Perhaps best known for his novel
The Great Gatsby, a fabulous work of fiction about society in the
1920's,
F. Scott Fitzgerald was better known in his time for his short stories and novellas. A major theme in his work is
aspiration-- the
idealism that
Fitzgerald regarded as a defining quality of the
American character. Also seen in much of his fiction is the theme of
mutability, or loss. As a social historian,
Fitzgerald came to be identified with "
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."
Fitzgerald’s first attempt at professional writing started when he wrote
The Romantic Egoist in 1917 before he left for the war. He was convinced that he would not return, so he dashed off this novel and submitted it to
Charles Scribner’s Sons for publication. Although they rejected it, they were impressed with
Fitzgerald’s originality and told him that they would be interested in it after he had revised the manuscript. However, when he did so in 1918 while stationed at
Camp Sheridan near
Montgomery, Alabama, and resubmitted it to
Scribners, the novel was once again rejected.
While
Fitzgerald had been at
Camp Sheridan, he had met and fallen in love with his future wife,
Zelda Sayre, daughter of an
Alabama Supreme Court judge. They got engaged before the war ended in 1919, and as soon as he was discharged,
Fitzgerald went to
New York City to seek his fortune in the advertising business so that he could marry
Zelda. However, she broke their engagement because she was too impatient to live on his small salary while waiting for him to succeed in advertising.
Ftizgerald’s professional writing career really started towards the end of 1919 when he quit his job in
New York to return to his hometown of
St. Paul. He first rewrote a previous manuscript for
This Side of Paradise, which was accepted by
Scribners editor
Maxwell Perkins in September of that year. After that,
Fitzgerald began to make money writing short stories for magazines through agent
Harold Ober, which interrupted work on his novels. A great number of his stories were published in
The Saturday Evening Post, as well as the smaller magazine
The Smart Set. Most of these early stories read with a fresh, innovative style, as
Fitzgerald created the independent, determined, young American woman and epitomized the free and easy style of the rich in the
1920’s. (see
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and
Bernice Bobs Her Hair)
When 24-year-old
Fitzgerald’s
This Side of Paradise was published on
March 26, 1920, he became an overnight success. A week later, he and
Zelda were married in
New York and began an extravagant lifestyle that would lead to an underappreciation of
Fitzgerald’s work.
Fitzgerald’s success continued with his second novel,
The Beautiful and the Damned, published in 1922. He was further blessed when his only child
Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald was born in October of 1921.
However,
Fitzgerald’s run of good luck did not last, as his play, The Vegetable, a political satire subtitled "From President to Postman," failed at its tryout in November 1923.
Fitzgerald had invested a lot in it as he had expected it to be a great success; to get himself out of debt, he continued to write short stories, which further impeded his progress on a third novel. Upset with his failure,
Fitzgerald began to drink heavily, and he and
Zelda, who also drank, frequently fought after fits of drinking. Even though he was an
alcoholic and knew that this was upsetting his personal life,
Fitzgerald would not let it disturb his professional talent and he never wrote while intoxicated.
This did not, however, help his work to gain positive literary opinion. Critics knew about his drinking and so they looked down on his worth as a serious writer. They assumed that being an alcoholic was affecting his writing and refused to accord him the literary merit he deserved;
Fitzgerald was a devoted writer whose work went through series of drafts.
Despite the disapproval he received,
Fitzgerald continued to persevere, writing his novel
The Great Gatsby in 1924 and 1925 while he and his family traveled through Europe.
Fitzgerald's technique in
The Great Gatsby was a solid departure from his earlier work, with a complex literary structure and a controlled narrative point of view. This regained him some of his merit in the literary world, but the novel did not sell as well as expected.
After returning to
America in 1926,
Fitzgerald made a brief attempt at screenwriting in
Hollywood. When this did not succeed, the Fitzgeralds moved to
Delaware in 1927, where
Fitzgerald was unable to make any significant progress on his fourth novel, begun while in
France the year before.
All the while,
Zelda’s behavior, seen as eccentric and unconventional, had become increasingly erratic; while
Fitzgerald tried to write his novel, she started intense ballet training, which damaged her health and led to their estrangement. In
April of 1930, she had her first mental breakdown and was treated at
Prangins clinic in
Switzerland until September 1931, while
Fitzgerald stayed in
Switzerland in various hotels, writing short stories to pay for
Zelda’s treatment. He made considerably more money from each of his 160 short stories than he did from any of his novels; but
Fitzgerald was not often in a good financial situation because he was still not one of the highest-paid writers at the time, and he and his wife were not very careful with their money. He was always writing stories to try and keep on top of things financially, which took more time away from his novels.
In September 1931, after
Zelda’s treatment, the Fitzgeralds returned to America and
Fitzgerald tried another stint in
Hollywood, again not meeting with success. A relapse of
Zelda’s condition in February 1932 sent her to
Baltimore for treatment at
Johns Hopkins Hospital. After that,
Zelda spent most of her life as a resident or
outpatient of
sanitariums.
She wrote an autobiography,
Save Me the Waltz, in 1932, while a patient at
Johns Hopkins Hospital; in
Fitzgerald’s view, this was an appropriation of the material that he was using in his novel-in-progress, and it increased the enmity between the two. Renting a house outside
Baltimore,
Fitzgerald soon completed his fourth novel,
Tender Is the Night, published in 1934. It was another failure as he saw it; its low sales and lack of popularity in the world of literary critics once again fell below
Fitzgerald’s expectations for his work.
Fitzgerald’s run of literary failure that had begun with his play
The Vegetable in 1923 continued on through 1937. The time of 1936-37 was one of the hardest for him, called "
the crack-up" after an essay
Fitzgerald wrote in 1936. He was in poor health, unable to save himself from alcoholism, in dire financial straits, and his talent was failing him: he could not manage to gain any literary or commercial success with his short stories. He sent his daughter
Scottie to boarding school and lived by himself in hotels near the
North Carolina hospital where his wife had been admitted. Although
Fitzgerald couldn’t manage to raise a fourteen-year-old child by himself with all the troubles he was facing, he tried to be a part of his daughter’s life through mail, acting the part of father as best he could.
Desperate for anything to buoy up his career and his finances,
Fitzgerald returned to
Hollywood, alone this time, in late 1937 with a
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract. After a year and a half,
Fitzgerald had gained a single screen credit (for adapting
Three Comrades) and over $90,000. Facing
the Great Depression, this was more than a lot of money, but
Fitzgerald was still unable to save, and merely paid himself out of debt. His relationship with
Zelda fell apart, and he found love in
California with movie columnist
Sheilah Graham. After 1938,
Fitzgerald freelanced writing scripts and short stories. His unfinished novel,
The Love of the Last Tycoon, retitled
The Last Tycoon, was still in draft stage when he died of a heart attack on
December 21, 1940.
Fitzgerald’s real success came after his death, with a revival starting in the late
40’s. Critics of his time condemned him for his lifestyle and apparent lack of developed talent, but by 1960, he was recognized by the literary world as one of America’s greatest writers, especially for his defining novel
The Great Gatsby.
sources:
works of
Matthew J. Bruccoli,
F. Scott Fitzgerald historian.