This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Page protected with pending changes

F. Scott Fitzgerald

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald in 1921
Fitzgerald in 1921
BornFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald
(1896-09-24)September 24, 1896
Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
DiedDecember 21, 1940(1940-12-21) (aged 44)
Hollywood, California, U.S.
Resting placeSaint Mary's Cemetery
Rockville, Maryland, U.S.
Years active1920–1940
Spouse
Zelda Sayre
(m. 1920)
ChildrenFrances Scott Fitzgerald
Signature

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, short story writer and screenwriter. He was best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four collections of short stories, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army amid World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he romanced Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.

His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now widely praised, with some literary critics labeling it as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).

Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works amid the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson completed and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death.

Life[]

Early life and education[]

Black-and-white photographic portrait of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his mother
Fitzgerald, unbreeched as a child in St. Paul, Minnesota

Born on September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to a middle-class family, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after his second cousin thrice removed, Francis Scott Key, but was always known as Scott Fitzgerald.[1] Fitzgerald was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott Fitzgerald, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth.[a][3] His father, Edward Fitzgerald, descended from Irish and English ancestry,[4] and moved to St. Paul from Maryland after the American Civil War.[5] His mother was Mary "Molly" McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had made his fortune in the wholesale grocery business.[6] Edward's first cousin twice removed, Mary Surratt, was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.[7]

Photograph of a two-story, front-gabled Italianate home the Fitzgeralds' Buffalo residence.
The Fitzgeralds' home in Buffalo, New York. The family never owned a house, only renting.[8]

Edward Fitzgerald had earlier worked as a wicker furniture salesman; when the business failed, he joined Procter & Gamble in Buffalo, New York.[9] Fitzgerald spent the first decade of his childhood primarily in Buffalo with a brief interlude in Syracuse between January 1901 and September 1903.[10] His parents, both Catholic, sent him to two Catholic schools on Buffalo's West Side—first Holy Angels Convent (1903–1904, now disused) and then Nardin Academy (1905–1908).[11] Fitzgerald's formative years revealed him a boy of unusual intelligence with a keen early interest in literature.[12] His mother's money supplemented the family income and enabled them to live in a comfortable lifestyle.[13] In a rather unconventional style of parenting, Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels with the arrangement that he go for only half a day—and be allowed to choose which half.[14]

In March 1908, Procter & Gamble fired his father, and the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy from 1908 to 1911.[15] At 13, Fitzgerald had his first work, a detective story, published in the school newspaper.[16] In 1911, Fitzgerald's parents sent him to the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey.[17] At Newman, Father Sigourney Fay recognized his literary potential and encouraged him to become a writer.[18] Mentored by Fay, Fitzgerald played on Newman's football team.[19] After graduating from Newman in 1913, Fitzgerald enrolled at Princeton University and became one of the few Catholics in the student body.[20] When he tried out for the football team, the coach rejected him on the first day of practice.[21]

At Princeton, Fitzgerald's classmates included future writers, critics, historians, and aviators such as Edmund Wilson, John Peale Bishop, George R. Stewart, and Elliott White Springs.[22] As the semesters passed, he formed close friendships with Wilson and Bishop, both of whom would later aid his literary career.[22] Fitzgerald wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club, the Princeton Tiger, and the Nassau Lit.[23] He became involved in the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, which ran the Nassau Lit.[24] Four of the University's eating clubs offered him membership at midyear, and he chose the University Cottage Club where its library still displays his desk and writing materials.[25]

Photograph of F. Scott Fitzgerald in his army uniform
Photographic portrait of Ginevra King
F. Scott Fitzgerald in his army uniform (left) and Chicago socialite Ginevra King (right)

Amid his sophomore year at Princeton, Fitzgerald returned home to Saint Paul during Christmas break.[26] At a winter sledding party on Summit Avenue,[27] the 19-year-old Fitzgerald met 16-year-old Chicago beauty and debutante Ginevra King with whom he fell deeply in love.[b][29][30] The couple began a romantic relationship that would span several years.[31] Obsessed, Fitzgerald inundated her with passionate love letters and insisted he would be devoted to her for the rest of his life.[32] She would become his literary model for the characters of Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise, Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, and many others.[33][34] While Fitzgerald attended Princeton, Ginevra attended Westover, a nearby Connecticut women's school.[35] He visited Ginevra at Westover until her abrupt expulsion for flirting with a crowd of young male admirers from her dormitory window.[36] Her immediate return to Lake Forest, Illinois, ended Fitzgerald's weekly courtship.[36]

Despite the great distance now separating them, Fitzgerald still attempted to pursue Ginevra, and he traveled across the country to visit her family's lavish estate at Lake Forest.[37] Although Ginevra loved him,[38] her upper-class family belittled Scott's courtship because of his lower-class status.[39] In contrast to Ginevra's other suitors, who were the wealthy scions of business executives, Fitzgerald's relative poverty precluded him as a match in her parents' eyes.[39] Her imperious father Charles Garfield King purportedly told a young Fitzgerald that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls".[40][41] When Ginevra ended the relationship in January 1917,[c] a distraught Fitzgerald requested she destroy his romantic letters professing his love.[43] Despite this demand, he never destroyed King's letters and, after his death in 1940, the letters were returned to King who kept them until her death.[44]

Rejected by Ginevra as a suitor and discouraged by his lack of success at Princeton, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I and received a commission as a second lieutenant.[45][46] While awaiting deployment to the Western front where he hoped to die in combat,[d][46] he was stationed in a training camp at Fort Leavenworth under the command of Captain Dwight Eisenhower, the future general of the Army and United States president.[48] Fitzgerald purportedly chafed under Eisenhower's authority and disliked him intensely.[49] Hoping to have a novel published before his anticipated death in Europe,[46] Fitzgerald hastily wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled The Romantic Egotist in three months.[50] When he submitted the manuscript to publishers, Scribners rejected it,[51] although the impressed reviewer, Max Perkins, praised Fitzgerald's writing and encouraged him to resubmit the novel after further revisions.[50]

Early struggles and meteoric success[]

See caption
A sketch of Zelda Sayre by artist Gordon Bryant published in Metropolitan Magazine

In June 1918, Fitzgerald was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Infantry Regiments at near Montgomery, Alabama.[52] Attempting to rebound from his rejection by Ginevra, a lonely Fitzgerald began dating a variety of young Montgomery women.[53] At a local country club, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and the youngest daughter of Alabama Supreme Court justice Anthony D. Sayre.[54] The affluent granddaughter of a Confederate senator whose extended family owned the White House of the Confederacy,[e][57] Zelda was one of the most celebrated debutantes of Montgomery's exclusive country club set.[58] Fitzgerald embarked upon a whirlwind courtship of Zelda, and a romance soon blossomed,[59] although he continued writing Ginevra, asking in vain if there was any chance of resuming their former relationship.[60] Three days after Ginevra married wealthy Chicago businessman William "Bill" Mitchell,[f] Fitzgerald professed his affections for Zelda in September 1918.[62]

Fitzgerald's sojourn in Montgomery was interrupted briefly in November 1918 when he was transferred northward to Camp Mills, Long Island.[63] While stationed there, the Allied Powers signed an armistice with Germany, and the war ended.[64] Dispatched back to the base near Montgomery to await discharge, he renewed his pursuit of Zelda.[65] During this period, Fitzgerald relied on Zelda for literary inspiration and plagiarized sentences from her diary while revising his first novel.[66] Together, Scott and Zelda engaged in what he later described as sexual recklessness, and by December 1918, they had consummated their relationship.[g][69] Although Fitzgerald did not initially intend to marry Zelda,[70] the couple gradually viewed themselves as informally engaged, although Zelda declined to marry him until he proved financially successful.[71][72]

Upon his discharge on February 14, 1919, he moved to New York City, where he unsuccessfully begged each of the city editors of various newspapers for a job.[73] He then turned to writing advertising copy to sustain himself while seeking a breakthrough as an author of fiction.[74] Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda frequently, and by March 1920, he had sent Zelda his mother's ring, and the two became officially engaged.[75] Several of Fitzgerald's friends opposed the match, as they deemed Zelda ill-suited for him.[76] Likewise, Zelda's Episcopalian family was wary of Scott because of his Catholic background, precarious finances, and excessive drinking.[77]

Attempting to make his fortune in New York, Fitzgerald worked for the Barron Collier advertising agency and lived in a single room at 200 Claremont Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood on Manhattan's west side.[78][73] Although he received a small raise for creating a catchy slogan, "We keep you clean in Muscatine", for an Iowa laundry,[79] Fitzgerald subsisted in relative poverty. Still aspiring to a lucrative career in literature, he wrote several short stories and satires in his spare time.[80] Rejected over 120 times, he sold only a single story, "Babes in the Woods", and received a pittance of $30.[81]

Cover of Fitzgerald's 1920 novel, This Side of Paradise
Cover of The Saturday Evening Post for Fitzgerald's story, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"
Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side of Paradise (left) became a cultural sensation in the United States. Soon after, The Saturday Evening Post published his short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (right).

