About F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24, 1896, named after his distant cousin Francis Scott Key (who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner"). From the start, Fitzgerald existed between worlds: his family had social pretensions but little money. His mother's family had money but his father's side had lost it. This tension—between appearance and reality, aspiration and achievement—would define his life and his writing. At Princeton, Fitzgerald focused more on writing for theatrical productions and the humor magazine than on academics. He left in 1917 without graduating, joining the army as WWI ended. At an army camp in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a beautiful Southern belle from a prominent family. She wouldn't marry him until he proved he could support her. This rejection drove Fitzgerald to write This Side of Paradise (1920), which became an instant bestseller. Zelda married him a week after publication. Like Gatsby buying a mansion to win Daisy, Fitzgerald wrote a novel to win Zelda. Unlike Gatsby, it worked—for a while. The Fitzgeralds became Jazz Age celebrities. They threw legendary parties, drank prohibited alcohol, spent money faster than he could earn it, and embodied the reckless glamour of the 1920s. Fitzgerald was documenting the era from inside it, which gave his writing authenticity other writers lacked. But it also meant he was living the lifestyle that was destroying him, which he recognized but couldn't stop. The Great Gatsby (1925) captured this contradiction perfectly: beautiful prose describing beautiful people doing ugly things. When The Great Gatsby was published, it sold poorly—only about 20,000 copies. Reviews were mixed. Critics called it trivial, a minor work. Fitzgerald was disappointed. He'd written what he considered his best work, and America didn't care. The book went out of print. He spent the 1930s writing Hollywood scripts to pay for Zelda's psychiatric care (she had schizophrenia and spent years institutionalized). He drank heavily. His career seemed over. His marriage was destroyed. He was forgotten. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at age 44. Obituaries misspelled his name. The New York Times mentioned he "had a brief success" in the 1920s. His last royalty check was $13.13. He told his daughter Scottie, "I wish I was a great writer." He died believing he'd failed. The Great Gatsby was forgotten. He never knew what happened next. After Fitzgerald's death, World War II began. The Armed Services Edition distributed 150,000 copies of The Great Gatsby to soldiers. They loved it. When they came home, they taught it in universities. By the 1960s, it was required reading in high schools nationwide. Now it sells 500,000 copies annually and is considered the Great American Novel. The book Fitzgerald died thinking was a failure became immortal. He wrote about a man reaching for a green light he'd never grasp, and that man was partly himself—reaching for literary recognition that came only after he was gone. His writing style influenced generations. The stripped-down prose, the symbolic density, the unreliable narrator, the geographic metaphors—these became tools for American writers from Hemingway to Salinger to contemporary novelists. He proved American English was worthy of high literature. He showed that you could write about jazz and bootleggers and still create art. He captured an era so perfectly that we still call the 1920s "the Jazz Age" (his term). The irony of Fitzgerald's life mirrors Gatsby's: both chased dreams that destroyed them. Gatsby wanted Daisy and died alone. Fitzgerald wanted to be a great writer and died thinking he'd failed. Both men built their identities on reaching for something just out of grasp. Both died too young, having paid what Nick calls "a high price for living too long with a single dream." The difference is that Gatsby's dream died with him, while Fitzgerald's dream came true—he just wasn't alive to see it. Understanding Fitzgerald's life helps you read The Great Gatsby with more complexity. He wasn't an outsider criticizing wealth; he was inside it, participating in the excess while seeing its corruption. He loved Zelda like Gatsby loved Daisy, and it destroyed him like it destroyed Gatsby. He wrote about the impossibility of recapturing the past while spending his life trying to recapture his early success. The book isn't just fiction—it's autobiography disguised as critique. When Nick says "you can't repeat the past," Fitzgerald knew it from experience. When Gatsby dies reaching for something that was never really there, Fitzgerald was writing his own future. He just didn't know it yet.