The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Editions. The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald Open Contents Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at http://collegebookshelf.net Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at F Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. http://collegebookshelf.net the “top girl,” in Fitzgerald’s words, of Montgomery, Alabama, youth About the author society. The two were engaged in 1919 and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 200 Claremont Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Working at an advertising firm and Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald writing short stories, Fitzgerald was unable to convince Zelda that he (September 24, 1896-December 21, would be able to support her. She broke off the engagement and 1940), was a Jazz Age novelist. Fitzgerald returned to his parents’ house in St. Paul to revise The Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the Romantic Egotist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, it was accepted by greatest American writers of the 20th Century. The self-styled Scribner’s in the fall of 1919, and Zelda and Scott resumed their spokesman of the “Lost Generation” — the Americans born in the 1890s engagement. It was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the who came of age during World War I — crafted five novels and dozens most popular books of the year, defining the flapper generation. The next of short stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age with week, Scott and Zelda were married in New York’s St. Patrick’s remarkable emotional honesty. His heroes — handsome, confident, and Cathedral. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott “Scottie” doomed — blaze brilliantly before exploding (“Show me a hero,” he once Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921. said, “and I will write you a tragedy”), and his heroines are beautiful and Although Fitzgerald’s passion lay in writing novels, they never sold intricate. well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as He was named for his relative Francis Scott Key, but commonly New York celebrities. To support this lifestyle, he turned to writing short known as simply Scott. Scott Fitzgerald attended Saint Paul Academy stories for such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Summit School in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1908-1911. He then Magazine, and Esquire magazine, and sold movie rights of his stories attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in and novels to Hollywood studios. He was constantly in financial trouble 1911-12. He entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the and often required loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his Class of 1917 and became friends with the future critics and writers editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins. Edmund Wilson ’16 and John Peale Bishop ’17. Saddled with academic The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald’s difficulties throughout his three-year career at the university, Fitzgerald development. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, published in dropped out in 1917 to enlist in the United States Army when America 1922, represents an impressive development over the comparatively entered World War I. However, the war ended quickly thereafter, and he immature This Side of Paradise. The Great Gatsby, which many consider was discharged without having been shipped to Europe. his masterpiece, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald made several famous Certain he was to die in the war and wanting to leave a literary excursions to Europe, notably Paris and the French Riviera during the legacy, Fitzgerald had quickly written a novel entitled The Romantic 20s, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate Egotist while in officer training at Camp Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky, community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway. and Camp Sheridan, Alabama. The novel was praised but rejected by an Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s editor at the publisher to which he submitted it, Charles Scribner’s Sons but was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing in New York. commercial short stories, and the schizophrenia that struck Zelda Sayre While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900-1948), Fitzgerald in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at F Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. http://collegebookshelf.net her life. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland, and Scott rented the “La Paix” estate in the suburb of Towson to work on his book, Contents which had become the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychoanalyst and his wife, Nicole, who is also one of his patients. It was published in 1934 as Tender Is the Night. Critics regard it as one of Fitzgerald’s finest works. Chapter 1. Once again in dire financial straits, Fitzgerald spent the second half Chapter 2. of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts Chapter 3. for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Chapter 4. Last Tycoon, based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg. He and Chapter 5. Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on Chapter 6. the east coast, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham in Chapter 7. Hollywood. Always something of an alcoholic and consequently in poor health Chapter 8. during the late 1930s, Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in late 1940. Chapter 9. He died of the second one on December 21, 1940, in Sheilah Graham’s apartment in Hollywood. Zelda died in a fire at the Highland mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1948. The two are buried in Click on a chapter number in the list Saint Mary’s Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland. above, or, as you are reading, on one of the He never completed The Love of the Last Tycoon. His notes for the numbers at the bottom of the screen to go to novel were edited by his friend Edmund Wilson and published in 1941 the first page of that chapter. as The Last Tycoon. However, there is now critical agreement that Fitzgerald intended the title of the book to be The Love of the Last Note: Tycoon, as is reflected in a new 1994 edition of the book, edited by The best way to read this ebook is in Full Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli of the University of South Screen mode (in Adobe Acrobat, click View, Carolina. FullScreen). In Full Screen View, you can use Page Down to go to the next page, and press Escape to exit the Full Screen View. Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at F Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. http://collegebookshelf.net 1 Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!” Chapter 1. Thomas Parke D’InVilliers. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m in- NOTICE clined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up Copyright © 2004 thewritedirection.net many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of Please note that although the text of this ebook is in the public domain, this pdf edition is a copyrighted publication. not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect FOR COMPLETE DETAILS, SEE and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal COLLEGEBOOKSHELF.NET/COPYRIGHTS Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at F Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. 2 http://collegebookshelf.net 3 person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly chines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impression- griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were ability which is dignified under the name of the “creative tem- unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or perament.”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that readiness such as I have never found in any other person and an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvi- dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed ous suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded ela- hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget tions of men.