With his dreams of a lucrative career in New York City dashed, he could not convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement in June 1919.[82] In the wake of Fitzgerald's earlier rejection by Ginevra two years prior, his subsequent rejection by Zelda greatly dispirited him.[83] While Prohibition-era New York City was experiencing the birth pangs of the raucous Jazz Age, Fitzgerald felt defeated and rudderless: two women had rejected him in succession; he detested his advertising job;[h] his short stories failed to sell; he couldn't afford new clothes, and his overall future seemed bleak.[85] Unable to earn a successful living, Fitzgerald publicly threatened to jump to his death from a window ledge of the Yale Club,[i][87] and he carried a revolver daily while contemplating suicide.[86]

In July, Fitzgerald quit his advertising job in New York and returned to St. Paul.[88] Having returned to his hometown as a failure, Fitzgerald became a social recluse and lived on the top floor of his parents' home at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill.[89] He decided to make one last attempt to become a novelist and to stake everything on the success or failure of a book.[88] Abstaining from alcohol and parties,[89] he worked day and night to revise The Romantic Egotist as This Side of Paradise—an autobiographical account of his Princeton years and his romances with Ginevra, Zelda, and others.[90]

Scribner's accepted his revised manuscript in the fall of 1919, and the novel appeared in bookstores on March 26, 1920. An instant success, This Side of Paradise sold 41,075 copies in the first year.[91] Within months of its publication, his debut novel became a cultural sensation in the United States, and F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name.[92] Critics such as H. L. Mencken hailed the work as the best American novel of the year,[93] and newspaper columnists described the work as the first realistic American college novel.[94] The work catapulted Fitzgerald's career as a writer. Magazines now accepted his previously rejected stories, and The Saturday Evening Post published his story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" with his name on its May 1920 cover.[95]

Following this financial success, Zelda resumed their engagement as Fitzgerald could now pay for her accustomed lifestyle.[j][99] 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".[89] Despite mutual reservations,[100][101] they married in a simple ceremony on April 3, 1920, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.[102] At the time of their wedding, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other,[100] and the early years of their marriage were more akin to a friendship.[101][103]

New York and the Jazz Age[]

It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald in "Echoes of the Jazz Age"[104]

Living in luxury at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City,[105] the newlywed couple became celebrities, as much for their wild behavior as for the success of Fitzgerald's debut novel. At the Biltmore, Scott did handstands in the lobby,[106] while Zelda slid down the hotel banisters.[107] After several weeks, the hotel asked them to leave for disturbing other guests.[106] The couple relocated two blocks to the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street where they spent half-an-hour spinning in the revolving door.[108] One day, on a whim, they jumped into a water fountain at Union Square while sober.[109] Fitzgerald likened their juvenile behavior in New York City to two "small children in a great bright unexplored barn".[110] Writer Dorothy Parker first encountered the couple riding on the roof of a taxi.[111] "They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun", Parker recalled, "their youth was striking. Everyone wanted to meet him".[111]

As Fitzgerald was one of the most celebrated novelists during the Jazz Age, many admirers sought his acquaintanceship. He met journalist Rebecca West,[112] playwright Zoe Akins,[112] cartoonist Rube Goldberg,[113] actress Laurette Taylor,[113] actor Lew Fields,[114] comedian Ed Wynn,[114] and many others.[115] He became close friends with critics George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken, the influential co-editors of The Smart Set magazine who led an ongoing cultural war against puritanism in American arts.[116] At the peak of his commercial success and cultural salience, Fitzgerald recalled travelling in a taxi one afternoon in New York City and weeping when he realized he that he would never be as happy again.[110]

A photograph of Fitzgerald in 1923
Cover of Fitzgerald's 1922 novel, The Beautiful and Damned
Fitzgerald in 1923, and the dust jacket of his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Fitzgerald's ephemeral happiness mirrored the societal giddiness of the Jazz Age, a term which he popularized in his essays and stories.[117] He described the era as racing "along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money".[118] In Fitzgerald's eyes, the era represented a morally permissive time when Americans became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and obsessed with self-gratification.[119] During this hedonistic period, alcohol increasingly fueled the Fitzgeralds' social life.[120] At every outing, the couple consumed gin-and-fruit concoctions.[106] Publicly, their alcohol intake meant little more than napping at parties, but privately it led to bitter quarrels.[120]

As their quarrels worsened, the couple remarked to friends that their marriage would not last much longer.[121] Amid these arguments, Zelda accused Fitzgerald of extramarital relations with Tallulah Bankhead, while Scott viewed her dalliances at parties with mounting suspicion.[122] The dissipated couple soon became viewed as the epitome of Jazz Age excess, with journalist Ring Lardner Jr. labeling them "the prince and princess of their generation".[123] After their eviction from the Commodore Hotel in May 1920, the couple spent the summer in a cottage on the shore of Westport, Connecticut, within sight of Long Island Sound.[106]

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.[124] On October 26, 1921, Zelda gave birth to their daughter and only child Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald.[125] As she emerged from the anesthesia, he recorded Zelda saying, "Oh, God, goofo [sic] I'm drunk. Mark Twain. Isn't she smart—she has the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool".[126] Fitzgerald later used some of her rambling almost verbatim for Daisy Buchanan's dialogue in The Great Gatsby.[126]

After his daughter's birth, Fitzgerald returned to drafting The Beautiful and Damned. The novel's plot follows a young artist and his wife who become dissipated and bankrupt while partying in New York City.[127] He modeled the characters of Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Patch on—in his words—the chill-mindedness and selfishness of Zelda.[128] Metropolitan Magazine serialized the manuscript in late 1921, and Scribner's published the book in March 1922. Scribner's prepared an initial print run of 20,000 copies and mounted an advertising campaign. It sold well enough to warrant additional print runs reaching 50,000 copies.[129] That year, Fitzgerald released an anthology of eleven stories entitled Tales of the Jazz Age. He had written all but two of the stories before 1920.[130]

Fitzgerald's stage play "The Vegetable" was an unmitigated disaster and greatly hurt his finances.

Following Fitzgerald's adaptation of his story "The Vegetable" into a play, in October 1922, he and Zelda moved to Great Neck, Long Island, to be near Broadway.[131] Although he hoped The Vegetable would inaugurate a lucrative career as a playwright, the play's November 1923 premiere was an unmitigated disaster.[132] The bored audience walked out during the second act.[132] Fitzgerald wished to halt the show and disavow the production.[132] During an intermission, Fitzgerald asked lead actor Ernest Truex if he planned to finish the performance.[133] When Truex replied in the affirmative, Fitzgerald fled to the nearest bar.[133] Mired in debt by the play's failure, Fitzgerald wrote short stories to restore his finances.[134] Fitzgerald viewed his stories as worthless except for "Winter Dreams", which he described as his first attempt at the Gatsby idea.[135] When not writing, Fitzgerald and his wife continued to socialize and drink at Long Island parties.[136]

Despite enjoying the exclusive Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald disapproved of the extravagant parties,[137] and the wealthy people he encountered often disappointed him.[138] While striving to emulate the rich, he found their privileged lifestyle morally disquieting.[139][140] Although Fitzgerald admired the rich, he possessed a smoldering resentment towards them.[140] While the couple were living on Long Island, one of Fitzgerald's wealthier neighbors was Max Gerlach.[k][141][145] Purportedly born in America to a German immigrant family,[l] Gerlach had been a major in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I and became a gentleman bootlegger who lived like a millionaire in New York.[147] Flaunting his new wealth,[m] Gerlach threw lavish parties,[149] never wore the same shirt twice,[150] used the phrase "old sport",[151] and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser.[152] These details would inspire Fitzgerald in creating his next work, The Great Gatsby.[153]

Europe and the Lost Generation[]

Dust jacket of The Great Gatsvy. Cover illustration by Francis Cugat (1893–1981).
In Europe, Fitzgerald wrote and published The Great Gatsby (1925), now viewed by many as his magnum opus.

