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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Serie: The Breaking Down Series
- Sprache: Englisch
A practical guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald's works for middle and secondary students F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and writer best known for his glamourous novels that detailed life in America's Jazz Age--a term which he popularized. Throughout his career, Fitzgerald published four novels, four collections of short stories, and 164 short stories in magazines. His work commonly focused on themes of ambition and loss, money and class, and the promise and disappointment of America and its vaunted dream. In his lifetime, Fitzgerald gained fame for his The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. Today, his works are taught in middle and high school classrooms throughout the United States and worldwide. Breaking Down Fitzgerald provides readers with an overview of Fitzgerald's life and investigates the composition, characters, themes, symbols, language, and motifs in his work and their relation to contemporary society. Author Helen Turner clarifies some essential facts about F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and addresses important themes found in his novels and short stories. As readers explore the literary and cultural context of Fitzgerald's works, they develop a firm appreciation of Fitzgerald's role in modern literature and why he is considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Breaking Down Fitzgerald: * Explains of why Fitzgerald remains one of the great American voices heard around the world * Showcases the multiple genres in Fitzgerald's world * Offers a brief thematic tour through Fitzgerald's novels and short stories * Provides an overview of Fitzgerald's critical reception * Discusses Fitzgerald in contemporary popular culture This book is a primer for younger or new Fitzgerald readers and a welcome addition to the toolbox used by educators, parents, and anyone interested in or studying F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and work.
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Seitenzahl: 204
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Breaking Down Fitzgerald: Introduction
Chapter 1: Fitzgerald's Life
CHILDHOOD AND PRINCETON (1896–1917)
MEETING ZELDA AND EARLY SUCCESS (1918–1924)
THE GREAT GATSBY
AND EUROPEAN TRAVELS (1924–1931)
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
AND “THE CRACK‐UP” (1931–1937)
HOLLYWOOD AND
THE LAST TYCOON
(1937–1940)
FURTHER READING
FURTHER VIEWING
NOTE
Chapter 2: Literary and Cultural Context
THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH
MODERNISM AND A CHANGING LITERARY LANDSCAPE
THE ROARING TWENTIES
THE 1930S AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION
THE UNITED STATES VERSUS EUROPE
CHANGES IN HOLLYWOOD
FURTHER READING
NOTES
Chapter 3: Early Novels:
This Side of Paradise
(1920) and
The Beautiful and Damned
(1922)
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE:
COMPOSITION
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE:
SYNOPSIS
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED:
COMPOSITION
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED:
SYNOPSIS
FURTHER READING
FURTHER VIEWING
NOTE
Chapter 4:
The Great Gatsby
(1925)
COMPOSITION
SYNOPSIS
THEMES
STRUCTURE
MOTIFS
CHARACTERS
FURTHER READING
FURTHER VIEWING
FURTHER LISTENING
NOTE
Chapter 5: Later Novels:
Tender Is the Night
(1934) and
The Last Tycoon
(1941)
TENDER IS THE NIGHT:
COMPOSITION
TENDER IS THE NIGHT:
SYNOPSIS
TENDER IS THE NIGHT:
INTERPRETATIONS
THE LAST TYCOON:
SYNOPSIS
THE LAST TYCOON:
REFLECTIONS ON AN UNFINISHED NOVEL
FURTHER READING
FURTHER VIEWING
Chapter 6: Short Stories and Essays
SHORT STORIES
ESSAYS
FURTHER READING
FURTHER VIEWING
FURTHER LISTENING
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Breaking Down Fitzgerald: Introduction
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
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BREAKING DOWN FITZGERALD
HELEN M. TURNER
Copyright © 2022 by Helen Turner. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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ISBNs: 9781119805328 (paperback),9781119805335 (epub),9781119805342 (ePDF)
COVER ART & DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY
Breaking Down Fitzgerald: Introduction
This guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald has three key purposes. The first is to explore his most famous and most widely studied novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Detailed consideration is given to the novel's composition, motifs, themes, and characters. The second purpose is to engage with other aspects of Fitzgerald's life and work. By contextualizing the text in this manner, students will deepen their understanding and appreciation of the novel. The third goal of this guide is to garner wider interest in Fitzgerald. The majority of students encounter the author for the first time through his most famous novel, but unfortunately, this can also be where engagement with Fitzgerald ends. However, he was a writer for a period of more than twenty years, and during that time he wrote three additional complete novels and an unfinished one, close to two hundred short stories, as well as dozens of essays and magazine articles.
