Born September 24, 1896 (St. Paul, Minnesota)
Died December 21, 1940 (Los Angeles, California)
Novelist and short story writer
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
F. Scott Fitzgerald was probably the most gifted and insightful literary chronicler of the Roaring Twenties. It was he who, in the title of one of his collections of short stories, coined the term "Jazz Age" to describe this decade of exuberance, creativity, and sometimes troubling change. Along with his glamorous wife, Zelda, Fitzgerald himself lived the life of excess for which the period is known. His was a tragic story in many ways, yet he also produced lasting literary masterpieces. The best of these is undoubtedly his novel The Great Gatsby, which has become a classic of U.S. fiction, but his numerous, finely crafted short stories are also acclaimed.
An ambitious young writer
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was a native of Maryland, and his mother, Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald, was from a wealthy local family; he had one younger sister. When his son was two years old, the elder Fitzgerald moved his family to the East Coast after accepting a position with the large dry
goods firm of Procter and Gamble, but they returned in 1908 when he lost this job. From then on the family lived on Mollie's inheritance. Some commentators have traced Fitzgerald's lifelong anxiety about financial failure to his father's inability to support the family.
As a boy, Fitzgerald always loved writing. His first publication, a detective story, appeared in the school newspaper of the St. Paul Academy, which he attended from 1908 to 1911. Poor grades forced Fitzgerald to transfer to the Newman School in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he spent the years between 1911 and 1913. During this period he especially enjoyed writing plays, several of which were produced during his summers at home by an amateur theatrical group.
Fitzgerald entered New Jersey's Princeton University in 1913. He spent much of his time writing for various campus publications, including the Nassau Literary Magazine, and making some lifelong friends. One of these was Edmund Wilson (1895–1972), who would later become a famous and well-respected literary critic. Fitzgerald neglected his academic work, however, and had to leave Princeton in 1915. He returned the next year, but he would never graduate. When, in 1917, the United States entered World War I (1914–18), Fitzgerald joined the army. He was made a second lieutenant and sent to an army base near Montgomery, Alabama.
This was a crucial period in Fitzgerald's life, for it was in Montgomery that he met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. The couple became engaged, but Zelda belonged to a wealthy, upper-class social set, and Fitzgerald felt he could not marry her until he had achieved some success. During his fifteen months of military service, he was never sent overseas, but he did begin work on his first novel, an autobiographical work that he initially titled The Romantic Egoist.
Fitzgerald sent his manuscript to the Scribner publishing company. It was rejected but returned with an encouraging note to revise the novel and submit it again. After a brief period as an advertising copywriter in New York City, Fitzgerald went home to St. Paul to work on rewriting his novel. Following another rejection and another revision, Scribner finally accepted the novel, which was renamed This Side of Paradise.
The fast life of the Roaring Twenties
This Side of Paradise chronicles the life of Amory Blaine, a Princeton undergraduate who bears a notable resemblance to his creator. Among the experiences shared by both are a failed romance (Fitzgerald's had been with Ginevra King, a wealthy girl after whom he would model Daisy Buchanan, one of his most famous creations), problems with bad grades, and an interest in literature. The novel also features a female character who embodies the flapper ideal of the Roaring Twenties: these young women were known for such bold, unconventional behaviors as drinking and smoking in public and wearing short skirts and bobbed (short) hair. Generally, the novel was considered a truthful portrait of postwar youth, who rebelled against their elders and disregarded tradition. Because it included patches of poetry and pieces of short stories and plays that Fitzgerald had previously written, its structure seemed original and vaguely sophisticated.
This Side of Paradise was published in March 1920 and quickly gained popularity; by the end of the year, it had sold forty thousand copies. A week after its publication Fitzgerald married Zelda, and the two began an adventurous life of travel, parties, and outrageous antics. They were known, for example, for having ridden up New York City's Fifth Avenue on the roof of a taxicab. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald continued to write steadily, publishing his short stories in such well-known national magazines as Smart Set and the Saturday Evening Post. His first short story collection, Flappers and Philosophers (1920), appeared soon after This Side of Paradise.
Throughout his career, Fitzgerald would fall back on the more profitable practice of publishing short stories (in 1922, for example, most of the $22,000 he earned came from short story writing) to bolster his income. Nevertheless, many of his short stories are finely written. This first collection contained several of Fitzgerald's best stories, including "The Ice Palace" and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"; the latter centered on a girl accepting her friends' challenge to take the daring and modern step of cutting her long hair.