In May 1924, Fitzgerald and his family moved abroad to Europe.[154] He continued writing his third novel, which would eventually become his magnum opus The Great Gatsby.[155] Fitzgerald had been planning the novel since 1923, when he told his publisher Maxwell Perkins of his plans to embark upon a work of art that would be beautiful and intricately patterned.[156] He had already written 18,000 words for his novel by mid-1923 but discarded most of his new story as a false start.[157] Initially titled Trimalchio—an allusion to the Latin work Satyricon—the plot followed the rise of a parvenu who seeks wealth to win the woman he loves.[157] For source material, Fitzgerald drew heavily on his experiences on Long Island and once again on his lifelong obsession with his first love Ginevra King.[158] "The whole idea of Gatsby", he later explained, "is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money.[c] This theme comes up again and again because I lived it".[159]

Work on The Great Gatsby slowed while the Fitzgeralds sojourned on the French Riviera, where a marital crisis developed.[160] Zelda became infatuated with a French naval aviator, Edouard Jozan.[160] She spent afternoons swimming at the beach and evenings dancing at the casinos with him. After six weeks, Zelda asked for a divorce.[161] Fitzgerald sought to confront Jozan and locked Zelda in their house until he could do so.[161] Before any confrontation could occur, Jozan—who had no intention of marrying Zelda—left the Riviera, and the Fitzgeralds never saw him again.[161] Soon after, Zelda overdosed on sleeping pills.[162] The couple never spoke of the incident,[163] but the episode led to a permanent breach in their marriage.[164] 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".[165][166]

Following this incident, the Fitzgeralds relocated to Rome,[167] where he made revisions to the Gatsby manuscript throughout the winter and submitted the final version in February 1925.[168] Fitzgerald declined a $10,000 offer for the serial rights, as it would delay the book's publication.[169] Upon its release on April 10, 1925, Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Wharton praised Fitzgerald's work,[170] and the novel received generally favorable reviews from contemporary literary critics.[171] Despite this reception, Gatsby became a commercial failure compared to his previous efforts, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922).[91] By the end of the year, the book had sold fewer than 23,000 copies.[91] For the rest of his life, The Great Gatsby experienced tepid sales.[n] It would take decades for the novel to gain its present acclaim and popularity.[156]

Ernest Hemingway's passport photograph
Photographic portrait of Gertrude Stein
In France, Fitzgerald became close friends with writers Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

After wintering in Italy, the Fitzgeralds returned to France, where they would alternate between Paris and the French Riviera until 1926. Fitzgerald began writing his fourth novel, provisionally titled The Boy Who Killed His Mother,[175] Our Type,[176] and then The World's Fair.[177] During this period, he became friends with writer Gertrude Stein, bookseller Sylvia Beach, novelist James Joyce, poet Ezra Pound and other members of the American expatriate community in Paris,[178] some of whom would later be identified with the Lost Generation.[179] Most notable among them was a relatively unknown Ernest Hemingway, whom Fitzgerald first met in May 1925 and grew to admire.[180] Hemingway later recalled that, during this early period of their relationship, Fitzgerald became his most loyal friend.[181]

In contrast to his friendship with Scott, Hemingway disliked Zelda and described her as "insane" in his memoir, A Moveable Feast.[o][182] Hemingway claimed that Zelda "encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract Fitzgerald from his work on his novel".[183] She preferred him to work on short stories he sold to magazines to help support her accustomed lifestyle.[j][184] Like many novelists at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing stories for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire.[185] He would first write his stories in an 'authentic' manner, then rewrite them to add plot twists which increased their salability as magazine stories.[186] This "whoring", as Hemingway called these sales, emerged as a sore point in their friendship.[187] Upon reading The Great Gatsby, an impressed Hemingway vowed to put any differences with Fitzgerald aside and to aid him in any way he could, although he feared Zelda would derail Fitzgerald's writing career.[188]

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway claimed Zelda sought to destroy her husband, and she purportedly taunted Fitzgerald over the penis' size.[189] After examining it in a public restroom, Hemingway confirmed Fitzgerald's penis to be of average size.[189] A more serious rift soon occurred when Zelda belittled Fitzerald with homophobic slurs and accused him of engaging in a homosexual relationship with Hemingway.[190] Fitzgerald decided to have sex with a prostitute to prove his heterosexuality.[191] Zelda found condoms he had purchased before any encounter occurred, and a bitter quarrel ensued, resulting in lingering jealousy.[191] Soon after, Zelda threw herself down a flight of marble stairs at a party because Fitzgerald, engrossed in talking to Isadora Duncan, ignored her.[192] In December 1926, after two unpleasant years in Europe which considerably strained their marriage, the Fitzgeralds returned to America.[193]

Sojourn in Hollywood and Zelda's illness[]

Photograph of Lois Moran
Fitzgerald's relations with Lois Moran further strained his relationship with Zelda.

In 1926, film producer John W. Considine Jr. invited Fitzgerald to Hollywood during its golden age to write a flapper comedy for United Artists.[194] He agreed and moved into a studio-owned bungalow with Zelda in January 1927.[194] In Hollywood, the Fitzgeralds attended parties where they danced the black bottom and mingled with film stars.[195] At one party they outraged guests Ronald Colman and Constance Talmadge by a prank: They requested their watches and, retreating into the kitchen, boiled the expensive timepieces in a pot of tomato sauce.[196] The Hollywood life's novelty quickly faded for the Fitzgeralds, and Zelda frequently complained of boredom.[195]

While attending a lavish party at the Pickfair estate, Fitzgerald met 17-year-old Lois Moran, a starlet who had gained widespread fame for her role in Stella Dallas (1925).[197] Desperate for intellectual conversation, Moran and Fitzgerald discussed literature and philosophy for hours while sitting on a staircase.[198] Despite being past his prime, a smitten Moran regarded the 31-year-old Fitzgerald as a sophisticated, handsome, and gifted writer.[199] Consequently, she pursued a relationship with him.[198] The starlet became a muse for the author, and he wrote her into a short story called "Magnetism", in which a young Hollywood film starlet causes a married writer to waver in his sexual devotion to his wife.[195] Fitzgerald later rewrote Rosemary Hoyt—one of the central characters in Tender is the Night—to mirror Moran.[200]

Jealous of Fitzgerald and Moran, an irate Zelda set fire to her own expensive clothing in a bathtub as a self-destructive act.[92] She disparaged the teenage Moran as "a breakfast food that many men identified with whatever they missed from life".[201] 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.[202]

They rented "Ellerslie", a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware, until 1929.[203] Fitzgerald returned to his fourth novel but proved unable to make any progress due to his alcoholism and poor work ethic.[204] In Spring 1929, the couple returned to Europe.[205] That winter, Zelda's behavior grew increasingly erratic and violent.[206] During an automobile trip to Paris along the mountainous roads of the Grande Corniche, Zelda seized the car's steering wheel and tried to kill herself, Fitzgerald, and their 9-year-old daughter by driving over a cliff.[207] Following this homicidal incident, doctors diagnosed Zelda with schizophrenia in June 1930.[208] The couple traveled to Switzerland, where she underwent treatment at a clinic.[208] They returned to America in September 1931.[209] In February 1932, she underwent hospitalization at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.[210]

Photographic portrait of H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken believed Fitzgerald's career as a novelist was in jeopardy due to his wife's mental illness.

In April 1932, when the psychiatric clinic allowed Zelda to travel with her husband, Fitzgerald took her to lunch with critic H. L. Mencken, now the literary editor of The American Mercury.[211] In his private diary, Mencken noted Zelda "went insane in Paris a year or so ago, and is still plainly more or less off her base".[211] Throughout the luncheon, she manifested signs of mental distress.[211] A year later, when Mencken met Zelda for the last time, he described her mental illness as immediately evident to any onlooker and her mind as "only half sane".[212] He regretted Fitzgerald could not write novels, as he had to write magazine stories to pay for Zelda's psychiatric treatment.[211]

During this time, Fitzgerald rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland, and worked on his next novel, which drew heavily on recent experiences.[213] The story concerned a promising young American named Dick Diver who marries a mentally ill young woman; their marriage deteriorates while they are abroad in Europe.[213] While Fitzgerald labored on his novel, Zelda wrote—and sent to Scribner's—her own fictionalized version of these same autobiographical events in Save Me the Waltz (1932).[214] Piqued by what he saw as theft of his novel's plot material, Fitzgerald would later describe Zelda as a plagiarist and a third-rate writer.[p][216] Despite his annoyance, he insisted upon few revisions to the work,[q] and he persuaded Perkins to publish Zelda's novel.[r][219] Scribner's published Zelda's novel in October 1932, but it was a commercial and critical failure.[220]

Fitzgerald's own novel debuted in April 1934 as Tender Is the Night and received mixed reviews.[221] Its structure threw off many critics who felt Fitzgerald had not lived up to their expectations.[222] Hemingway and others argued that such criticism stemmed from superficial readings of the material and from Depression-era America's reaction to Fitzgerald's status as a symbol of Jazz Age excess.[223] The novel did not sell well upon publication, with approximately 12,000 sold in the first three months,[224] but, like The Great Gatsby, the book's reputation has since risen significantly.[225]

Great Depression and decline[]

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Ernest Hemingway on Fitzgerald's loss of talent in A Moveable Feast (1964)[226]

Amid the Great Depression, Fitzgerald's works were deemed elitist and materialistic.[227] In 1933, journalist Matthew Josephson criticized Fitzgerald's short stories saying that many Americans could no longer afford to drink champagne whenever they pleased or to go on vacation to Montparnasse in Paris.[227] As writer Budd Schulberg recalled, "my generation thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald as an age rather than a writer, and when the economic stroke of 1929 began to change the sheiks[s] and flappers into unemployed boys or underpaid girls, we consciously and a little belligerently turned our backs on Fitzgerald".[230]

