F. SCOTT FITZGERALD AND JAY GATSBY.

Very few people get to call themselves Irish American with the same level of authority as F. Scott Fitzgerald. His name was actually Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald in honor of his distant cousin who wrote a poem called, The Star Spangled Banner  in 1812. It was later put to music and became the National Anthem of the United States. His father Edward Fitzgerald and his mother Mollie (nee McQuillan) were both born in the United States.

The Fitzgerald family was not rich, but they were comfortable and they could afford to send their young son to prestigious Catholic schools and then on to Princeton University. As a college student, Fitzgerald developed his writing skills by working on a number of publications. Unfortunately however, he did not apply the same amount of zeal to his classes and was put on academic probation. He later dropped out of Princeton and joined the Army to fight in World  War I.

It was this point in his life that gave inspiration to his best known work; The Great Gatsby. While stationed in Alabama Fitzgerald was introduced to Zelda Sayre whom he fell hopelessly in love with and sought to marry. Zelda came from a prominent family in Alabama where her father sat on the State Supreme Court. Despite Fitzgerald's proposals, she made it clear that she would not marry him until he could demonstrate that he was financially able to provide for her. This same dynamic exists in The Great Gatsby where the penniless Gatsby tries to amass a fortune to gain the hand of Daisy.
Fitzgerald was able to convince his beloved that he was more than capable after he sold his first novel, This Side of Paradise to Scribner Publishing.

"Scott" and Zelda became the "It"couple that defined the Jazz Era, but their relationship was just as tragic as the finale of The Great Gatsby. In the end Zelda would suffer from a series of nervous breakdowns and would be institutionalized. Fitzgerald would teeter on poverty as he spent his last penny to see that his wife received the best medical care available. Zelda would eventually die tragically in a fire that consumed the sanitarium that she was in eight years after her husband died of a heart attack in 1940.

For an observation on The Great Gatsby, please read my article in The In Print Review at: http://www.authorshipmedia.com/Newsletter.html 

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This edition contains an interview with Pulitzer Prize nominated author Charles McNair, A review of an important new work by David O'Connell titled; The Art and Life of Atlanta Artist Wilbur G. Kurtz, an analysis of The Great Gatsby comparing the book and its film versions, plus much more.


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