Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24th 1896 - December 21st 1940) is a American writer , born with Saint Paul (Minnesota). Leader of the lost Generation and moving representative by the Era of the Jazz , he is also that which launches the career of Ernest Hemingway. Married to Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, which published a novel ( Accordez me this waltz ; Save Me The Waltz ), and was a source of constant inspiration. Together, they had a girl, Frances, which they called “Scottie”.

Life and work

Francis Scott Fitzgerald is born in 1896 in a family from the lower middle class from Saint Paul. His/her parents appearing unable to satisfy its intellectual appetite and its needs for glory, Scott will always consider them with contempt. In 1917, it is however at the price of important financial sacrifices that Mollie and Edward reach the whims of their son, and accept to send it in one of the very best universities of the country: Princeton. The Scott young person was going to know his first great disillusions there.

Indeed, its claim and its immaturity quickly exclude it from the pitiless student's company whereas its efforts to integrate the football team of the university appear vain (this failure will mark it all its life). It is only at the time of its second year in the New Jersey that the future writer manages to be made friends, as well as a place in the newspapers of the university. Accompanied by Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop, Scott takes part thus in the writing of a musical comedy of the Princeton Triangle Club and offers its feather to the humorous magazine Princeton Tiger and to the Nassau Literary Magazine … Reste that Butler, Byron, Coleridge and Keats becomes quickly too invading. Scott neglects its studies with the profit of poetry. Soon, it leaves Princeton. Without the diploma.

At the time, it is the army which is most capable to carry out its dreams of glory. It engages in 1917, to the entry in war of the United States at the time of the First World War and, in June 1918, is sent there has Camp Sheridan, meadows of Montgomery (Alabama), as a second lieutenant. They is there that it falls in love with the eccentric Zelda Sayre, eighteen years but already full with spirit. With an aim of conquering it, he writes the outline of what will be its first novel: the Romantic Egotist . Rejected twice by Maxwell Perkins, it is finally accepted in July 1919 under the title of the Towards Paradise (This Side Of Paradise), and appears in bookstore on March 26th, 1920. In spite of obvious gaps, the novel is an enormous success, and makes of its author the representative of a whole generation, that of the Era of the Jazz . The financial repercussions make it possible the writer to marry Zelda. Like many their compatriots, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and his wife decide to benefit from the strong dollar and emigrate then in France (with Paris ( Montmartre ) and on the Riviera mainly). It is there that after The Beautiful and Damned (the Happy ones and Damnés), he writes its first large novel, The Great Gatsby (Gatsby the Splendid one), of which he makes read the manuscript with Ernest Hemingway with the terrace of the Closerie of the Lilacs , a brewery of Montparnasse; and the young journalist of then is enthusiastic. Maxwell Perkins, of the editions Scribner' S (which publish Fitzgerald since its beginnings), also, moreover: enchanted by the style of the writer, it starts to dream of a great destiny for the novel. With the setting on sale of Gatsby Splendid the , in April 1925, in spite of good criticisms, the sales however do not take off.

Although that hardly satisfies the writer, Fitzgerald is thus forced to continue to write news. Since the Saturday Evening Post (and other newspapers) still buys to him at ransom price, him and his wife can continue their escapades - bets mild nutters (Zelda wondering what a barman contains, they try one day to cut out one with the saw of them!) and cooked several weeks, mainly. But the last years of the writer are very difficult. After the adventure of Zelda with Jozan, a French aviator met on Riviera, Francis Scott becomes intolerable. And its success (though very relative commercially) Zelda relegates to a secondary role in total contradiction with its nature. Its attempts to reach the celebrity - painting, dance, literature - are méritoires but appear vain, and its schizophrenia appears. Between the visits with its wife (Fitzgerald makes intern Zelda in Switzerland, then with Asheville (North Carolina); always in the best private clinics), its own alcoholism, the psychological depressions and the money worries (to read the collection of news: the Crack ; and tearing it new same name), Francis Scott Fitzgerald arrives however - at the end of nine years! - to write Tendre is the night , looked today like its masterpiece. But the best books of Fitzgerald are those which are sold the least best, and this one does not make exception. It is in misery that Francis Scott Fitzgerald dies in Hollywood in 1940, whereas he follows the hated occupation of scenario writer. He leaves the promising fort Dernier Nabob (The Last Tycoon) unfinished. His wife dies a few years later in the fire which devastates the sanatorium of Asheville, where it is interned.