With his popularity greatly decreased, Fitzgerald began to suffer financially and, by 1936, his book royalties amounted to $80.[231] The cost of his opulent lifestyle and Zelda's medical bills quickly caught up, placing him in constant debt. He relied on loans from his agent, Harold Ober, and publisher Perkins.[232] When Ober ceased advancing money, an ashamed Fitzgerald severed ties with his agent believing Ober had lost faith in him due to his alcoholism.[t][234]

As he had been an alcoholic since college, Fitzgerald's extraordinarily heavy drinking undermined his health by the late 1930s. His alcoholism resulted in cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, angina, dyspnea, and syncopal spells.[235] According to biographer Nancy Milford, Fitzgerald's claims of having tuberculosis (TB) served as a pretext to cover his drinking ailments.[236] Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring TB.[237] A biographer, Arthur Mizener, notes Fitzgerald suffered a mild attack of TB in 1919, and conclusively had a tubercular hemorrhage in 1929.[238] In the 1930s, as his health deteriorated, Fitzgerald had told Hemingway of his fear of dying from congested lungs.[239]

Fitzgerald's deteriorating health, chronic alcoholism, and financial woes made for difficult years in Baltimore. Hospitalized nine times at Johns Hopkins Hospital, his friend H. L. Mencken wrote in a June 1934 diary entry that "the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance. His wife, Zelda, who has been insane for years, is now confined at the Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, and he is living in Park Avenue with his little daughter, Scottie".[240] By 1935, alcoholism disrupted Fitzgerald's writing and limited his mental acuity.[241] From 1933 to 1937, he was hospitalized for alcoholism eight times.[235] In September 1936, journalist Michel Mok of the New York Post publicly reported Fitzgerald's alcoholism and career failure in a nationally syndicated article.[242] The article damaged Fitzgerald's reputation and prompted him to attempt suicide after reading it.[243]

By that same year, Zelda's intense suicidal mania necessitated her extended confinement at the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.[244] Nearly bankrupt, Fitzgerald spent most of 1936 and 1937 living in cheap hotels near Asheville.[245] His attempts to write and sell more short stories faltered.[246] He later referred to this period of decline in his life as "The Crack-Up" in a short story.[247] Shortly after the release of this story, Hemingway publicly referred to Fitzgerald's decline in his short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro".[248] The sudden death of Fitzgerald's mother and Zelda's mental deterioration led to his marriage further disintegrating.[249] He saw Zelda for the last time on a 1939 trip to Cuba.[231] During this trip, spectators at a cockfight beat Fitzgerald when he tried to intervene against animal cruelty.[250] He returned to the United States and—his ill-health exacerbated by excessive drinking—underwent hospitalization at the Doctors Hospital in Manhattan.[250]

Return to Hollywood[]

Photograph of Fitzgerald holding a cigarette.
A middle-aged Fitzgerald with a cigarette in 1937, three years before his death

Fitzgerald's dire financial straits compelled him to accept a lucrative contract as a screenwriter with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1937 that necessitated his relocation to Hollywood.[251][252] Despite earning his highest annual income up to that point ($29,757.87, equivalent to $535,711 in 2020),[251] Fitzgerald spent the bulk of his income on Zelda's psychiatric treatment and his daughter Scottie's expenses at Vassar College.[253] During the next two years, Fitzgerald rented a cheap room at the Garden of Allah bungalow on Sunset Boulevard. In an effort to abstain from alcohol, Fitzgerald drank large amounts of Coca-Cola and ate many sweets.[254]

Estranged from Zelda, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with his first love Ginevra King when the wealthy Chicago heiress visited Hollywood in 1938.[255] "She was the first girl I ever loved and I have faithfully avoided seeing her up to this moment to keep the illusion perfect", Fitzgerald informed his daughter Scottie, shortly before the planned meeting.[28] The reunion proved a disaster due to Fitzgerald's uncontrollable alcoholism, and a disappointed Ginevra returned east to Chicago.[255]

Soon after, a lonely Fitzgerald began a relationship with nationally syndicated gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death.[256] After a heart-attack in Schwab's Drug Store, a doctor ordered Fitzgerald to avoid strenuous exertion. Fitzgerald had to climb two flights of stairs to his apartment, while Graham lived on the ground floor.[257] 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.[258]

Throughout their relationship, Graham claimed Fitzgerald suffered from constant guilt over Zelda's mental illness and confinement.[259] He repeatedly attempted sobriety, suffered from depression, had violent outbursts, and attempted suicide.[260] On occasions that Fitzgerald failed his attempt at sobriety,[u] he would ask strangers, "I'm F. Scott Fitzgerald. You've read my books. You've read The Great Gatsby, haven't you? Remember?"[262] As Graham had read none of his works, Fitzgerald attempted to buy her a set of his novels.[263] After visiting several bookstores, he realized they had stopped carrying his works.[263] The realization that he was largely forgotten as an author further depressed him.[264][265]

During this last phase of his career, Fitzgerald's screenwriting tasks included revisions on Madame Curie (1943) and an unused dialogue polish for Gone with the Wind (1939)—a book which Fitzgerald disparaged as "unoriginal" and an "old wives' tale".[266] Both assignments went uncredited.[266] His work on Three Comrades (1938) became his sole screenplay credit.[266] To the studio's annoyance, Fitzgerald ignored scriptwriting rules and included descriptions more fitting for a novel.[267] In his spare time, he worked on his fifth novel, The Last Tycoon,[v] based on film executive Irving Thalberg.[268] In 1939, MGM terminated his contract, and Fitzgerald became a freelance screenwriter.[269] During his work on Winter Carnival (1939), Fitzgerald suffered an alcoholic relapse and sought treatment by New York psychiatrist Richard Hoffmann.[270]

Director Billy Wilder described Fitzgerald's foray into Hollywood as like that of "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job".[271] Edmund Wilson and Aaron Latham suggested Hollywood sucked Fitzgerald's creativity like a vampire.[267] His failure in Hollywood pushed him to return to drinking, and he drank nearly 40 beers a day in 1939.[235] Beginning that year, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories. Esquire originally published the Pat Hobby Stories between January 1940 and July 1941.[272] Approaching the final year of life, Fitzgerald wrote regretfully to his daughter: "I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked back—but said at the end of The Great Gatsby: I've found my line—from now on this comes first. This is my immediate duty—without this I am nothing".[156]

Final year and death[]

Photograph of the grave of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Rockville, Maryland. The quote on the headstone is the final line of The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past".
The Fitzgeralds' current grave at St. Mary's in Maryland, inscribed with the final sentence of The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald achieved sobriety over a year before his death, and Graham described their last year together as one of the happiest times of their relationship.[273] On the night of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love.[274] As the couple left the Pantages Theatre, a sober Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had difficulty walking to his vehicle.[274] Watched by onlookers, he remarked in a strained voice to Graham, "I suppose people will think I'm drunk".[274]

The following day, as Fitzgerald ate a candy bar and annotated his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly,[275] Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, and collapse on the floor without uttering a sound.[275] Lying flat on his back, he gasped and lapsed into unconsciousness.[275] After failed efforts to revive him, Graham ran to fetch Harry Culver, the building's manager.[275] Upon entering the apartment, Culver stated, "I'm afraid he's dead".[275] Fitzgerald had died of occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis, aged just 44.[276]

On learning of her father's death, Scottie telephoned Graham from Vassar and asked she not attend the funeral for social propriety.[277] After agreeing not to attend the funeral and hanging up, Graham sobbed and told herself that, if Scott were alive, "he, too, would have said to me, Sheilo [sic], you cannot come to my funeral".[278] In her place, Graham's friend Dorothy Parker attended the visitation held in the back room of an undertaker's parlor.[279] Observing few other people at the visitation, Parker murmured "the poor son of a bitch"—a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in The Great Gatsby.[279] When Fitzgerald's poorly-embalmed corpse arrived in Bethesda, Maryland, only thirty people attended his funeral.[w][281] Among the attendees were his only child, Scottie, his agent Harold Ober, and his lifelong editor Maxwell Perkins.[282]

Zelda eulogized Fitzgerald in a letter to a friend: "He was as spiritually generous a soul as ever was... It seems as if he was always planning happiness for Scottie and for me. Books to read—places to go. Life seemed so promising always when he was around. ... Scott was the best friend a person could have to me".[283] At the time of his death, the Roman Catholic Church denied the family's request that Fitzgerald, a non-practicing Catholic, be buried in the family plot in the Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. Fitzgerald was buried instead with a simple Protestant service at Rockville Union Cemetery.[284] When Zelda died in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in 1948, she was buried next to him at Rockville Union.[285] In 1975, Scottie successfully petitioned to have the earlier decision revisited, and her parents' remains were moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's.[286]

