Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott (Key)

Fitzgerald, F[rancis] Scott [Key] (1896–1940), born in St. Paul, Minn., where part of his youth was spent until he went to Princeton (1913). There he was a friend of Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop and was a leader in theatrical and literary activities until he left because of academic difficulties, and then, after a brief return, to enter the army (1917). While being trained in U.S. camps he wrote the initial draft of his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), set at his alma mater and an expression of a new generation and its jazz age. His book having caught the flavor and interests of the changing era, his stories were in great demand by both the popular Saturday Evening Post and the critical Scribner's as he became a chronicler of the manners and moods of the time. From these journals came his next works, Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), the latter including “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” In keeping with the tone of the stories, he himself became a character of the period, the handsome, witty, charming author married to a glamorous woman named Zelda, and both living life as though it were one great party. His lesser, second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), was a minor work telling of a rich, aristocratic young artist and his wife foundering in dissipation, suggesting something of the Fitzgeralds' own extravagant life. This was followed by his satirical play, The Vegetable; or, From President to Postman (1923), reissued (1976) with previously cut scenes. Then came The Great Gatsby (1925), his finest novel, a sensitive and symbolic treatment of themes of contemporary life related with irony and pathos to the legendry of the “American dream.” Although he continued to write stories, collected in All the Sad Young Men (1926) and later in Taps at Reveille (1935), and worked ahead on his most extensive novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), his personal life suffered the tragedies of his wife's nervous breakdown and his own loss of security as he became sick and saw his critical esteem and public reception deteriorate, leading him to write the touching essays posthumously collected by Edmund Wilson in The Crack‐Up (1945). His view of the psychological and spiritual malaise of modern life in Tender Is the Night he tried to clarify by a revision not published until after his death. He managed to pick up pieces of his life as a motion picture scenarist in Hollywood, about which he wrote his impressive final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), portraying a studio mogul and his industry, a work not completed because of the author's death by heart attack. Afternoon of an Author (1958) collects lesser stories and essays, and The Pat Hobby Stories (1962) are 17 tales, written just before his death, about a Hollywood hack writer down on his luck. A great resurgence of popularity led to several new collections of his magazine contributions, including The Apprentice Fiction (1969), In His Own Time (1971), The Basil and Josephine Stories (1976), and The Price Was High (1979). His correspondence, beyond that in The Crack‐Up, appears in Letters (1963) and As Ever, Scott Fitz‐ (1972). His Poems were collected in 1981.