After a short period in Europe, the Fitzgeralds returned to St. Paul for the birth of their daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald (called Scottie). Afterward they plunged right back into their fast-living ways. They never owned a home, preferring to stay in expensive hotels or rent large houses.
Fitzgerald's second novel appeared in 1922. The Beautiful and the Damned centers on a beautiful, glamorous couple, Anthony and Gloria Patch, who live on inherited money. They spend freely, drink heavily, and quarrel often as their lives gradually fall apart. The novel is distinguished by its strongly cynical tone and emphasis on the negative effects of too much money. Although the critics gave it low marks, The Beautiful and the Damned sold well.
That same year, another collection of Fitzgerald's short stories was published. Tales of the Jazz Age (the author's nickname for the Roaring Twenties, which would become widely used) contains some of his most popular and frequently anthologized (compiled) stories, such as "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "May Day," and "Winter Dreams." Most of the stories in the volume, however, are not up to the standard of Fitzgerald's best writing.
The Expatriate Scene in Paris
It was an unusual circ*mstance of the Roaring Twenties that many of the creators of the most exciting artistic developments in the United States lived in Paris, France, during this period. There were several reasons for this expatriate migration. World War I had exposed many young people to Europe, and life was cheaper there and offered an escape both from Prohibition and from what many considered the intolerance and small-mindedness of U.S. society. There also were more opportunities to have one's work published in Paris.
Although a great number of the expatriates in France during the 1920s were merely posing as artists, some genuinely talented artists and writers lived there as well. Such classic works as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway were written in France. These and other serious authors were welcomed by three older figures who had arrived several years earlier: writer and literary critic Gertrude Stein, who hosted a popular literary salon; poet Ezra Pound (at least until his departure in 1924); and Sylvia Beach, who owned a famous bookstore called Shakespeare & Company. It was Beach who, in 1922, published James Joyce's groundbreaking modernist novel Ulysses.
Other authors were able to publish their work through such Paris-based companies as the Contact Press, the Three Mountains Press, and the Black Manikin Press, or in literary journals like The Little Review, Gargoyle, and the Transatlantic Review. Paris also attracted musicians, some of whom—like composers Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland—studied with French composer Nadia Boulanger, dancers, and visual artists. Painters like Marc Chagall, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso were on the scene, as were journalist Djuna Barnes and poets e.e. cummings and Hilda Doolittle.
A masterpiece of twentieth-century literature
Despite the success of his books and the considerable amount of money Fitzgerald had made through selling his short stories to magazines, the couple's extravagant lifestyle landed them in debt. They rented a house on Long Island (near New York City), where Fitzgerald wrote a play called The Vegetable (1923) that he hoped would ease their financial troubles. Instead, the play was a flop.
Searching for a less expensive place to live, the Fitzgeralds moved to Europe again, renting a villa on the French Riviera (a coastal region in southern France). There they entered a circle of U.S. expatriates (those who live outside their native country). Despite the demands of their active social life, and the heartache and tension caused by Zelda's affair with a French pilot, Fitzgerald wrote the novel that is usually considered his masterpiece.
The Great Gatsby is a relatively short, tightly written work with a complex structure and compelling characters. Fitzgerald used symbolism masterfully to illustrate and explore the novel's themes, which include the clash between traditional values and modern culture, the shallow pursuit of wealth and the tarnishing of the so-called "American dream," and the stubborn persistence of hope.
The novel takes place on Long Island. Its hero is Jay Gatsby, born Jimmy Gatz, whose pursuit of a wealthy, out-of-reach young woman leads him to amass a huge fortune through bootlegging (the selling of alcoholic beverages, which had been made illegal by Prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). The object of Gatsby's blind devotion, Daisy Buchanan, is a shallow creature who has married the rich but insensitive Tom Buchanan. The couple has a young daughter. Meanwhile, Tom is involved with the wife of a mechanic whose shop is along the road to New York City.
The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carroway, a native of the Midwest and Daisy's cousin, who has rented a cottage near Gatsby's estate. Fitzgerald successfully employs this disillusioned but sensitive narrative voice to tell the story of Gatsby's downfall. He paints a vivid, detailed portrait of life in the Roaring Twenties, from the fancy parties attended by flappers and shady underworld characters to the ash heaps that exist just outside the glittering world of the wealthy.
Despite critical acclaim, the novel was not a popular success; it sold only twenty-five thousand copies in 1925. In fact,
The Great Gatsby would not attain its status as a classic of U.S. literature until after Fitzgerald's death.
