FScottFitzgerald

• Personal Life** //**"Give me a hero and I'll** **write you a tragedy"**//, said the sophisticated author by the name of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, was born September 24, 1896 in St.Paul, Minnesota. Fitzgerald began his worthy career of success by attending [|Princeton University] for four years, although he departed from the school before graduating to join the army during World War I. Fitzgerald wrote several novels and screenplays. Fitzgerald's father was fired from his job, and since that incident, he kept in mind that he would not be a failure like his father. He was able to attend all the right prep schools due to his mother's wealthy family. Fitzgerald always felt as if an outsider amongst all the other rich children, although the fact still stand that his special gift of writing he developed helped him fit in.
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In 1913, he was given the honors to be a rising student at Princeton University. He embarked on his long journey to writing by wrote for the university's magazine and he joined the //**Tragedy Club, which was a theatrical group.**// During college he dated Genevral King, meaning a "Golden Girl", whom all the boys longed for. Genevral King's father told Fitzgerald "//Poor boys dont marry rich girls."// In 1917 Scott entered WWI the same time the United States did, by joining the army. In 1918 he was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Alabama. While stationed in Alabama he met a young lady by the name of Zelda Sayre, who was not the typical woman, she had all the opposite characteristics of a sweet and perserved lady. Zelda was wild, she drinked, smoked and drove men to distraction. Fitzgerald later proposed to Zelda, but the plan to marry her failed, she called off the engagement due to his weekly salary of $35.00 working as a copywriter, and she figured he didn't have what it took to support her life lifestyle.

As Fitzgerald began working as a screenwriter in 1937, he began dating Shelia Graham. Due to his alcohol being an active role in his life, he earned a bad repuation amongst many, and had trouble getting work. His wife Zelda was in and out of mental hospital repeatdly, and his career was drastically declining, therefore his drinking became more intense and a habit. When Fitzgerald died December 21, 1940, of a massive heart atttack, few attended his funeral, and he was buried in Rockville, Maryland. For the next continuing 8 years Zelda was still in and out of mental hospitals, she tragically died in a fire in 1948, while committed to HIghland Hospital located in Asheville, North Carolina.

Remembering the fact that Zelda did not want to marry Fitzgerald, at age 23 he became an instant celebrity-and Zelda all of the sudden had experienced a change of heart. Scott and Zelda became the most known famous couple during the era of the 1920s. In 1937, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. • Major works During the year of 1920, Fitzgerald returned to his parents' home in St.Paul, Minnesota to write his first novel, tilted " **This side of Paradise."** Fitzgerald wrote the following novel to encounter and capture the hopes and fears of the post-war generation and the novel became a big success. To support his lifestyle and Zelda's, Fitzgerald wrote short stories for magazines like //Saturday Evening Post and Esquire.// In the year of 1922, Scott published his 2nd novel **"The Beautiful and Damned."** In the following year of 1924, as Fitzgerald and Zelda began to experience problems in their marriage, so they made a decision to move to Europe whre the began working on the book we read as a class **"The Great Gatsby",** which was published in 1925, but failed to sell. 1934-He published his 4th novel "Tender is the Night", the novel's subject matter was outdated, which caused it never to reach reader hands. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack, and left one novel unfinished called the **"The Last Tycoon."** His books were out of print and he was relatively unknown, which is not too good. During the 1950s readers rediscovered his book and critics counted him among the best American authors. The 1920s was a time of extravagance, and Fitzgerald called it the Jazz Age. He believed writing novels was what he had done best. Fitzgerald became very appealing to female readers because he was intrested in love, desire, and domestic life. Faith in his own work kept Fitzgerald writing despite personal hardships and tragedies.
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 * Note: on his 40th birthday in 1936 The New York Post called him "a pathetic has-been who had squandered his talent."**
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