Time made of Fitzgerald moving it incarnation by the wasted and misunderstood talent. Of alive sound, the critics often saw in its novels only the reflection of the carefree life of their author, passing through their great tragic force. Capacity of Scott Fitzgerald to collect the moment, to define the atmospheres, in the visual and highly lyric style which is clean for him - all in all: its genius - is fully recognized today. $$

Novels

• the Back of the paradise ( This Side off Paradise ), Scribner' S Sounds 1920

• the happy ones and damnés ( The Beautiful and Damned ), Scribner' S Sounds 1922
• Gatsby splendid the ( The Great Gatsby ), Scribner' S Sons 1925
• Tendre is the night ( Tender is the Night ), Scribner' S Sons 1934
• the last nabob ( The Last Tycoon ) - unfinished, published in 1941, by Scribner' S Sons

He is also the author of very many news, of some tests (gathered in My Lost City ), of a play ( the Vegetable ) and of a collection of poems ( Thousand and one ships ). Among its most known news appear a large Diamond as Ritz ( has Diamond ace big ace the Ritz ), the Crack ( The ace-up ) and the rich Boy ( The Rich servant boy ).

Some quotations

• the mark of an intelligence of foreground is that it is able to be fixed on two contradictory ideas without to lose the possibility of functioning. However one should for example be able to include/understand that the things are without hope and to be determined to change them. it Fêlure
• I gave up my capacity to hope on the small roads which led to the sanatorium of Zelda - Notebooks
• the life is naturally a process of demolition - the Crack
• In the truly black night of the heart, it is always, day after day, three hours of the morning - the Crack
• Thirty years - ten years promise of loneliness, of a list of unmarried friends which will go only in slimming, of a reserve of energy which will be only being impoverished, of hair which will be only being cleared up. But Jordan was beside me. Contrary to Daisy, it was enough wise not to be encumbered, of age in age, forgotten dreams. When the car engaged on the bridge, its face was posed against my shoulder with lassitude, and the thirty years by-effect calmed down under the calm pressure of its hand. And in the twilight which brought a little freshness to us, we rolled towards death. - Gatsby Splendid the
• Gatsby believed in the green light, in extatic the future which year by year moves back in front of us. It has escaped us! What imports! Tomorrow we will run more quickly, our arms will further extend… And a beautiful morning… Thus we advance, boats fighting against a current which unceasingly rejects us towards the past - Gatsby Splendid the
• supreme wisdom is to have enough large dreams not to lose sight of the fact them while they are continued.
• I am the product of a spirit which does not know what he wants in a generation worries - Dick Diver in Tendre is the Night

Others

Cinema

• Gatsby Splendid the was adapted to the big screen with four recoveries. The most famous adaptation is that of Jay Clayton, (1973). Robert Redford plays the part of Jay Gatz and Mia Farrow that of Daisy. Francis Ford Coppola takes part in the scenario.

• Tendre is the night was adapted to the cinema in 1962 ( Tendre is the night ). Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones plays the Others.

• Elia Kazan turned the Last Nabob (1976), with a casting joining together Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis and Robert Mitchum. The dialogs were adapted by Harold Pinter.

• Francis Scott Fitzgerald, as a scenario writer, took part itself in the writing of the scenario of Gone With The Wind , the film of Victor Fleming (1939).

Biographies

• Francis Scott Fitzgerald inspired with Budd Schulberg the main character of its novel: Disillusioned the .

• Si of many biographies of Francis Scott Fitzgerald exists, that of Matthew Bruccoli refers. It is available out of pocket (Francis Scott Fitzgerald - a certain epic size, Editions of the Roundtable).

Bonds

The university of South Carolina has a very rich Internet site (in English) devoted to Francis Scott Fitzgerald. One finds there in particular many photographs, as well as an exhaustive bibliography.

Simple: F. Scott Fitzgerald Zh-min-nan: F. Scott Fitzgerald