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F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) rose to prominence as a annalist of the jazz age. Born in St. Paul, Minnisota, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton University to join the U.S. Army. The success of his first novel, “This Side of Paradise” (1920), made him an instant celebrity and by his third novel, “The Great Gatsby” (1925), it was very highly regarded, and is now one of the classic American novels of today. Struggling with alcoholism and his wife’s mental illness, Fitzgerald attempted to reinvent himself as a screenwriter. He died before completing his final novel, “The Last Tycoon” (1941), but earned posthumous acclaim as one of America’s most celebrated writers.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune, and the misfortune, to be a writer who summed up an era. The son of an alcoholic failure from Maryland and an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, he grew up acutely conscious of wealth and privilege and of his family’s exclusion from the social elite. After entering Princeton in 1913, he became a close friend of Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop and spent most of his time writing lyrics for Triangle Club theatrical productions and analysing how to triumph over the school’s intricate social rituals. Fitzgerald highly analysed the rich and famous and gathered a vast knowledge on how to live like the elite.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune, and the misfortune, to be a writer who summed up an era. The son of an alcoholic failure from Maryland and an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, he grew up acutely conscious of wealth and privilege and of his family’s exclusion from the social elite. After entering Princeton in 1913, he became a close friend of Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop and spent most of his time writing lyrics for Triangle Club theatrical productions and analysing how to triumph over the school’s intricate social rituals. Fitzgerald highly analysed the rich and famous and gathered a vast knowledge on how to live like the elite.
Fitzgerald was the only son of an unsuccessful, aristocratic father and an energetic, provincial mother. Half the time he thought of himself as the heir of his father’s tradition. As a result he had typically ambivalent American feelings about American life, which seemed to him at once vulgar and dazzlingly promising.
He also had an intensely romantic imagination which is what i want to focus on with the interior, what he once called “a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” and he charged into experience determined to realize those promises. At both St. Paul Academy (1908–10) and Newman School (1911–13) he tried too hard and made himself unpopular, but at Princeton he came close to realizing his dream of a brilliant success. He became a prominent figure in the literary life of the university and made lifelong friendships with Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. 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; he fell in love with Ginevra King, one of the beauties of her generation. Then he lost Ginevra and flunked out of Princeton.
He left Princeton without graduating and used it as the setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). It was perfect literary timing. The twenties were beginning to roar, bathtub gin and flaming youth were on everyone’s lips, and the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal spokesman for the decade. With his stunning southern wife, Zelda, he headed for Paris and a mythic career of drinking from hip flasks, dancing until dawn, and jumping into outdoor fountains to end the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make enough money to match his extravagant lifestyle and still produce serious work, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster’s pursuit of an unattainable rich girl, was close to a masterpiece. The Fitzgeralds’ frenetic ascent to literary fame was soon tinged with tragedy. Scott became an alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of his fame (or in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to an America in the grip of the Great Depression a land no longer interested in youth except to rob them for their excesses.
He also had an intensely romantic imagination which is what i want to focus on with the interior, what he once called “a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” and he charged into experience determined to realize those promises. At both St. Paul Academy (1908–10) and Newman School (1911–13) he tried too hard and made himself unpopular, but at Princeton he came close to realizing his dream of a brilliant success. He became a prominent figure in the literary life of the university and made lifelong friendships with Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. 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; he fell in love with Ginevra King, one of the beauties of her generation. Then he lost Ginevra and flunked out of Princeton.
He left Princeton without graduating and used it as the setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). It was perfect literary timing. The twenties were beginning to roar, bathtub gin and flaming youth were on everyone’s lips, and the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal spokesman for the decade. With his stunning southern wife, Zelda, he headed for Paris and a mythic career of drinking from hip flasks, dancing until dawn, and jumping into outdoor fountains to end the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make enough money to match his extravagant lifestyle and still produce serious work, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster’s pursuit of an unattainable rich girl, was close to a masterpiece. The Fitzgeralds’ frenetic ascent to literary fame was soon tinged with tragedy. Scott became an alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of his fame (or in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to an America in the grip of the Great Depression a land no longer interested in youth except to rob them for their excesses.
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity to wonder." - The Great Gatsby
Not until the early fifties did interest in Fitzgerald's novel's revive, and when it did, it became a scholarly industry. A closer look at his life and career reveals a writer with an acute sense of history, an intellectual pessimist who had grave doubts about Americans’ ability to survive their infatuation with success. At the same time he conveyed in his best novels and short stories the sense of youthful love and hope America’s promises created in many people.
Reference for all text: http://www.history.com/topics/f-scott-fitzgerald
& http://www.neabigread.org/books/greatgatsby/readers-guide/about-the-author/
Reference for all text: http://www.history.com/topics/f-scott-fitzgerald
& http://www.neabigread.org/books/greatgatsby/readers-guide/about-the-author/