Influence and legacy[]

Critical reevaluation[]

It has been the greatest credo in my life that I would rather be an artist than a careerist. I would rather impress my image upon the soul of a people.... I would as soon be as anonymous as Rimbaud if I could feel that I had accomplished that purpose.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald[287]

At the time of his death, Fitzgerald believed his life a failure and that his work was forgotten.[288] The few critics who were familiar with his work regarded him as a failed alcoholic—the embodiment of Jazz Age decadence.[289] His New York Times obituary hailed him as a brilliant novelist but deemed his work forever tied to an era "when gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession".[290] As late as 1941, his works were still regarded as period pieces with English literary historian Peter Quennell dismissing The Great Gatsby as having "the sadness and the remote jauntiness of a Gershwin tune".[156]

Fitzgerald died before he could complete his fifth novel. His friend, literary critic Edmund Wilson, completed the manuscript using Fitzgerald's extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel's story.[291] When Wilson published his finished version entitled The Last Tycoon in 1941,[v] he included The Great Gatsby within the edition, sparking new interest and discussion among critics.[156] Amid World War II, The Great Gatsby gained further popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free Armed Services Edition copies to American soldiers serving overseas. The Red Cross distributed the novel to prisoners in Japanese and German POW camps.[8] By 1945, over 123,000 copies of The Great Gatsby had been distributed among U.S. troops.[8] By 1960—thirty-five years after the novel's original publication—the book was selling 100,000 copies per year.[293] This renewed interest led The New York Times editorialist Arthur Mizener to proclaim the novel a masterwork of American literature.[156]

By the 21st century, The Great Gatsby had sold millions of copies, and the novel is required reading in many high school and college classes.[288] Despite its publication over a century ago, the work continues to be cited by scholars as relevant to understanding contemporary America.[294] According to Professor John Kuehl of New York University: "If you want to know about Spain, you read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. If you want to know about the South, you read Faulkner. If you want to know what America's like, you read The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald is the quintessential American writer".[294]

Posthumous renown[]

Admirers of Fitzgerald's work often deposit mementos at his gravesite.
Admirers of Fitzgerald's work often deposit mementos at his gravesite.

The Great Gatsby's popularity led to widespread interest in Fitzgerald himself.[295] By the 1950s, he had become a cult figure in American culture and was more widely known than at any period during his lifetime.[295] In 1952, critic Cyril Connolly observed that "apart from his increasing stature as writer, Fitzgerald is now firmly established as a myth, an American version of the Dying God, an Adonis of letters" whose rise and fall inevitably prompts comparisons to the Jazz Age itself.[296]

Seven years later, Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson remarked that he now received copious letters from female admirers of Fitzgerald's works and that his flawed alcoholic friend had posthumously become "a semi-divine personage" in the popular imagination.[296] Echoing these opinions, writer Adam Gopnik asserted that—contrary to Fitzgerald's claim that "there are no second acts in American lives"—Fitzgerald became "not a poignant footnote to an ill-named time but an enduring legend of the West".[297]

Decades after his death, Fitzgerald's childhood Summit Terrace home in St. Paul became a National Historic Landmark in 1971.[298] Fitzgerald detested the house and deemed it to be an architectural monstrosity.[299] In 1990, Hofstra University established the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, which later became an affiliate of the American Literature Association.[294] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the society organized an online reading of This Side of Paradise to mark its centenary.[300] In 1994, the World Theater in St. Paul—home of the radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion—was renamed the Fitzgerald Theater.[301]

Literary influence[]

Photograph of poet T.S. Eliot by Ottoline Morrell
Photograph of writer John O'Hara
Poet T. S. Eliot claimed Fitzgerald single-handedly altered American fiction, and writer John O'Hara stated Fitzgerald influenced his work.

As one of the leading authorial voices of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald's literary style influenced a number of contemporary and future writers.[302] Similar to Edith Wharton and Henry James, Fitzgerald's style often used a series of disconnected scenes to convey plot developments.[303] His lifelong editor Max Perkins described this particular technique as creating the impression for the reader of a railroad journey in which the vividness of passing scenes blaze with life.[304] In the style of Joseph Conrad, Fitzgerald often employed a narrator's device to unify these passing scenes and imbue them with deeper meaning.[303]

Fitzgerald's literary output was not without its critics. Fitzgerald's close friend and literary critic Edmund Wilson believed that Fitzgerald was a gifted writer with a vivid imagination who did not have any intellectual ideas to express.[305] Wilson argued that Fitzgerald's early works such as This Side of Paradise suffer from the defects that they are meaningless and lacked intellectual substance.[305] Likewise, H. L. Mencken concurred that Fitzgerald's literary output lacked any engagement with the issues of his day.[306] Mencken nevertheless praised Fitzgerald for maturing as a writer with each work—a development which for most authors usually occurred in the opposite direction.[306] By the time that Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, both Wilson and Mencken believed Fitzgerald had become a masterful writer and his literary works more thematically unified.[307]

Gatsby remains Fitzgerald's most influential literary work as an author. The publication of The Great Gatsby prompted poet T. S. Eliot to opine that the novel was the most significant evolution in American fiction since the works of Henry James.[308] Charles Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, wrote that Gatsby was the only flawless novel in the history of American literature.[309] Later authors Budd Schulberg and Edward Newhouse were deeply affected by it, and John O'Hara acknowledged its influence on his work.[310] Richard Yates, a writer often compared to Fitzgerald, hailed The Great Gatsby as showcasing Fitzgerald's miraculous talent and triumphal literary technique.[311] Donald J. Adams, a columnist for The New York Times, remarked upon the tremendous influence of Fitzgerald upon his contemporaries: "In the literary sense he invented a generation ... He might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction".[312]

Adaptations and portrayals[]

Poster for one of the first cinematic adaptations of Fitzgerald's work—the 1921 silent film The Off-Shore Pirate
The 1921 silent film The Off-Shore Pirate was among the first cinematic adaptations of Fitzgerald's works.

Fitzgerald's stories and novels have been adapted into a variety of media formats. His earliest short stories were cinematically adapted as flapper comedies such as The Husband Hunter (1920), The Chorus Girl's Romance (1920), and The Off-Shore Pirate (1921).[313] Other Fitzgerald short stories have been adapted into episodes of anthology television series,[314] as well as the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.[315] Nearly every novel by Fitzgerald has been adapted for the screen. His second novel The Beautiful and Damned was filmed in 1922 and 2010.[316] His third novel The Great Gatsby has been adapted numerous times for both film and television, most notably in 1926, 1949, 1958, 1974, 2000, and 2013.[317] His fourth novel Tender Is the Night was made into a 1955 CBS television episode, an eponymous 1962 film, and a BBC television miniseries in 1985.[318] The Last Tycoon has been adapted into a 1976 film,[319] and a 2016 Amazon Prime TV miniseries.[320]

Beyond adaptations of his novels and stories, Fitzgerald himself has been portrayed in dozens of books, plays, and films. He inspired Budd Schulberg's novel The Disenchanted (1950),[297] later adapted into a Broadway play starring Jason Robards.[321] Other theatrical productions of Fitzgerald's life include Frank Wildhorn's 2005 musical Waiting for the Moon,[322] and a musical produced by the Japanese Takarazuka Revue.[323] Fitzgerald's relationships with Sheilah Graham and Frances Kroll Ring respectively served as the basis for the films Beloved Infidel (1959) and Last Call (2002).[256][324]

Lost manuscripts[]

In 2004, the University of South Carolina purchased a cache of 2,000 pages of screenplay work that Fitzgerald wrote for MGM.[325] The cache corrects the view of Fitzgerald's screenwriting years in Hollywood as unproductive and indicates he put in considerable effort to earn his salary.[325][clarification needed]

In 2015, The Strand Magazine published an 8,000-word lost manuscript by Fitzgerald entitled "Temperature", dated July 1939.[326] Long thought lost, the manuscript was found by a researcher in Princeton's archives.[326] The story recounts the illness and decline of an alcoholic writer among Hollywood idols in Los Angeles, while suffering lingering fevers and indulging in light-hearted romance with a Hollywood actress.[326] Two years later, Scribner's published a rediscovered cache of Fitzgerald's short stories in a collection titled I'd Die For You.[327]

Selected works[]

A mural depicting Fitzgerald in Saint Paul, Minnesota
A mural depicting Fitzgerald in Saint Paul, Minnesota

