Francis
Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)
from
"Fields of Vision by D.Delaney”
Life
Early years
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Minnesota into an upper-class family. He
attended Princeton
University but, due to
the outbreak of the First World War, he interrupted his studies and joined the
army.
Success, marriage and the high life After his discharge from the army he moved to New York City, where he started work on his
first novel. This Side of Paradise
was published in 1920 and was an immediate success. In 1921 he married his
fiancée Zelda, a young socialite from a wealthy background, and embarked with
her on a high life of big spending and party-going. To support such a lifestyle
Fitzgerald had to keep turning out large amounts of work, so he started writing
stories for popular papers. The appearance of his second novel, The Beautiful
and the Damned (1922), consolidated his fame as a brilliant writer.
Europe and "The Great Gatsby” In 1924 the couple moved to Europe and settled on the French Riviera. The following
year Fitzgerald published what is widely considered his finest novel, The Great Gatsby. However, the book was
not a commercial success and marked the beginning of the decline of the author’s
popularity.
Illness, debts and declining reputation For the next five years the Fitzgeralds traveled back and forth between
Europe and the United States.
Zelda suffered a series of nervous breakdowns and was hospitalized for much of
the rest of her life. In 1934 Fitzgerald published Tender is the Night which, although critically acclaimed, sold
badly. Frustrated and in serious debt, he started working as a scriptwriter for
a major movie studio in Hollywood.
He only completed one screenplay before being dismissed for alcohol abuse.
Final publications
Fitzgerald returned to writing short stories. In 1940, before completing his
final novel, The Last Tycoon (published in 1941), he died, at forty-four, of a
heart attack.
Works
A record of his life and times Fitzgerald was the author who best represented the historical decade in
America known as the "Roaring Twenties”, or the "Jazz Age”. He was not,
however, a detached observer of the period – he experienced it first hand and
was an expression of its aspirations, dreams and excesses. All his novels are autobiographical
to some degree. Tender is the Night (1934),
for example, tells the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients
and reflects the author’s experience as the husband of the mentally unstable
Zelda.
An American classic
Since its publication in 1925, The Great
Gatsby has become a major American classic. The story is set on Long
Island, where the Fitzgeralds rented a house in the 1920s. It is narrated by
Nick Carraway, a detached but curious observer who watches his wealthy neighbors
living a hedonistic, destructive and immoral life. It captures the spiritual
bankruptcy and material excesses of the time and questions the basic principles
of the American Dream.
Style Fitzgerald’s greatest
talent as a writer was his ability to create atmosphere and characters. His
rich, elegant prose style is dense in metaphors, similes, and symbols,
and often has the evocative beauty of poetry.
External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Fitzgerald
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