Thursday, April 7, 2016

F = FITZGERALD, F. Scott, Author - A-Z Blog Tour 2016

You've heard of the jazzy 1920s, when Flappers were dancing in clubs and college men wore raccoon coats. Fitzgerald was in Paris with Hemingway and other authors of the expatriate community. 


F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1921, PD


F = Fitzgerald, F. Scott, Author
Theme = Authors A2Z


Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, born September 24, 1896 and died from a heart attack December 21, 1940, was an American novelist who also wrote short stories. His works are paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century and a member of the Lost Generation of the 1920s. 

He finished four novels This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. A fifth novel The Love of the Last Tycoon was unfinished. 

The Romantic Egoist, recast as This Side of Paradise, a semi-autobiographical account of Fitzgerald's undergraduate years at Princeton. His revised novel was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919 and was published on March 26, 1920 and became an instant success, It launched Fitzgerald's career as a writer and provided a steady income. Fitzgerald and Zelda were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.

Paris in the 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, mostly Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway, however, did not get on well with Zelda,





Fitzgerald, an alcoholic since college, became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, undermining his health by the late 1930s. He did have recurring tuberculosis, and suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrhage."

The last years of Fitzgerald's life and his affair with Sheilah Graham, the Hollywood gossip columnist, was the theme of the movie Beloved Infidel (1959) based on Graham's 1958 memoir by the same name. 


Portrayals of Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald and Zelda in Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald appear alongside Ernest Hemingway, Hadley Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound in the novel The Paris Wife by Paula McLain 

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons was the basis for a 2008 film.

Fitzgerald's own life from 1937 to 1940 was dramatized in Beloved Infidel.

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The books I have read and reviewed: Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon, This Side of Paradise.

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Have you read any of the books mentioned here by Fitzgerald or any books about him? 

Please leave a comment so I know you were here, and I'll respond. Thanks for dropping by!

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A to Z Challenge

It's April again and time for the 2016 Blogging from A to Z challenge  This is my 4th year participating in the challenge! (Previous A to Z  posts at the top of my blog page tabs are: Art A-Z, French Faves, Paris, Etc. 

Thanks to originator Lee (Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out), and the co-hosts and co-host teams who make the challenge run smoothly. See the list of participants, and other important information at the A to Z Blog site.  The basic idea is to blog every day in April except Sundays (26 days). On April 1st, you begin with the letter A, April 2 is the letter B, and so on. Posts can be random or use a theme.

The Badge

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References

Photograph of F. Scott Fitzgerald c. 1921
This media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. "The World's Work",

PD = Public Domain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald Wiki on Fitzgerald.

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