417] and a 2016 Amazon Prime TV miniseries. He collapsed and died from a heart attack at the young age of 44. [76] Upon reading the telegram, an ecstatic Fitzgerald ran down the streets of St. Paul and flagged down random automobiles to share the news. [258] After failed efforts to revive him, Graham ran to fetch Harry Culver, the building's manager. 1908-09 In the years since, it has gone on to become nearly synonymous with Fitzgerald and life in the Roaring '20s. Zelda suffered an even sadder fate, dying in a mental institution fire in . The chaos of World War I left America in a state of distress, and the generation that fought the war turned to profligate living to recompense. His last meal consisted of a pastrami sandwich from the nearby Greenblatt's Deli. [94], In Winter 1921, 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. His mother was of Irish descent, and his father had Irish and English ancestry. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. [344][345] Due to this thematic focus, his works became a sensation among college students, and the press depicted him as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt". [174] He agreed and moved into a studio-owned bungalow with Zelda in January 1927. [249] His failure in Hollywood pushed him to return to drinking, and he drank nearly 40 beers a day in 1939. [408] Richard Yates, a writer often compared to Fitzgerald, hailed The Great Gatsby as showcasing Fitzgerald's miraculous talent and triumphal literary technique. The Peacock Inn, Princeton, New Jersey. [157], After wintering in Italy, the Fitzgeralds returned to France, where they alternated between Paris and the French Riviera until 1926. Born on September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to a middle-class Catholic family, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after his distant cousin, Francis Scott Key, who wrote in 1814 the lyrics for the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner". [12] Although his alcoholic father was now destitute, his mother's inheritance supplemented the family income and allowed them to continue living a middle-class lifestyle. - Attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald in response to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". The map below shows the places where the ancestors of the famous person lived. [217] In September 1936, journalist Michel Mok of the New York Post publicly reported Fitzgerald's alcoholism and career failure in a nationally syndicated article. [e][86] Although they were re-engaged, Fitzgerald's feelings for Zelda were at an all-time low, and he remarked to a friend, "I wouldn't care if she died, but I couldn't stand to have anybody else marry her. [260] In Graham's place, her friend Dorothy Parker attended the visitation held in the back room of an undertaker's parlor. [56][57], Upon his discharge on February14, 1919, he moved to New York City, where he unsuccessfully begged the editors of various newspapers for a job. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. ", Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald in eBook form, Catalog of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Personal Library, American Writers: A Journey Through History, F. Scott Fitzgerald in MNopedia, the Minnesota Encyclopedia, F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles', The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=F._Scott_Fitzgerald&oldid=1150318875, 20th-century American short story writers, United States Army personnel of World War I, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 April 2023, at 13:05. [217] According to biographer Nancy Milford, Fitzgerald's claims of having tuberculosis (TB) served as a pretext to cover his drinking ailments. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Scott and Zelda had a tumultuous relationship, characterized by excessive drinking, partying, and fighting. His second novel The Beautiful and Damned was filmed in 1922 and 2010. [245] After visiting several bookstores, he realized they had stopped carrying his works. [395][396] While writing This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald quoted verbatim entire letters sent to him by his Catholic mentor, Father Sigourney Fay. "[331], Realizing that slick magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire were more likely to publish stories that pandered to young love and featured saccharine dnouements, Fitzgerald became adept at tailoring his short fiction to the vicissitudes of commercial tastes. [250] In 1939, MGM terminated his contract, and Fitzgerald became a freelance screenwriter. [372][373] His later life as an expatriate in Europe and as a writer in Hollywood reinforced this lifelong sense of being an outsider. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. 5 Literary Influences. [375][376] In particular, Jay Gatsby, whom other characters belittle as "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere",[377] functions as a cipher because of his obscure origins, his unclear ethno-religious identity and his indeterminate class status. [126][127] Although Fitzgerald admired the rich, he possessed a smoldering resentment towards them. [135] He continued writing his third novel, which would eventually become his magnum opus The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald conveyed in The Great Gatsby the sense of hope America promised to its youth and the disappointment its youth felt when America failed to deliver. He was 44 years old. [28], Despite the great distance separating them, Fitzgerald still attempted to pursue Ginevra, and he traveled across the country to visit her family's Lake Forest estate. (Occasionally he went east to visit Zelda or his daughter Scottie, who entered Vassar College in 1938.) [340][341] In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Fitzgerald and Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and were largely untouched by the devastating conflict's psychological and material horrors. [178] Fitzgerald was 31 years old and past his prime, but the smitten Moran regarded him as a sophisticated, handsome, and gifted writer. [306] With the publication of The Beautiful and Damned, editor Max Perkins and others commended the conspicuous evolution in the quality of his prose. [145] Jozan later dismissed the entire incident and claimed no infidelity or romance had occurred: "They both had a need of drama, they made it up and perhaps they were the victims of their own unsettled and a little unhealthy imagination. [304] Having read and digested these criticisms of his debut novel, Fitzgerald sought to improve upon the form and construction of his prose in his next work and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether. In 1929, the Fitzgeralds spent their last summer on the Riviera. [254] Approaching the final year of life, Fitzgerald wrote regretfully to his daughter: "I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked backbut said at the end of The Great Gatsby: I've found my linefrom now on this comes first. When I was little I got to see a huge spread of them," she notes. [95] After several weeks, the hotel asked them to leave for disturbing other guests. Fitzgerald had to climb two flights of stairs to his apartment, while Graham lived on the ground floor. [94] The couple relocated two blocks to the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street where they spent half an hour spinning in the revolving door. Alternate titles: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Mellon Foundation Professor of Humanities, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. "[181] Fitzgerald's relations with Moran further exacerbated the Fitzgeralds' marital difficulties and, after merely two months in Jazz Age Hollywood, the unhappy couple departed for Delaware in March 1927. [50] Dispatched back to the base near Montgomery to await discharge, he renewed his pursuit of Zelda. He became a leading figure in the socially important Triangle Club, a dramatic society, and was elected to one of the leading clubs of the university. [239] Consequently, he moved in with Graham, who lived in Hollywood on North Hayworth Avenue, one block east of Fitzgerald's apartment on North Laurel Avenue. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. 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