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Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts of Lake Forest, Princeton, and Hollywood--places that left an indelible mark on his worldview.
In this comprehensive biography, Brown reexamines Fitzgerald's childhood, first loves, and difficult marriage to Zelda Sayre. He looks at Fitzgerald's friendship with Hemingway, the golden years that culminated with Gatsby, and his increasing alcohol abuse and declining fortunes which coincided with Zelda's institutionalization and the nation's economic collapse.
Placing Fitzgerald in the company of Progressive intellectuals such as Charles Beard, Randolph Bourne, and Thorstein Veblen, Brown reveals Fitzgerald as a writer with an encompassing historical imagination not suggested by his reputation as "the chronicler of the Jazz Age." His best novels, stories, and essays take the measure of both the immediate moment and the more distant rhythms of capital accumulation, immigration, and sexual politics that were moving America further away from its Protestant agrarian moorings. Fitzgerald wrote powerfully about change in America, Brown shows, because he saw it as the dominant theme in his own family history and life.
In this comprehensive biography, Brown reexamines Fitzgerald's childhood, first loves, and difficult marriage to Zelda Sayre. He looks at Fitzgerald's friendship with Hemingway, the golden years that culminated with Gatsby, and his increasing alcohol abuse and declining fortunes which coincided with Zelda's institutionalization and the nation's economic collapse.
Placing Fitzgerald in the company of Progressive intellectuals such as Charles Beard, Randolph Bourne, and Thorstein Veblen, Brown reveals Fitzgerald as a writer with an encompassing historical imagination not suggested by his reputation as "the chronicler of the Jazz Age." His best novels, stories, and essays take the measure of both the immediate moment and the more distant rhythms of capital accumulation, immigration, and sexual politics that were moving America further away from its Protestant agrarian moorings. Fitzgerald wrote powerfully about change in America, Brown shows, because he saw it as the dominant theme in his own family history and life.
424 pages, Hardcover
Published May 22, 2017
42 people are currently reading
309 people want to read
About the author
David S. Brown
26 books24 followersDavid Scott Brown is Horace E. Raffensperger professor of history at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, United States. He graduated from Wright State University in 1990 and earned a master's degree from the University of Akron in 1992. He completed his Ph.D. in 1995 at the University of Toledo. Brown joined Elizabethtown College in 1997, after previously teaching at the University of Toledo, Washtenaw Community College, and Saginaw Valley State University. He was named Raffensperger Professor in 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
September 15, 2017
Upon graduation from Princeton University Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, the future author of classic novels capturing the culture of American youth, looked to begin his writing career, however America was entering World War I. He became an officer, receiving low marks from his men and remained stateside through Armistice. I found it interesting that future author known for chronicling his generation through novels was very saddened believing he missed out on experiencing the greatest adventure of his generation, which was serving in combat on the front lines in France. Both of my grandfathers were among Fitzgerald’s generation and actively served on the Western Front. Had Fitzgerald witnessed the Great War first hand his lifestyle, perception and writing may have changed, but likely not. Following the war, like most military men, Fitzgerald got married and his life with Zelda although full of turmoil, offered much writing material.
Fitzgerald was constantly swimming upstream trying his best to fit into a select higher echelon of society. He was a “functioning alcoholic”, and like many creative artists, musicians and writer’s he possessed the belief that performing under a few drinks (for others alternative drugs) enhanced his creativity. He was keenly aware the grasp drinking had on his craft noting: “A short story can be written on a bottle, but for a novel you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the whole pattern of your head and ruthlessly sacrifice the sideshows as Ernest did in “A Farewell to Arms”. His writings were not autobiographical, but certainly exposed many of his experiences and insecurities. True to his socialistic roots Fitzgerald spent money at ease, never accumulating wealth, as he constantly partied trying to live the lavish life of the privileged ultra-rich. During the roaring 20’s prohibition he once stated: “He [your host] displays his liquor as he used to display his new car or his wife’s jewels”.
Like other artists in future generations (especially the 60’s decade) the pleasure seeker lived life as a constant party until burning out at age 44. I found this rather sad.
I mainly read non-fiction, but I plan to read and revisit a few of Fitzgerald’s novels, which although classics, tend to average below 4 stars.
Fitzgerald was constantly swimming upstream trying his best to fit into a select higher echelon of society. He was a “functioning alcoholic”, and like many creative artists, musicians and writer’s he possessed the belief that performing under a few drinks (for others alternative drugs) enhanced his creativity. He was keenly aware the grasp drinking had on his craft noting: “A short story can be written on a bottle, but for a novel you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the whole pattern of your head and ruthlessly sacrifice the sideshows as Ernest did in “A Farewell to Arms”. His writings were not autobiographical, but certainly exposed many of his experiences and insecurities. True to his socialistic roots Fitzgerald spent money at ease, never accumulating wealth, as he constantly partied trying to live the lavish life of the privileged ultra-rich. During the roaring 20’s prohibition he once stated: “He [your host] displays his liquor as he used to display his new car or his wife’s jewels”.
Like other artists in future generations (especially the 60’s decade) the pleasure seeker lived life as a constant party until burning out at age 44. I found this rather sad.
I mainly read non-fiction, but I plan to read and revisit a few of Fitzgerald’s novels, which although classics, tend to average below 4 stars.
May 27, 2017
This latest bio of F. Scott Fitzgerald deftly weaves a tapestry of history and literature to create an eloquently sympathetic narrative. There was so much more to Fitzgerald than just a mere chronicler of Jazz Age exuberance, for his was an all-American tale full of great talent that became somewhat ironically tarnished by the "American Dream." Simply a great book that will surely be appreciated by Fitzgerald admirers!