The structure of the book is as follows:
Chapter One
provides an overview of Fitzgerald's life, the details of which read like a novel in themselves.
The second chapter is concerned with important cultural and literary contexts that influenced the writer and his work.
Chapter Three
is focused on Fitzgerald's first two novels,
This Side of Paradise
(1920) and
The Beautiful and Damned
(1922).
Chapter Four
is the longest in the book as it is focused on
The Great Gatsby
(1925). Consideration is given to its composition, major characters, and motifs as well as structure and themes.
In
Chapter Five
attention turns to Fitzgerald's later novels,
Tender Is the Night
(1934) and
The Last Tycoon
(1941).
The final chapter is concerned with the author's short stories and essays.
At the end of each chapter are details for further reading but also further viewing and listening, which opens up Fitzgerald's work and world through a variety of resources in different media.
Before turning attention to the man and his work, it is worth pondering the question: why Fitzgerald? In recent decades there has been a reconsideration of the literary canon. Who is included in the western literary tradition, who has been excluded and—importantly—why? Traditionally it has privileged the narratives of dead white men at the expense of the voices of others. So, does this particular dead white man have something valuable to tell the modern reader? Some of the attitudes he expresses in his fiction and in personal correspondence seem out of step with contemporary values. His depiction of race, gender, and sexuality can at times rely on crude stereotypes. For example, it is impossible to see Meyer Wolfshiem as anything other than a caricature of anti‐Semitic tropes. Many critics have raised concerns about Fitzgerald's depiction of women as they are simultaneously infantilized and held responsible for the frustrations and disappointments of men. His descriptions of black people lack depth and agency.
However, through a close reading of his work, it is possible to see that Fitzgerald's response to a changing world is complex. He inherited the beliefs and attitudes of a Victorian world. However, in the aftermath of the First World War, assumptions about gender, race, and sexuality that previously appeared “correct” or “normal” were brought into question. In his work it is evident that he is wrestling with these changing attitudes, creating ambivalence and at times apparent agreement with both progressive and reactionary views. His description of “three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl” that made Nick laugh “aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled towards us in haughty rivalry” (Fitzgerald 2019, p. 83) is countered with Nick's recognition of there being “something pathetic in his [Tom's] concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more” as Tom attempts to explain his racist theories regarding the collapse of civilization (p. 17).
Fitzgerald was living in a frantic, changing world: a world contending with the aftermath of war, changing social relationships between men and women, bans on alcohol and illicit boozing, new media and entertainment, and a flu pandemic that killed millions. In many respects, it was a time not unlike our own where certainty seems like a concept that will never return. People are bombarded with contrary attitudes and opinions toward sexuality, gender identity, climate change, and public health. There is something familiar in Fitzgerald's life and work in terms of mood if not in the exact detail. He explores the anxieties and excitement of change that we can all understand. He certainly does have something to tell the modern reader.
Chapter 1Fitzgerald's Life
F. Scott Fitzgerald's life has garnered almost as much interest as his most famous novel. At the beginning of his career in the 1920s, he went through extraordinary highs at a time when fame combined with mass media to create celebrity culture. He was talked about in newspapers and magazines as the spokesman of his generation. It was also at this time that the image—both still and moving—became ubiquitous. His good looks and those of his glamorous wife, Zelda, made them an early incarnation of the celebrity couple. The highs could not last, however, and the desperate predicaments that both of them would find themselves in through the course of the 1930s read like a tragedy. He would die in 1940 in Hollywood, aged only forty‐four, but his life began in the Midwest city of St. Paul, Minnesota.
CHILDHOOD AND PRINCETON (1896–1917)
In the popular imagination, F. Scott Fitzgerald is associated with the glamour of New York and the French Riviera in the 1920s, but his roots were firmly planted in the turn of the century Midwest. He was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Edward and Mollie Fitzgerald. The couple represented two alternative traditions of American identity. His maternal line was immigrant Irish; his grandfather had arrived as a child in the United States in the 1840s. Through industry and identifying valuable opportunities, Philip McQuillan amassed a considerable fortune running a wholesale grocery business that would be the income source Fitzgerald's family relied upon through much of his childhood. This financial reliance was the result of Edward owning and then losing a furniture business in 1898 that led to a family move to Buffalo, New York, for employment. This work with Procter & Gamble ended in 1908 and a return to the Midwest and financial dependency followed.
