The style & technique of F SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tony Rossiter examines the writer who epitomised the Jazz Age
Tony Rossiter
Now here’s a strange thing. His best known, most highly regarded novel is The Great Gatsby (1925). Yet when F Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, it was not even mentioned in the Time magazine obituary. During his own lifetime he was known mainly as a short story writer, screenwriter and chronicler of the Jazz Age. He achieved real fame as a writer only posthumously. It’s a stark reminder of how literary fashions can change and reputations can ebb and flow.
During his short life (he died at the age of 44) he wrote 164 short stories and four novels (a fifth, unfinished, was published posthumously); and he published four collections of short stories and one collection of essays, letters and notes.
How he began
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s first piece of writing to appear in print was a detective story published in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. He went to a prestigious Catholic prep school in New Jersey and then to Princeton University, where he was a poor student, often missing classes and struggling to achieve pass marks. He joined the University Cottage Club, a dining club dedicated to the ideal of the fashionable gentleman. An indifferent speller, he dedicated his time at Princeton to developing and honing his craft as a writer. He became friends with future critic and writer Edmund Wilson, and wrote for several university magazines and theatre groups. While at Princeton he submitted his first novel (entitled The Romantic Egotist) to the New York publisher Scribners. Although it was rejected, the editor noted its originality, praised the writing and encouraged him to submit more work in the future.