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ Fitzgerald discussed his siblings' deaths in his short story "Auction House". He wrote: "Three months before I was born, my mother lost her other two children ... I think I started then to be a writer".[2]
  2. ^ According to friends, "Fitzgerald was so smitten by King that for years he could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes".[28]
  3. ^ a b As a parting gift before their relationship ended, Ginevra King wrote a Gatsby-like short story which she sent to Fitzgerald.[42] In her story, she is trapped in a loveless marriage and still pines for Fitzgerald. They are reunited only after Fitzgerald has attained enough money to take her away from her husband.[42] Fitzgerald kept Ginevra's story with him until his death.[42]
  4. ^ Fitzgerald would later regret not serving in combat during World War I, as detailed in his short story "I Didn't Get Over" (1936).[47]
  5. ^ Zelda's grandfather, Willis B. Machen, served in the Confederate Congress.[55] Her father's uncle was John Tyler Morgan, a Confederate general in the American Civil War and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.[56] According to biographer Nancy Milford, "if there was a Confederate establishment in the Deep South, Zelda Sayre came from the heart of it".[55]
  6. ^ Ginevra King married William "Bill" Mitchell on September 4, 1918.[61] Three days later, Fitzgerald declared his love for Zelda on September 7, 1918.[62]
  7. ^ Both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre had other sexual partners prior to their first meeting and courtship.[67][68]
  8. ^ Fitzgerald stated that "advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero".[84]
  9. ^ According to biographer Andrew Turnbull, "one day, drinking martinis in the upstairs lounge, [Fitzgerald] announced that he was going to jump out of the window. No one objected; on the contrary, it was pointed out that the windows were French and ideally suited for jumping, which seemed to cool his ardor".[86]
  10. ^ a b During her youth, Zelda Sayre's wealthy Southern family employed half-a-dozen domestic servants, many of whom were African-American.[96] Consequently, she was unaccustomed to domestic labor or responsibilities of any kind.[97][98]
  11. ^ Primary sources such as Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson both said that Max Gerlach was a neighbor.[141][142] Scholars have yet to find surviving property records for a Long Island residence with Gerlach's name.[143] However, there are likely "gaps in the record of his addresses",[143] and an accurate reconstruction of Gerlach's life and whereabouts is greatly hindered "by the imperfect state of relevant documentation".[144]
  12. ^ In a 2009 book, scholar Horst Kruse asserts that Max Gerlach possibly was born in or near Berlin, Germany, and, as a young boy, he immigrated with his German parents to America.[146]
  13. ^ With the end of prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression, Max Gerlach lost his wealth. Living in poverty, he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1939.[148]
  14. ^ In 1929, Fitzgerald received royalties of $5.10 from the American edition and just $0.34 from the English edition,[172] A final royalty check amounted to $13.13, all of which was from Fitzgerald buying his own books.[173] Although Gatsby experienced tepid book sales, Fitzgerald sold the film rights for $15,000 to $12,000.[174]
  15. ^ In his memoir A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway claims he realized that Zelda suffered from a mental illness when she insisted that jazz singer Al Jolson was greater than Jesus Christ.[182]
  16. ^ Fitzgerald objected to Zelda naming her heroine's husband Amory Blaine, the name of the protagonist in This Side of Paradise.[215]
  17. ^ Contrary to Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda,[217] scholarly examinations of Zelda's earlier drafts of Save Me the Waltz and the final version discerned fewer alterations than previously claimed.[216] According to Matthew J. Bruccoli, the revised galleys were "in Zelda Fitzgerald's hand. F. Scott Fitzgerald did not systematically work on the surviving proofs: only eight of the words written on them are clearly in his hand".[218]
  18. ^ Upon reading Zelda's novel, Hemingway warned editor Maxwell Perkins that, if he ever published a novel by any of his wives, he would shoot him.[215]
  19. ^ A "sheik" referred to young men in the Jazz Age who imitated the appearance and dress of iconic film star Rudolph Valentino.[228] The female equivalent of a "sheik" was called a "sheba".[229] Both "sheiks" and "shebas" were older in age than the younger "flapper" generation who were children during World War I.[229]
  20. ^ Fitzgerald later offered an apologetic tribute to Harold Ober in his short story "Financing Finnegan".[233]
  21. ^ According to Graham, Fitzgerald "had begun drinking, as a young man, because in those days everyone drank. 'Zelda and I drank with them. I was able to drink and enjoy it. I thought all I needed anywhere in the world to make a living was a pencil and paper. Then I found I needed liquor too. I needed it to write'".[261]
  22. ^ a b Scribner's later reissued the book under Fitzgerald's preferred title, The Love of The Last Tycoon.[292]
  23. ^ Frances Kroll Ring wrote regarding Fitzgerald's corpse: "The figure in the grey box had no connection with the Scott I knew. The moritician's cosmetics defacted him and he looked like a badly painted portrait, waxed, spiritless".[280]

Citations[]