Edward's background contrasted with his wife's in a number of significant ways. He was born in Maryland into a well‐established Southern family whose influence had faded. At the end of the Civil War, Edward had headed north and west, eventually settling in industrial St. Paul, home of railroad magnate James J. Hill. The pull between the self‐made and reinvented idea of American identity and the allure of inherited wealth and social influence his parents represented reveals itself as a tension both in Fitzgerald's life and in his writing.
Throughout his great success in the 1920s, Fitzgerald showed little appreciation for the role his parents had played in the formation of his talent. Remarks about them during this time are either disparaging or pitying. However, Edward was central in passing on a love of literature, particularly in the form of English Romanticism. Fitzgerald's lifelong love of Byron and John Keats specifically can be traced to the influence of his father. He applied a less flattering acknowledgement to his mother, claiming that weaknesses in his character were a direct result of her overindulgence of him in childhood. Her behavior was not entirely surprising when we reflect on the fact that the Fitzgeralds buried three of Scott's siblings in infancy.
Fitzgerald's interest in writing revealed itself early on and a number of his short stories were published in school magazines, first, at the St. Paul Academy, which Fitzgerald attended between 1908 and 1911, and subsequently at the Newman School, where he was a student until 1913. The second institution was vital in Fitzgerald's emotional and creative development as it was here that he met Monsignor Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his artistic leanings. The friendship between the two also led to Fitzgerald flirting with the idea of the priesthood. Fitzgerald would use him as a model for the character Monsignor Darcy in his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920).
Although Fitzgerald was already showing signs of writerly talent by adding playwriting to his short story accomplishments, he did not particularly shine academically. However, university was an expected path for a man of his class to follow and he set his heart on the Ivy League and Princeton. His maternal grandmother's timely death meant that the tuition fees could be met and the threat of the University of Minnesota to save money was removed (Bruccoli 2002, p. 37).
Fitzgerald's time at Princeton was no more academically successful than his school days. However, he made a number of important friends during his time as an undergraduate, including the poet John Peal Bishop, the writer and critic Edmund Wilson, and John Biggs, future judge and—on Fitzgerald's death—executor of his estate. Fitzgerald carried on writing and performing with the university's Triangle Club, as well as contributing to the university magazines Tiger and Nassau Literary Magazine that both Wilson and Bishop were heavily involved in. These creative outlets were the focus of his attention rather than his studies.
The outcome of his haphazard approach to academia was that in 1916, he returned to Princeton to repeat his junior year. By the beginning of the following year, he was making little progress and had little chance of graduating. In April 1917, the United States entered the war, relieving Fitzgerald of having to admit his academic failure or make decisions about his immediate future. By October, he was a commissioned second lieutenant in the infantry stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The following March he was at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama, and had been promoted to first lieutenant. Fitzgerald would not take part in the action of the First World War, which he recognized as the defining experience of his generation, but he was about to experience a life‐changing moment of a different kind. For it was here in Montgomery that he would meet eighteen‐year‐old Zelda Sayre, his future wife.
MEETING ZELDA AND EARLY SUCCESS (1918–1924)
Before his arrival at Fort Sheridan, Fitzgerald had already begun work on the novel that would eventually become This Side of Paradise and an early draft was completed by February 1918. It was submitted to Charles Scribner's Sons publishing house in New York for consideration under the title The Romantic Egotist, but it was rejected in both August and October of that year.
In July, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre at a country club dance in Montgomery. She was beautiful, vivacious, and popular; Fitzgerald was besotted. The path to marriage, however, was not without interruption as Zelda was unable to fully commit to Fitzgerald until she was certain that he could provide for her properly. A handsome soldier and would‐be writer may have had romantic appeal but Zelda, like all women of her class at this time (as well as Fitzgerald's female characters), needed to be practical too. With no means of generating an income for themselves because of the limited opportunities open to them, women needed to take the decision to marry with both the head and the heart. Her lack of faith at this point in the relationship cast a shadow over their marriage that Fitzgerald could never quite escape.
In 1919, having never seen action overseas, Fitzgerald was dismissed from the army. Intent on marrying Zelda, he headed to New York and a role in advertising. He continued to write and submitted a number of short stories to magazines for publication but was unsuccessful. In June, Zelda—unconvinced that Fitzgerald would make a success of his chosen career and conscious that he had no independent wealth—broke their engagement. Fitzgerald was heartbroken but it triggered a series of events that would set him on the path to fame and fortune. He quit his job in advertising, packed his belongings, and once again returned to St. Paul where in the attic of his parents’ home he redrafted his novel in a flurry of activity over the summer months.
