Abstract
Hemingway was the only significant influence for Fitzgerald in his writing career. Fitzgerald highly respected Hemingway’s opinion on his work and often preferred his opinion. Though Hemingway was known to dislike Fitzgerald, he owned all of Fitzgerald’s books and wrote letters to him. A quote from Ernest Hemingway in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald read “A man can be destroyed but not defeated”. I think that Fitzgerald was an accomplished author that never allowed himself to accomplish more due to his alcoholism. Frequently moving to Europe back to the United States, back to Europe may have been good for Fitzgerald allowing him to meet new writers. I am going to write a journal as my original piece and I am going to discuss the trouble with Zelda and with Fitzgerald’s alcoholism. Fitzgerald’s writing career was singularly influenced by Hemingway.
I. History
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the son of Edward and Mary Mcquillan Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was sent east to New Jersey and attended a Catholic prep school, Newman School in Lakewood, New Jersey. Scott was not interested in school, just extracurricular activities at school. In 1913, he attended Princeton where he decided upon a career as a writer of musical comedies. He failed several subjects but managed to survive his freshman year (Eble). Fitzgerald’s literary companions were John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson. Wilson taught Scott more about poetry than all the teachers at Princeton. Princeton provided an outlet for his writing talent and introduced himself to more and better literature. Fitzgerald was diagnosed with malaria but preferred to call it tuberculosis, which allowed Fitzgerald to leave Prince...
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... it but I had success turning my novels into movies. Writing brought me great joy and allowed me to support my family with a career that I loved to do.
V. Conclusion
The only writer who was a significant influence on Fitzgerald’s writing career was Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s opinion was highly respected for Fitzgerald’s work and preferred Hemingway’s opinion often more than any other person’s opinion. Fitzgerald was known to be disliked by Hemingway but they both learned a lot from each other and they were both known to own all of each others’ books. Fitzgerald is known as an accomplished author but I felt that he would have been better if he did not become an alcoholic. As F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, I wrote a journal discussing the problems with Zelda Fitzgerald and the battle with alcoholism. Fitzgerald will be remembered as an icon of the “Roaring Twenties”.
On Wednesday February 12 of 1890 F. Scott Fitzgerald's parents were married in Washington D.C. Six years later on September 24, 1896 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born at his home 481 Laurel Ave. in St. Paul, Minnesota. His two infant older sisters had died from a violent influenza so that by the time Fitzgerald came along Mollie Fitzgerald had become the proverbial nightmare that known as an overprotective mother. Fitzgerald's mother was no traditional mother though, for she was known for her eccentricities. These eccentricities disturbed young Scott's life, "Fitzgerald later described his mother as 'half insane with pathological nervous worry'" (Bruccoli 15), but nothing worried anyone in the family so much as his father's failure to hold down a job. It was because his father lost his job as a wicker furniture manufacturer and salesman the family was forced to move from St. Paul to Buffalo in April of 1898, where his father began work for Proctor and Gamble. In January of 1901 the family moved from Buffalo to Syracuse where Edward had been transferred by his employer and where, on Sunday July 21, 1901 Scott's younger sister Annabel was born. Just two years later the family was back in Buffalo and just five years after that the family had returned to St. Paul and Grandma McQuillan's money.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald, also known under his writer’s name, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is revered as a famous American novelist for his writing masterpieces in the 1920’s and 1930’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about his extravagant lifestyle in America that his wife, Zelda, their friends, and him lived during that era. In fact, a lot of his novels and essays were based off of real-life situations with exaggerated plots and twists. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels were the readers looking glass into his tragic life that resulted in sad endings in his books, and ultimately his own life. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a nice neighborhood, but growing up, he wasn’t privileged.
Fitzgerald was brought up in an upper class family and was highly educated throughout his life. He pursued writing at Princeton University, but was put into academic probation shortly after. Afterwards, he decided to drop out and continue his passion for writing novels and short stories. Fitzgerald then joined the army when his first story was unapproved. Upon his return, he met a southern Alabama belle named Zelda . Since she was a spoiled young lady, she declined Fitzgerald’s proposals, after seeing he had no fortune and had encouraged to firstly seek his fortune of his own. Throughout their life together the rich and adventurous couple maintained a crazy lifestyle filled with extravagant parties all over Europe. That soon ended when Zelda
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most influential writers of modern day society. He holds this title because he wrote about things that drive people's everyday life. He wrote in two different periods that were very significant in the social development of America. These two periods of time symbolized not only the generation that he was writing about, but it also speaks to the present day generation.
