Transcript F. Scott Fitzgerald - Reading, Writing, Living

F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE MAN WHO MADE
“THE JAZZ AGE”
The Jazz Age /
The Roaring Twenties
 According to Fitzgerald,
“It was an age of miracles, it
was an age of art, it was an
age of excess, and it was an
age of satire.”
WWI  Boom  Bust
A decade
sandwiched
between two
great heartaches
The Jazz Age
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
 Born in Minnesota

Namesake: Francis Scott Key of the “StarSpangled Banner”
 Published a story in the school paper
at 12, but also got expelled from High
School for neglecting his studies
 At Princeton University, he wrote
musical comedies and left without a
degree
 Enlisted in the Army, but then WWI
ended and he never had to go overseas
Love and Making a Living
 Fell in love with Zelda Sayre
 But he wasn’t rich enough
 So she broke off their
engagement
 When his first novel, This Side
of Paradise, was published with
bestseller status…
 They married the next month.
 Fitzgerald remarked that perhaps he should have
continued writing musicals, but he said, "I am too
much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach
at people in some acceptable form, rather than
entertain them."
The High Life: Living It Up and Putting It Down
 Fitzgerald named “The Jazz Age” and enjoyed it, but
also commented on it, watching and recording his
era with subtle and powerful insight.
 This Side of Paradise (1920)
 The Beautiful and Damned (1921)
 Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
 Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
 The Great Gatsby (1925)
 Tender Is the Night (1934)
About a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients
 Perhaps inspired by Zelda’s ordeal with schizophrenia
 Failed because Americans during the Depression were
not interested in Jazz Age “parties”

 The Love of the Last Tycoon (unfinished b/c
Fitzgerald died)

About Hollywood
 And 160 short stories! (He and Hemingway called
this “whoring” for the magazine industry.)
Fitzgerald’s thematic elements
 Aspiration / idealized ambition
 Success / Failure
 Love / Loss
 Disillusionment
 Mutability (changeability / loss)
The Great Gatsby
 The Epigraph
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!”
--Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
(a character in F’s This Side of Paradise)
Do you Agree or Disagree?
 When one comes by wealth illegally, he or
she is very likely to pay for it in the end.
Do you Agree or Disagree?
 People who live in big East Coast cities are
sophisticated, while people who live in
Midwestern cities are simple and innocent.
Do you Agree or Disagree?
 If you truly love another person long
enough, you will eventually have a life
together.
Do you Agree or Disagree?
 There is no difference between a family that
has been wealthy for generations and one
which was poor until just recently.
 Chapter 1: (a new kind of narrator!)
 The movie: Today or tomorrow
 The characters
 The dream
 http://www.leninimports.com/f_scott_fitzgerald.html
 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/video/ANgrea
tgatsby.html
 http://wwwtc.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/images/fitzger
ald_pic.jpg
 http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XIUfvSXwUhY/Rto1TbnyTuI
/AAAAAAAAAC8/ymcbN_d7HeY/s400/The-Jazz-Age.jpg
 http://bestbooksreview.com/wpcontent/uploads/2009/05/f-scott-fitzgerald-and-hi-001300x180.jpg