A nomadic life and a new novel
The Fitzgeralds lived in Europe through 1926. During this period, Fitzgerald befriended Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), who was on his way to becoming one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century. Fitzgerald greatly admired Hemingway both for his literary talent and his bold, adventurous personality. Meanwhile, Zelda was starting to show some signs of mental disturbance as she searched for her own creative outlet, experimenting with painting, ballet, and eventually writing. Both Fitzgeralds were drinking heavily.
In 1926 Fitzgerald's short-story collection All the Sad Young Men appeared. One of the stories included was "Rich Boy," which explored some of the same themes as The Great Gatsby. This volume, however, actually sold more copies than the novel. That same year, the Fitzgeralds returned to the United States, spending a brief period in Hollywood, California (the center of the new, expanding film industry), where Fitzgerald worked as a screenwriter. Then they settled for two years in Delaware, with Fitzgerald supporting the family by writing short stories, mainly for the Saturday Evening Post. At this point he was earning as much as four thousand dollars per story.
The ever-nomadic Fitzgeralds returned to France in 1929. There Fitzgerald continued work on a novel that he had begun earlier, now incorporating details and characters drawn from the expatriate scene around him. As the 1930s began, Zelda's psychological problems finally resulted in a total breakdown. She spent a year and a half being treated in a Swiss sanitarium (a kind of hospital and rest home for chronically ill people), which would be the first of a long series of hospitalizations. From now on, Zelda's illness would exert not only emotional but also financial stress on Fitzgerald.
The Fitzgeralds returned to the United States in 1931. After a brief period of recovery, Zelda had another breakdown, brought on by the news of her father's death. She would never be well again. Despite the turmoil of his personal life, Fitzgerald continued to work, and two years later he published a third novel.
Tender is the Night is filled with much autobiographical material. It tells of the gradual disintegration of Dick Diver, a talented psychiatrist who has given up a promising career to marry and continue treating a young female patient, Nicole Warren (a character with many similarities to Zelda). Like the Fitzgeralds, the Divers and their three children live on the French Riviera, supported by Nicole's family wealth. As the novel progresses, the couple, whose past lives are chronicled in a section placed in the middle of the book, rather than in chronological order, grows increasingly troubled. Nicole has an affair with a French naval officer, and Diver falls in love with a young actress. The marriage ends, and Diver retreats to practice in a small town in the United States.
Some commentators interpreted Tender Is the Night as an indictment of the shallowness and excess of the Roaring Twenties. Others found it a more complex chronicle that highlights the loss of innocence experienced by those who came to adulthood during and just after World War I. In any case, the novel was published in the middle of the Great Depression (the period of economic downturn and hardship that lasted from the 1929 stock market crash until the beginning of World War II), and readers were not particularly interested in reading about the problems of the wealthy. Tender Is the Night received mixed critical reviews, but it was not popular with the public.
A faltering career
During the last decades of his life, pressed with the demands of paying for both Zelda's treatment and Scottie's college education, Fitzgerald continued to write and sell his short stories. He also accepted a position as a screenwriter at Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), one of the most successful of the Hollywood film production companies. Fitzgerald earned one thousand dollars per week, but he was not particularly successful. He felt that he was wasting his talent, and he was drinking heavily. The only bright spot was provided by his stable relationship with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham.
Fitzgerald did not entirely abandon his literary work, as he began a novel based on his experiences in the movie industry. The protagonist of this book, which Fitzgerald never finished, is Monroe Stahr, the powerful, self-made head of a Hollywood studio. Eventually published under the title The Last Tycoon (1941), the novel tells the story of Stahr's ill-fated romance with a young actress. Some critics believe that it would have been Fitzgerald's best work if he had lived to finish it. Instead, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. At the end of his life, he considered himself a failure, but he has since come to be recognized as one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.
In 1975, the bodies of both Fitzgeralds (Zelda died in 1948 in a mental hospital fire) were buried together in the cemetery of St. Mary's Church in Rockville, Maryland. The epitaph on their gravestone is the final sentence of The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
For More Information
Books
Bruccoli, Matthew. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Harcourt, 1981.
Bruccoli, Matthew, and Jackson R. Bryer, eds. F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Times: A Miscellany. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1971.
Lehan, Richard. The Great Gatsby: The Limits of Wonder. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Medlow, James R. Invented Lives: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
Web Sites
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. Available online at http://www.fitzgeraldsociety.org/. Accessed on June 22, 2005.
"A Brief Life of Fitzgerald." USC: F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Home Page. Available online at http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html. Accessed on June 22, 2005.