In September, Fitzgerald's career as a commercial writer began when The Smart Set magazine accepted “Babes in the Woods” for publication. More good news would follow that month when Scribner's editor Maxwell Perkins accepted the newly renamed This Side of Paradise for publication. The title came from a poem titled “Tiare Tahiti” (1915) by English poet Rupert Brooke, who had perished during the war. The relationship between Perkins and Fitzgerald would be a mainstay of the author's life. Perkins was not only an extraordinary editor; he was also a loyal and remarkable friend who supported Fitzgerald through some of the darkest periods of his life.
Two months later, another professional contact would enter his life and remain a source of emotional, creative, and financial support. Harold Ober was a literary agent who was working for the Paul Revere Reynolds Agency, which specialized in placing short stories in magazines.1 Throughout his lifetime, commercial short stories would be the most reliable income stream for Fitzgerald. Almost as soon as the author signed with the agency, Ober sold his story “Head and Shoulders” to The Saturday Evening Post, which was one of the most widely read periodicals in the country. It was the beginning of a productive relationship between author and publication that was closely guarded by Ober himself. Over the following months into 1920, a series of Fitzgerald stories was sold to a number of magazines.
On a personal level, things were also on the up. The engagement between Zelda and Fitzgerald resumed in January 1920, as the author's career began to take shape. Within a few months Fitzgerald found himself a published author when This Side of Paradise was published on March 26. The first print run of 3,000 copies priced at $1.75 sold out in an astonishing three days and it went on to sell close to 50,000 copies. Just over a week after publication, on April 3, Fitzgerald and Zelda married in a low‐key ceremony in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Fitzgerald found himself newly married, newly rich, and newly famous. The couple embraced their new life and the freedom that money brought. Parties and excessive drinking were routine. Toward the middle of the year, they rented a house in Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald hoped he would be more productive; it was here that he started his next novel The Beautiful and Damned (1922) that drew heavily on the early days of the Fitzgeralds’ marriage.
Over the next few years, the couple moved regularly with periods spent in St. Paul, New York, and finally Great Neck on Long Island. Despite their somewhat chaotic lives, Fitzgerald published a number of his most significant short stories during this time, such as “May Day” (1920) and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1920), as well as “The Diamond as Big as The Ritz” and “Winter Dreams,” both published in 1922. A collection of stories appeared in 1920 titled Flappers and Philosophers followed by Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). A third collection of stories would appear more than a decade later, titled Taps at Reveille (1935). However, The Beautiful and Damned's publication in 1922 did not have the same impact either commercially or critically as its predecessor. In the midst of the writing and the partying, the couple's only child—a girl—was born on October 26, 1921, and named for her father: Frances Scott Fitzgerald. She went by Scottie throughout her life. During this period Fitzgerald returned to his previous love of the theatre by writing a play, The Vegetable (1923); however, it failed to impress during a pre‐Broadway run in Atlantic City and, although published, it has garnered little attention from scholars.
This period of early success is also marked by the beginning of a problem that would haunt Fitzgerald throughout the remainder of his life and contribute considerably to his death, namely his alcoholism. His heavy drinking probably became a physical and psychological addiction by his mid‐twenties at the latest. It interfered with Fitzgerald's work patterns as did Zelda's need for amusement. An intelligent and curious woman, her need for interests outside of her marriage saw her eventually turning toward artistic pursuits of her own. Alongside writing herself she would—at different times in her life—also explore ballet and painting.
By 1924, Fitzgerald was desperate to break the cycle of having to write short stories to sell them in order to fund a lifestyle that was indulgent and financially reckless. In an attempt to save money, the couple decided to take advantage of the dollar‐franc exchange rate and spend time in Europe. The goal was that Fitzgerald could work uninterrupted on his next novel. Therefore, in the middle of April 1924, the Fitzgeralds were ready to set sail to France and new adventures.
THE GREAT GATSBY AND EUROPEAN TRAVELS (1924–1931)
After their transatlantic crossing, the Fitzgeralds spent just over a week in Paris where they found a suitable nanny for Scottie before heading down to the Riviera. By June they were settled in the Villa Marie in St Raphaël. Fitzgerald began in earnest the writing of his next novel, which he hoped would be a considerable departure from his commercial fiction and would be sustained by a developed artistic vision. Writing to Max Perkins shortly before their departure to Europe, Fitzgerald reflected on the time that he had wasted in the previous two years. He also articulated his hopes for his new book. It was not to be concerned with “trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world. So I tread slowly and carefully + at times in considerable distress. The book will be a consciously artistic achievment [sic] + must depend on that as the 1st books did not” (Fitzgerald 1994, p. 67).