  1. ^ Mizener 2020; Bruccoli 2002, p. 13; Milford 1970, p. 25; Turnbull 1962, pp. 5–7; Donaldson 1983, p. 2.
  2. ^ Fitzgerald 1957, p. 184.
  3. ^ Schiff 2001, p. 21.
  4. ^ Donaldson 1983, p. 2: Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to John O'Hara: "I am half black Irish and half old American stock with the usual exaggerated ancestral pretensions".
  5. ^ Mizener 1972, p. 5; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 11, 495–506.
  6. ^ Donaldson 1983, p. 2; Mizener 1972, p. 5; Bruccoli 2002, p. 5.
  7. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 2; Bruccoli 2002, p. 11.
  8. ^ a b c Gross & Corrigan 2014.
  9. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 7; Bruccoli 2002, p. 13; Donaldson 1983, p. 4.
  10. ^ Milford 1970, p. 25; Mizener 1972, p. 116; Turnbull 1962, p. 7; Mizener 1951, pp. 9–10.
  11. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 15.
  12. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 14.
  13. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 14; Donaldson 1983, p. 4.
  14. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 11.
  15. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 16; Milford 1970, pp. 25, 27; Donaldson 1983, p. 4.
  16. ^ Milford 1970, p. 27; Fitzgerald 1960.
  17. ^ Idema 1990, p. 202; Milford 1970, p. 27; Turnbull 1962, p. 32.
  18. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 42–44, 59; Tate 1998, p. 76; Mizener 1972, p. 23.
  19. ^ Helliker 2014.
  20. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 48: Edmund Wilson later claimed "that Fitzgerald was the only Catholic he knew at Princeton".
  21. ^ Helliker 2014; Mizener 1972, p. 9.
  22. ^ a b Mizener 1972, p. 18; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 47–49.
  23. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 45, 65–68, 75.
  24. ^ The Daily Princetonian 1913.
  25. ^ Mizener 1972, p. 29; West 2005, p. 19.
  26. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 54–55; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 53–54; West 2005, p. 21.
  27. ^ Smith 2003; West 2005, p. 21; Turnbull 1962, pp. 54–55.
  28. ^ a b Noden 2003.
  29. ^ Smith 2003: Fitzgerald later confided to his daughter that Ginevra King "was the first girl I ever loved" and that he "faithfully avoided seeing her" to "keep the illusion perfect".
  30. ^ Noden 2003; Mizener 1951, pp. 47–51; West 2005, p. 21; Turnbull 1962, pp. 54–55.
  31. ^ Stevens 2003.
  32. ^ Mizener 1972, p. 29; West 2005, p. 104.
  33. ^ Stepanov 2003; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 123–124; Noden 2003; West 2005, p. xiii.
  34. ^ Corrigan 2014, p. 58: Scholar Maureen Corrigan notes that "because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—even more than Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".
  35. ^ West 2005, p. 10.
  36. ^ a b West 2005, pp. 36, 49; Smith 2003; Turnbull 1962, pp. 56–58, 60.
  37. ^ West 2005, pp. 41, 91.
  38. ^ West 2005, p. 35.
  39. ^ a b West 2005, p. 42.
  40. ^ Smith 2003: "That August Fitzgerald visited Ginevra in Lake Forest, Ill. Afterward he wrote in his ledger foreboding words, spoken to him perhaps by Ginevra's father, 'Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls'".
  41. ^ Carter 2013; Donaldson 1983, p. 50; Turnbull 1962, p. 72.
  42. ^ a b c West 2005, pp. 3, 50–51, 56–57.
  43. ^ West 2005, p. 64; Stevens 2003.
  44. ^ Smith 2003; Stepanov 2003.
  45. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 70.
  46. ^ a b c Bruccoli 2002, pp. 80, 82. Fitzgerald wished to be killed in battle, and he hoped that his unpublished novel would become a great success in the wake of his death.
  47. ^ Fitzgerald 1936b.
  48. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 79, 82; Korda 2007, p. 134.
  49. ^ Korda 2007, p. 134.
  50. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, pp. 80, 84.
  51. ^ Tate 1998, p. 251.
  52. ^ Tate 1998, pp. 6, 32; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 79, 82; Milford 1970, p. 24.
  53. ^ Donaldson 1983, p. 60: "On the rebound from Ginevra King, Fitzgerald was playing the field".
  54. ^ Milford 1970, pp. 6, 14; Mizener 1951, pp. 74–75; Turnbull 1962, pp. 84–85.
  55. ^ a b Milford 1970, pp. 3–4.
  56. ^ Davis 1924, pp. 45, 56, 59; Milford 1970, p. 5; Svrluga 2016.
  57. ^ Wagner-Martin 2004, p. 24; Milford 1970, p. 3.
  58. ^ Wagner-Martin 2004, p. 44.
  59. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 111: Fitzgerald wrote in a letter, "I love [Zelda] and that's the beginning and end of everything".
  60. ^ West 2005, pp. 65–66.
  61. ^ West 2005, p. 68.
  62. ^ a b West 2005, p. 73.
  63. ^ Milford 1970, pp. 35–36; Tate 1998, p. 32; West 2005, p. 73.
  64. ^ Milford 1970, pp. 35–36.
  65. ^ West 2005, p. 73; Milford 1970, pp. 35–36; Bruccoli 2002, p. 89.
  66. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 161–162; Milford 1970, pp. 35–36.
  67. ^ Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, pp. 314–315: "By your own admission many years after (and for which I have [never] reproached you) you had been seduced and provincially outcast. I sensed this the night we slept together first for you're a poor bluffer".
  68. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 70: "It seemed on one March [1916] afternoon that I had lost every single thing I wanted—and that night was the first time I hunted down the spectre of womanhood that, for a little while, makes everything else seem unimportant".
  69. ^ Milford 1970, pp. 35–36; Bruccoli 2002, p. 89.
  70. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 91: Fitzgerald wrote on December 4, 1918, "My mind is firmly made up that I will not, shall not, can not, should not, must not marry".
  71. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 91.
  72. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 85, 89, 90: "Zelda would question whether he was ever going to make enough money for them to marry", and Fitzgerald was thus compelled to prove that "he was rich enough for her".
  73. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, pp. 92–93; Mizener 1972, p. 43; Mizener 1951, p. 80.
  74. ^ Milford 1970, p. 39.
  75. ^ Milford 1970, p. 42; Turnbull 1962, p. 92.
  76. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 91, 111: "Isabelle Amorous, the sister of a Newman friend, congratulated him when he broke off with Zelda".
  77. ^ Milford 1970, p. 43; Bruccoli 2002, p. 91.
  78. ^ Sommerville & Morgan 2017, pp. 186–187.
  79. ^ Fitzgerald 2004, p. 124.
  80. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 92; Rodgers 2005, p. 147.
  81. ^ Sommerville & Morgan 2017, pp. 186–187; Bruccoli 2002, p. 93.
  82. ^ Milford 1970, p. 52.
  83. ^ Stern 1970, p. 7.
  84. ^ Fitzgerald 1966, p. 108.
  85. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 95–96.
  86. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, pp. 93–94.
  87. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 95: "When he climbed out on a window ledge and threatened to jump, no one tried to stop him".
  88. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 96.
  89. ^ a b c Bruccoli 2002, p. 97.
  90. ^ Milford 1970, p. 54; West 2005, pp. 65, 74, 95; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 121–122.
  91. ^ a b c Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, p. 32.
  92. ^ a b Buller 2005, p. 9.
  93. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 117.
  94. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 124.
  95. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 102, 108.
  96. ^ Wagner-Martin 2004, p. 24.
  97. ^ Wagner-Martin 2004, p. 24; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 189, 437.
  98. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 111: "Zelda was no housekeeper. Sketchy about ordering meals, she completely ignored the laundry".
  99. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 109.
  100. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 479: Fitzgerald wrote in 1939, "You [Zelda] submitted at the moment of our marriage when your passion for me was at as low ebb as mine for you. ... I never wanted the Zelda I married. I didn't love you again till after you became pregnant".
  101. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 437: In July 1938, Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter that, "I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her but, being patient in those days, made the best of it".
  102. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 105; Mizener 1951, p. 109; Bruccoli 2002, p. 128.
  103. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 128–129: Describing his marriage to Zelda, Fitzgerald said that—aside from "long conversations" late at night—their relations lacked "a closeness" which they never "achieved in the workaday world of marriage".
  104. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 14.
  105. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 128.
  106. ^ a b c d Turnbull 1962, p. 110.
  107. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 105.
  108. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 133.
  109. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 117; Turnbull 1962, p. 134; Bruccoli 2002, p. 131; Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. xxvi.
  110. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, p. 115.
  111. ^ a b Milford 1970, p. 67.
  112. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, pp. 134–135.
  113. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, pp. 136–137.
  114. ^ a b Bruccoli 2000, pp. 53–54.
  115. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 136: The Fitzgeralds "knew everyone, which is to say most of those whom Ralph Barton, the cartoonist, would have represented as being in the orchestra on opening night".
  116. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 122.
  117. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 224; Mizener 1951, p. 110.
  118. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 18: "In any case, the Jazz Age now raced along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money".
  119. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 15: "[The Jazz Age represented] a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure".
  120. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, pp. 131–132.
  121. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 112.
  122. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 479.
  123. ^ Greenwood & O'Brien 1995, p. 22.
  124. ^ Milford 1970, p. 84; Turnbull 1962, p. 127.
  125. ^ Milford 1970, p. 84; Bruccoli 2002, p. 156.
  126. ^ a b Milford 1970, p. 84; Mizener 1951, p. 63; Turnbull 1962, p. 127.
  127. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 116; Mizener 1951, p. 138.
  128. ^ Fitzgerald 1966, pp. 355–356.
  129. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 159, 162; Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, p. 32.
  130. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 166–169.
  131. ^ Tate 1998, p. 104.
  132. ^ a b c Turnbull 1962, p. 140; Milford 1970, p. 103; Mizener 1951, pp. 155–156.
  133. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, p. 140.
  134. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 157; Curnutt 2004, p. 58; Bruccoli 2002, p. 185.
  135. ^ Mizener 1960; Fitzgerald 1966, p. 189.
  136. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 135–136.
  137. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 135, 140.
  138. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 140–41.
  139. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 140: Although Fitzgerald strove "to become member of the community of the rich, to live from day to day as they did, to share their interests and tastes", he found such a privileged lifestyle morally disquieting.
  140. ^ a b Mizener 1951, p. 141: Fitzgerald "admired deeply the rich" and yet his wealthy friends often disappointed or repulsed him. Consequently, he harbored "the smouldering hatred of a peasant" towards the wealthy and their milieu.
  141. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 178: "Jay Gatsby was inspired in part by a local figure, Max Gerlach. Near the end of her life Zelda Fitzgerald said that Gatsby was based on 'a neighbor named Von Guerlach or something who was said to be General Pershing's nephew and was in trouble over bootlegging'".