Fitzgerald was gaining notoriety. It was said to be a representation of the free lifestyle and relaxed morals of what became known as the "Lost Generation.” This couple “personified the immense lure of the East, of young fame, of dissolution and early death.” (Milford, 2011, p. 6) She was said to be his muse, but there was also talk that he plagiarized much of his writing from her journals. In addition, to inspiring his major heroines, she supplied him with many other memorable lines. “Much has been written on Zelda Fitzgerald as F. Scott Fitzgerald's muse and as a victim of mental illness.” (Grogan, 2015, p.110) Zelda was considered an embodiment of the Jazz Age (1920-1929), and had a very tumultuous, substance abuse filled life with Mr.
Hemingway after Fitzgerald continued to be the man everyone expected him to be, superficially at least. He was famous, adventurous, had affairs with women, and continued to dominate the literary world. In the end, however, these very characteristics brought him into a state of depression that would ultimately defeat him. In the words of Kelly Dupuis, "[Hemingway's] final years were haunted by some of the same ghosts that haunted Fitzgerald: alcoholism, mental illness (in this case his own) and a creeping sense of diminished self-worth"1
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota on September 24, 1896. His parents were Mary McQuillan and Edward Fitzgerald. Francis was the lone son of the couple however they had a daughter named Annabel who was five years younger than Francis. The Fitzgerald’s, who were Catholics, lived an upper-middle class lifestyle (Merriman). Francis attended St. Paul Academy where his writing career began. He penned “The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage” which was a short story that was printed in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. When he was fifteen, his parents sent him to a prestigious catholic school known as Newman School. Incidentally, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged Fitzgerald to pursue a writing career (Biography.com Staff).
Doreski, C. K. "Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1896—1940." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Retrospective Supplement 1. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 97-120. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective quality of my talent, and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James). Fitzgerald had heavy drinking problems and faced many financial failures throughout his life of writing but has proved to be gifted in many ways of writing. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a short story writer, an essayist, and a novelist that was most famous during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Scott kept on her on a short leash like Hemingway had with Hadley, allowing him to live his life in search of party and alcohol, spend frivolously, and still concentrate on his writing. His wife, neglected and chained to the domestic life, was no burden on his conscience. When she fell ill, he put her in a series of mental hospitals and abandoned her, having the most productive years of his writing career, publishing the most stories and earning many royalties. Scott Fitzgerald became an icon, a literary figure of the generation, by appealing to the innermost desires of each flapper girl and man of the era. He wrote about the frivolity of life, love, social structures, and the American Dream, giving insight and his perspective the fragility of relationships, the socioeconomic ladder, and chasing the elusive American Dream. Scott illustrated America through his eyes and placed his stories in the hands of many Americans, inspiring them to not conform, live life to the fullest, and chase an ideal, an intangible future. However, the master of prose, Scott Fitzgerald, could have not achieved his legendary success as a novelist without his right-hand woman, Zelda, his muse, guide, and source of
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a world renowned author, particularly known for his remarkable novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s early life was filled with experiences that shaped him to be the man that he later became. His early life includes his family and his schooling, both of which gave him values and traditions to follow. Fitzgerald’s later life contained hardships, illness and the production of his own family. The factors involved in his later life aided him in composing his most well-known novels with their influence. Lastly, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s list of works is an important aspect in understanding his life and personality. His novels and short stories were all written at various moments in Fitzgerald’s life, while all have the influence of unique factors surrounding his life. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a successful author whose stories have remained universally read and relevant today.
In writing this book, commonly refered to as the “Great American Novel”, F. Scott Fitzgerald achieved in showing future generations what the early twenties were like, and the kinds of people that lived then. He did this in a beautifully written novel with in-depth characters, a captivating plot, and a wonderful sense of the time period.
There was mixed initial reaction to the series of Esquire articles. The major positive initial reaction came from some of Fitzgerald’s old friends and fans, who implored him to both “cheer up, and … keep writing” (Prigozy 178). This response was offset by the troubles Fitzgerald’s literary agent, Harold Ober, soon found the essays created for his client. In the wake of the articles, “not only did [Fitzgerald] appear to be finished as a writer, but his name seemed to evoke shameful aspects of American experience” (Bruccoli 405). As a result, ...
He starts the story as a writer for a newspaper, just making a living by writing stories that the people wanted rather than what he desired to write. Later he begins to showcase all of the friends he met in Paris as many artists like him lived there at the time. Hemmingway has a unique relationship with all of his friends and describes how he felt about them in depth. He gains inspiration from the different styles and opinions of his friends as well as the people and scenery of Paris. The majority of the book is spent with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although a talented writer, Hemmingway mentions Fitzgerald had problems with alcohol. Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, also an alcoholic, almost promotes his drinking and prevents him from being a better writer, and yet he still loves her. By the end of the story, Hemmingway describes his affair as another wealthier woman tempted him. He shows a sort of regret in what he did in being tempted by wealth rather than leading a life of value and