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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald had a major impact on the 1920s. While The Great Gatsby was his biggest moneymaker, he is also known for This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night, and America’s Jazz Age.
Fitzgerald was born September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota (Stewart). He was named after his second cousin three times removed, on his father’s side, who was also the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Bruccoli). The name comes from his father’s loyalty to the Old South. Edward, his father, was from Maryland. His mother, the daughter of an Irish immigrant, who became a wealthy wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Mary McQuillan was his mother’s name but she was called Mollie. They were both Catholics (Bruccoli). His father did not make it as a wicker salesman so they moved to upstate New York to sell for Procter and Gramble (Bruccoli). When Francis was twelve his father was fired and the Fitzgeralds moved back to St. Paul to live off Mollie’s inheritance (Bruccoli).
He attended private schools St. Paul Academy in Minnesota and Newman Academy in Boston (ABC-CLIO). He wrote a detective story for the school newspaper when he was thirteen. He attended Princeton University in 1913 (ABC-CLIO). Due to physical illness and academic probation, he knew he was not going to graduate. He left before the end of his junior year and joined the army in 1917. He became a second lieutenant in the infantry (ABC-CLIO).
Before going overseas Francis spent his time on an old college novel “The Romantic Egotist.” He sent a draft to Charles Scribner’s Sons. It was rejected but he was asked to send a revised copy. After the resolution of World War I, he met Zelda Sayre at a country club dance (ABC-CLIO). In hopes she would marry him, he revised his novel and resubmitted it to Charles Scribner’s Sons (ABC-CLIO). They accepted it and the novel was renamed This Side of Paradise (ABC-CLIO). They married eight days after the publication in March 26, 1920 (Bruccoli). He was 24 and she was 19 years old when they married. Fitzgerald became instantly famous and celebrated with an extended honeymoon. All-night parties and drunken adventures, which they later called “the greatest, gaudiest spree in history.”(ABC-CLIO)
The success of This Side of Paradise led him to the profitable magazine market. Fitzgerald wrote many stories about his extravagant lifestyle (ABC-CLIO). Trying to boost his reputation he put together collections of old stories he had written, Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) (ABC-CLIO). The Beautiful and Damned, a story of the downfall of Anthony and Gloria Patch (Bruccoli), another attempt to create a story from his own life (Bruccoli).
In October 1921, the Fitzgeralds had a daughter. They named her Frances Scott whom they called Scottie. Later, they spent time in the United States and Europe. They lived in Paris and on the French Riviera (ABC-CLIO).
In the spring of 1924 the Fitzgeralds went to France trying to calm their hectic life of parties and extravagance down. He wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Raphael. During that time Frances suspected Zelda’s of having an affair with a French naval aviator. How much of the affair is unknown or even if it really happened but the marriage was damaged nonetheless. While living on the Riviera the Fitzgeralds made good friends with the wealthy and cultured American migrant Gerald and Sara Murphy.
The 1924-1925 winter was spent in Rome where he revised his greatest masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. They were on their way to Paris when the novel was published in April of 1925. “The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view.” -Bruccoli. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income (Bruccoli).
“Jay Gatsby is a man of fabulous wealth who gives lavish parties at his mansion in a posh Long Island town. He is the reincarnation of James Gatz, a man of humble origins who made a fortune bootlegging alcohol during Prohibition. Gatsby can buy anything but love; his pursuit of Tom Buchanan's wife, Daisy, is frustrated and ultimately leads to his own murder. The novel exposes the hollow values of the Jazz Age, with its economic and social corruptions. It also turns on its ear the particularly American myth of the self-made man who achieves success through his integrity and plain hard work.” -ABC-CLIO. A year later he published two of his best-known stories, “The Rich Boy” and “Winter Dreams,” in a book called All the Sad Young Men.
Expecting to get rich from his play, The Vegetable, in the fall of 1922 they moved to Great Neck, Long Island to be near Broadway (Bruccoli). The political satire “From President to Postman,” written November 1923, did not do well. He wrote himself out of debt with short stories (Bruccoli). He wrote sober but by this time he was an alcoholic. Zelda was drinking regularly but was not an alcoholic (Bruccoli). Prevented by the distractions of Great Neck and New York he could not make progress on his third novel, later to become published as America’s Jazz Age (Bruccoli).
The crash of the stock market ended the Jazz Age in 1929. The Fitzgeralds went down hill and were unable to recover financially (ABC-CLIO). Zelda became frustrated in her own work as a writer and a dancer, after the publication of The Great Gatsby. She showed more and more signs of instability. Finally, in 1930, she had a complete breakdown, the first of several to come. She spent the last 18 years of her life in a series of private sanatorium diagnosed as a schizophrenic (ABC-CLIO). She died in 1948 lived to be 48 years old. The cost of her medical care just about wiped out her husband. Francis wrote many stories for magazines trying to maximize his income (ABC-CLIO). Even magazine fees were at low levels and he was forced to work so quickly that he himself later characterized much of his work during this period as “trash” (ABC-CLIO). Francis became troubled over Zelda’s mental state, shamefaced over his failure to provide a decent home for Scottie, and he did not like his work. Fitzgerald wrote three essays in 1935 for Esquire magazine about his personal situation. The “The Crack Up,” “Pasting it Together,” and “Handle with Care” which all captured the mood of the 1930s and are now thought to be among his best work. (ABC-CLIO)
Fitzgerald's fourth novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), tells about the brilliant young psychiatrist Dick Diver, whose life is ruined by his marriage to the beautiful Nicole Warren, a schizophrenic he hopes to cure. Nicole is based transparently on Zelda. Fitzgerald went so far as to use Zelda's letters and medical records in the novel. The book got great reviews, however, neither it nor a companion volume of short stories, Taps at Reveille (1935), sold well during the depression. (ABC-CLIO)
Still desperate for money, Fitzgerald turned to Hollywood, where he earned a handsome salary as a screenwriter on such projects as A Yank at Oxford, Three Comrades, and, for a short time, Gone with the Wind (ABC-CLIO). His life in Hollywood provided material for Fitzgerald's unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, a tragic story about a motion picture producer, published posthumously in 1941 (ABC-CLIO).
Toward the end of his life, Fitzgerald finally found a measure of happiness in an affair with Sheilah Graham, a motion picture columnist (ABC-CLIO). Nevertheless, a life of excess and of emotional hardship had taken its toll. At the age of 44 he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940 (ABC-CLIO). An untimely ending for a middle aged man.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald wrote many masterpieces during his tragic and short-lived life. His novels are the essence of classic literary works. He will always be remembered as the biggest influence of the Jazz Age.