  142. ^ Kruse 2014, pp. 13–14: Biographer Arthur Mizener wrote in a January 1951 letter to Max Gerlach that, "Edmund Wilson, the literary critic, told me that Fitzgerald came to his house, apparently from yours [Gerlach's], and told him with great fascination about the life you were leading. Naturally, it fascinated him as all splendor did".
  143. ^ a b Kruse 2014, pp. 23–24.
  144. ^ Kruse 2014, p. 20.
  145. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 51.
  146. ^ Kruse 2014, pp. 6, 20.
  147. ^ Kruse 2002, pp. 53–54, 47–48, 63–64.
  148. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 178; Kruse 2002, pp. 47–48; Kruse 2014, p. 15.
  149. ^ Kruse 2014, p. 15.
  150. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 47.
  151. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 178.
  152. ^ Kruse 2002, p. 60.
  153. ^ Kruse 2002, pp. 45–83; Bruccoli 2002, p. 178.
  154. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 142, 352.
  155. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 147; Milford 1970, p. 103.
  156. ^ a b c d e f Mizener 1960.
  157. ^ a b West 2002, pp. xi, xvii.
  158. ^ Carter 2013; Corrigan 2014.
  159. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 150; Fessenden 2005, p. 28.
  160. ^ a b Tate 1998, p. 86; Bruccoli 2002, p. 195; Milford 1970, pp. 108–112.
  161. ^ a b c Milford 1970, pp. 108–112; Tate 1998, p. 86.
  162. ^ Milford 1970, p. 111.
  163. ^ Milford 1970, p. 111; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 201.
  164. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 164; Milford 1970, p. 112.
  165. ^ Milford 1970, pp. 108–112.
  166. ^ Tate 1998, p. 86: "Zelda became romantically interested in Edouard, a French naval aviator. It is impossible to determine whether the affair was consummated, but it was nevertheless a damaging breach of trust".
  167. ^ Tate 1998, p. 101.
  168. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 215.
  169. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 145.
  170. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 218.
  171. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 217; Mizener 1951, p. 193.
  172. ^ Quirk 2009.
  173. ^ Achenbach 2015.
  174. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 192.
  175. ^ Donaldson 1983, p. 8.
  176. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 228.
  177. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 250.
  178. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 153, 179.
  179. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 29.
  180. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 153, 352; Mizener 1951, p. 195.
  181. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 184.
  182. ^ a b Hemingway 1964, p. 186.
  183. ^ Canterbury & Birch 2006, p. 189.
  184. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 437, 468–469: "She wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream".
  185. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 116, 280; Mizener 1951, p. 270.
  186. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 155; Canterbury & Birch 2006, p. 189.
  187. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 155.
  188. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 176.
  189. ^ a b Hemingway 1964, p. 190.
  190. ^ Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. 65.
  191. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 275.
  192. ^ Milford 1970, p. 117; Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. 57.
  193. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 352.
  194. ^ a b Buller 2005, p. 5.
  195. ^ a b c Turnbull 1962, p. 170.
  196. ^ Buller 2005, p. 5; Turnbull 1962, p. 170.
  197. ^ Buller 2005, pp. 6–8; Turnbull 1962, p. 170.
  198. ^ a b Buller 2005, pp. 6–8.
  199. ^ Buller 2005, pp. 6–8: "My worship for him", Moran later recalled, "was based on admiration of his talent".
  200. ^ Buller 2005, p. 11; Turnbull 1962, p. 170.
  201. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 256.
  202. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 352; Buller 2005, pp. 6–8.
  203. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 171.
  204. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 261, 267.
  205. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 269.
  206. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 288–289; Milford 1970, p. 156.
  207. ^ Milford 1970, p. 156.
  208. ^ a b Bruccoli 2002, p. 291.
  209. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 313; Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, p. 3.
  210. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 204; Milford 1970, p. 210.
  211. ^ a b c d Mencken 1989, pp. 44–45.
  212. ^ Mencken 1989, p. 56.
  213. ^ a b Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, pp. 3–4.
  214. ^ Milford 1970, p. 220.
  215. ^ a b Berg 2013, p. xi.
  216. ^ a b Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. 162.
  217. ^ Milford 1970, p. 225.
  218. ^ Fitzgerald 1991, p. 9.
  219. ^ Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, p. 162; Fitzgerald 1991, p. 9; Milford 1970, p. 225.
  220. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 327–328.
  221. ^ Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, p. 28; Turnbull 1962, p. 243.
  222. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 243.
  223. ^ Stern 1970, p. 96.
  224. ^ Cowley 1951; Turnbull 1962, p. 246; Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, p. 32.
  225. ^ Bruccoli & Baughman 1996, pp. 50, 157.
  226. ^ Hemingway 1964, p. 147.
  227. ^ a b Josephson 1933; Mizener 1960.
  228. ^ Savage 2007, pp. 206–207, 225–226.
  229. ^ a b Perrett 1982, pp. 151–152.
  230. ^ Kazin 1951, p. 110; Rodgers 2005, p. 376.
  231. ^ a b Fassler 2013.
  232. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 299–300; Mizener 1951, pp. 283–284.
  233. ^ Tate 1998, pp. 33, 78; Berg 2013, p. xvi.
  234. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 299–300; Mizener 1951, pp. 283–284; Rath & Gulli 2015.
  235. ^ a b c Markel 2017.
  236. ^ Milford 1970, p. 183.
  237. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 60, 269, 300, 327.
  238. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 259.
  239. ^ Hemingway 1964, pp. 163–164.
  240. ^ Mencken 1989, pp. 62–63.
  241. ^ Fitzgerald 1966, p. 286.
  242. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 279–280; Fitzgerald 2004, pp. xiv, 123–125.
  243. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 280; Fitzgerald 2004, pp. xiv, 123–125; McInerney 2007.
  244. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 480; Milford 1970, p. 308.
  245. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 257–259; Turnbull 1962, p. 257; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 393–394.
  246. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 405, 408.
  247. ^ Tate 1998, p. 43; Fitzgerald 1936a; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 400–401.
  248. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 408–409; Dempsey 2000.
  249. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 405–407.
  250. ^ a b Turnbull 1962, pp. 298–299; Mizener 1951, p. 283; Milford 1970, p. 327.
  251. ^ a b Hook 2002, p. 90.
  252. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 200.
  253. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 188; Ring 1985, p. 115; Mizener 1951, p. 290; Turnbull 1962, p. 303.
  254. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 273; Fitzgerald 1966, p. 150.
  255. ^ a b Bleil 2008, p. 32; Corrigan 2014, p. 59; Noden 2003; Smith 2003.
  256. ^ a b Graham & Frank 1958, pp. vii–ix, 172–173.
  257. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 323; Fitzgerald 1966, pp. 117, 151.
  258. ^ Ring 1985, p. 104; Bruccoli 2002, p. 485.
  259. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 308: "The day came when he realized he was drinking to escape—not only to escape the growing sense of his wasted potentialities but also to dull the guilt he felt over Zelda. 'I feel that I am responsible for what happened to her. I could no longer bear what became of her'".
  260. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 255–257, 275, 281, 296, 309.
  261. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 308.
  262. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 202.
  263. ^ a b Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 186–187.
  264. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 301: Upon realizing that no one attended stage adaptations of his works, Fitzgerald became "silent and depressed".
  265. ^ Turnbull 1962, p. 110: Scott believed, "as Oscar Wilde said, [that] the only thing worse than being talked about is being forgotten".
  266. ^ a b c Turnbull 1962, pp. 294–295; Mizener 1951, pp. 282–283.
  267. ^ a b Brooks 2011, pp. 174–176.
  268. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 214–215; Turnbull 1962, pp. 305–307; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 257, 458.
  269. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 294–295; Bruccoli 2002, p. 449.
  270. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 182, 451.
  271. ^ Krystal 2009.
  272. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 285; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 468–469; Turnbull 1962, p. 316.
  273. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 309–311, 314; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 446–447.
  274. ^ a b c Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 326–327.
  275. ^ a b c d e Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 330–331; Ring 1985, p. 106.
  276. ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 486–489.
  277. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, p. 333: "By the way, Sheilah—we're going to bury Daddy in Baltimore. I don't think it would be advisable for you to come to the funeral, do you?"
  278. ^ Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 333–335.
  279. ^ a b Mizener 1951, pp. 298–299; Graham & Frank 1958, pp. 333–335.
  280. ^ Ring 1985, p. 109.
  281. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 298–299; Turnbull 1962, pp. 321–322.
  282. ^ Mizener 1951, pp. 298–299; Turnbull 1962, pp. 321–322; Ring 1985, p. 109.
  283. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 321–322.
  284. ^ Turnbull 1962, pp. 321–322; Mizener 1951, pp. 298–299; Milford 1970, p. 350.
  285. ^ Young 1979; Mangum 2016, pp. 27–39; Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, pp. 385–386.
  286. ^ Kelly 2014; Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald 2002, pp. 385–386.
  287. ^ Fitzgerald 1966, p. 530.
  288. ^ a b Donahue 2013.
  289. ^ Willett 1999.
  290. ^ New York Times Obituary 1940.
  291. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 287.
  292. ^ Bruccoli 2002, p. 463; Ring 1985, p. 102.
  293. ^ Tredell 2007, p. 90.
  294. ^ a b c Edwards 1992.
  295. ^ a b Wilson 1965, pp. 16–17; Mizener 1960; Gopnik 2014.
  296. ^ a b Wilson 1965, pp. 16–17.
  297. ^ a b Gopnik 2014.
  298. ^ Gamble & Preston 1968.
  299. ^ Palmer 2018.
  300. ^ Thorpe 2020.
  301. ^ Diamond 2016; Bloom 2009.
  302. ^ Stern 1970.
  303. ^ a b Mizener 1951, p. 170.
  304. ^ Kazin 1951, p. 86.
  305. ^ a b Kazin 1951, pp. 77–78.
  306. ^ a b Kazin 1951, pp. 90–91.
  307. ^ Kazin 1951, pp. 81–83, 90–91.
  308. ^ Fitzgerald 1945, p. 310.
  309. ^ Jackson 1996, p. 149.
  310. ^ Mizener 1960: "Writers like John O'Hara were showing its influence and younger men like Edward Newhouse and Budd Schulberg, who would presently be deeply affected by it, were discovering it".
  311. ^ Yates 1981, p. 3.
  312. ^ Adams 1941.
  313. ^ Mizener 1951, p. 330; The New York Times 1920, p. D2.
  314. ^ Hischak 2012, p. 23.
  315. ^ Scott 2008.
  316. ^ Tate 1998, p. 14.
  317. ^ Hall 1926; Coppola 2013; Kendall 2013.
  318. ^ Hischak 2012, p. 240.
  319. ^ Canby 1976.
  320. ^ Ryan 2017.
  321. ^ Nelson 1958.
  322. ^ Blank 2012.
  323. ^ Buckton 2013.
  324. ^ Genzlinger 2002; Ring 1985.
  325. ^ a b McGrath 2004.
  326. ^ a b c Begley 2015; Miller 2015.
  327. ^ McAlpin 2017.

Works cited[]

Print sources[]

Online sources[]

External links[]

Retrieved from ""