| Born | September 24, 1896 St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. |
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| Died | December 21, 1940 (aged 44) Hollywood, California, U.S. |
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| Occupation | Novelist, screenwriter | |
| Nationality | American | |
| Writing period | 1920-1940 | |
| Genres | Literary fiction | |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's great writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation", Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He finished four novels, left a fifth unfinished, and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth and promise (his first act), and despair and age (act two: Fitzgerald is also famous for the phrase, "There are no second acts in American lives").
Early years
Born on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle class Irish Catholic household—aggressive mother, retiring father—Fitzgerald was named after his famous relative Francis Scott Key, but was referred to as "Scott." He spent 1898–1901 and 1903–1908 in Buffalo, New York, where he attended Nardin Academy.[1] When his father was fired from Proctor & Gamble, the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul from 1908–1911. His first literary effort was published in a school newspaper when he was 13. He attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1911–1912, and entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917. There he became friends with future critics and writers Edmund Wilson (Class of 1916) and John Peale Bishop (Class of 1917), and wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club. His absorption in the Triangle—a kind of musical-comedy society—led to an official invitation to repeat junior year, and, finally, a temporary withdrawal from the college. (On the occasion of the first, the author told a friend, "Charlie, they've just flunked the brightest man in the class of 1917 back to your class"; on the occasion of the second, Fitzgerald—always sensitive to gauges of failure and success—asked a dean to prepare a note accounting for his departure by poor health. The dean complied, added in a covering letter: "This is for your sensitive feelings. I hope you will find it soothing.")[2]
A mediocre student throughout his three years at Princeton, Fitzgerald severed university relations entirely in 1917 to enlist in the United States Army, when America entered World War I. Fitzgerald wrote a novel titled The Romantic Egotist, portions of which later largely were reincarnated as the first half of This Side of Paradise, while at Princeton, and edited the work at Camp Zachary Taylor and Camp Sheridan. When he submitted the novel to Charles Scribner's Sons, the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. The war ended shortly after Fitzgerald's enlistment.
Marriage to Zelda Sayre
While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900–1948), the "top girl", in Fitzgerald's words, of Montgomery, Alabama youth society. She was the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge. The two were engaged in 1919, and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 1395 Lexington Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement.
Fitzgerald returned to his parents' house at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill, in St. Paul to revise The Romantic Egoist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, about the post-WWI flapper generation, it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919, and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. The novel was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year. Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.
Hollywood years
Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in dire financial straits, and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including some unfilmed work on Gone with the Wind), and his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Published posthumously as The Last Tycoon, it was based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg. Scott and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on the east coast, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist, in Hollywood. From 1939 until his death, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, later collected as "The Pat Hobby Stories"
Illness and death
Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis, but Milford dismisses it as a pretext to cover his drinking problems. However, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring tuberculosis, and Nancy Milford reports that Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener said that Scott suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrhage". Some have said that hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices.
Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in late 1940. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion and to obtain a first floor apartment. He moved in with Sheilah Graham, who lived on the first floor. On the night of December 20, 1940, he had his second heart attack, and the next day, December 21, while awaiting a visit from his doctor, Fitzgerald collapsed in Graham's apartment and died. He was 44.
Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home in Hollywood was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son of a bitch", a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.[3][4] In a strange coincidence, the author Nathanael West, who was a friend and admirer of Fitzgerald, was killed along with his wife Eileen McKenney in El Centro, California, while driving back to Los Angeles to attend Fitzgerald's funeral service.
Fitzgerald's remains were then shipped to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by very few people. The Catholic church would not allow him to be buried in his family's plot in Rockville and he was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. Zelda died tragically in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1948. With the permission and assistance of their only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, the Women's Club of Rockville had their bodies moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland.
Fitzgerald never completed The Love of the Last Tycoon. His notes for the novel were edited by his friend Edmund Wilson and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994, the book was rereleased under the original title The Love of the Last Tycoon, which is now agreed upon as Fitzgerald's intended title.
Influence and praise
Fitzgerald's work and legend has inspired writers ever since he was first published. The publication of The Great Gatsby prompted T. S. Eliot to write, in a letter to Fitzgerald, "[I]t seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James...".[5] Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend, says to himself, referring to Gatsby, "There's no such thing...as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it."[6] In letters written in the 1940s, J. D. Salinger expressed admiration of Fitzgerald's work, and his biographer Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor."[7] Richard Yates, a writer often compared to Fitzgerald, called The Great Gatsby "the most nourishing novel [he] read...a miracle of talent...a triumph of technique."[8]
Works
Novels
- This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920)
- The Beautiful and Damned (New York: Scribner, 1922)
- The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 1925)
- Tender Is the Night (New York: Scribner, 1934)
- The Last Tycoon – originally The Love of the Last Tycoon – (New York: Scribners, published posthumously, 1941)
Other works
- The Princeton Tiger (Humor Magazine, 1917)
- The Vegetable, or From President to Postman (play, 1923)
- The Crack-Up (essays and stories, 1945)
- Winter Dreams (Short Story, 1922)
- Babylon Revisited (Short Story)
- All the Sad Young Men (Short Story Collection, 1926)
- Babylon Revisited (Short Story Collection)
- Taps at Reveille (Short Story Collection, 1935)
- Tales of the Jazz Age (Short Story Collection, 1922)
- The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Short Story)
- Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Short Story)
- The Ice Palace (Short Story)
- The Bridal Party (Short Story)
- The Baby Party (Short Story)
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Short Story)
- Head and Shoulders (Short Story)
- Flappers and Philosophers (Short Story Collection, 1920)
- The Basil and Josephine Stories (Short Story Collection)