June 6, 2017
A brand new critical biography of the twentieth century writer. This biography analyzes the influence and events of Fitzgerald's life on his short stories and novels, so it's a wonderful treasure trove for the literary student. If you're looking for just a regular account of his life, you're better off with Some Sort of Epic Grandeur by Matthew Bruccoli or Scott Fitzgerald by Andrew Turnbull.
March 5, 2020
(3.5 Stars) (Audiobook) Sometimes, when you read the biographies of writers, it can be a tough balance of analyzing the author's life and their literary works. In some respects, they are intertwined to the point that life is in writing and vice-versa. However, where this biography is concerned, it feels more like a detailed literary analysis with some mentions of the life of the author thrown in for good measure. Such is the case with Brown's Paradise Lost. It goes in to a lot of detail about the various writings and inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald for his works, from the earliest short stories to the final, unfinished novel. It does attempt to analyze the life of the man, but the descriptions of the man can get lost in the shuffle to analyze the writing. While some literary criticism is expected in any work talking about a writer, this one seemed to be more literary criticism and less biography.
Not that the analysis is bad. It is in-depth, bordering on academic, but the writing has enough interest to keep it from devolving into a mere academic literary analysis. There is much to learn about the man who arguably did much to shape how history views the Jazz Age and the man who may have written what most consider the greatest American novel in history (The Great Gatsby). Yet, Fitzgerald was a flawed figure. His alcoholism and living to excess is legendary, even for his time, but Brown does a decent job balancing fact from myth. He offers insight into inspirations, to include his historical ties to Maryland and Francis Scott Key (a distant relation).
All in all, it is a decent work, one that a Fitzgerald fan would enjoy. If you don't care for any of Fitzgerald works in the slightest, then you probably won't get much out of this work, and this may not inspire you to read them. If you like or respect Fitzgerald's work, then this would be a work that would inspire you to read or re-read some of those works again.
Not that the analysis is bad. It is in-depth, bordering on academic, but the writing has enough interest to keep it from devolving into a mere academic literary analysis. There is much to learn about the man who arguably did much to shape how history views the Jazz Age and the man who may have written what most consider the greatest American novel in history (The Great Gatsby). Yet, Fitzgerald was a flawed figure. His alcoholism and living to excess is legendary, even for his time, but Brown does a decent job balancing fact from myth. He offers insight into inspirations, to include his historical ties to Maryland and Francis Scott Key (a distant relation).
All in all, it is a decent work, one that a Fitzgerald fan would enjoy. If you don't care for any of Fitzgerald works in the slightest, then you probably won't get much out of this work, and this may not inspire you to read them. If you like or respect Fitzgerald's work, then this would be a work that would inspire you to read or re-read some of those works again.
October 30, 2021
Review title: Contextual biography
David Brown's biography of the historian and Adams' family descendant The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams and the Stewart O'Nan novelization of F. Scott Fitzgerald's last years West of Sunset brought me to....this biography of Fitzgerald by Brown. First I read O'Nan's story, which inspired me to learn more about the real biography of Fitzgerald. Then I read Brown's Adams biography because I have always been fascinated by both his writing and his position as the last public figure of the Adams family dynasty in decline. Then, while searching for a good biography of Fitzgerald, I found Brown's earlier biography, with an additional connection in true catholic reader fashion: Brown highlights the convergence of the two authors' criticisms of the trend of history in the turn to the 20th century, along with Fitzgerald's claim that he met the older Adams as a young boy (despite the lack of historical documentation).
In Paradise Lost, Brown tells the story of Fitzgerald's life by showing how his fiction both reflected and shaped the cultural, moral, and political mores of his times: the Jazz Age progression from young flappers in his first novel This Side of Paradise to disillusioned social climbers in his best-known The Great Gatsby, the early descent to mid-life crises in Tender is the Night (considered by some critics his best novel), and the literally dying cry of a burned-out creative husk of the artist in the posthumously published The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald's writings have always been recognized as extremely autobiographical, but Brown shows his skill as at the same time an observer, reflector, and shaper of the world he described.
The biography within the context is that of a boy and then a man always on the outside looking in. Born in 1896, from his father's side he inherited gentleman-farmer poverty with a southern sensitivity to class and the "Lost Cause", while from his mother's side in Minnesota he learned the 20th century ethos of capitalist striving for financial and social success; throughout his life he never fit in either world,
As a struggling artist failed out of Princeton trying to make a living and establish a career based on his writing, Fitzgerald (the F. Scott coming from his father's distant relationship to the writer of the "Star Spangled Banner") met flighty Alabama belle Zelda, who withheld her hand in marriage until he sold his first writings and proved himself marriage-worthy. When his first novel became a best seller, with their marriage in 1920 they inaugurated the roaring decade as America's foremost and one of its first celebrity couples.
Just over a decade later, after the years of alcohol abuse and very public spats stressed fragile psyches leaving Zelda resident in a string of psychiatric wards and Scott in and out of rehab resorts, he wrote bitterly, belittlingly, and unfairly to one of her caregivers "My God, my books made her a legend and her single intention . . . is to make me a non-entity." (p. 220).
This sad image, Brown writes, is unfortunately the impression left by many biographers focused on their sad and sensational story; by focusing on the bibliographic and cultural context, he restores depth and significance to both the life and work of Fitzgerald. While often remembered as the glitzy documentarian and popularizer of the superficial Jazz Age lifestyle of get rich quick, live life fast, and forget about tomorrow, Fitzgerald actually looked backward to the 19th century for his stress on morality, class, and decency. The modern dominance of money as the measure of success and the struggle for money as the only worthwhile metric of success was a sad distortion of the real America dream.
The very same day I read this page my news and email feeds alerted me to evidence that a century later the same fractures between conservative morality and financial striving for success measured in dollars and power not only still exist but have intensified:
--What was once governance by law is now attempted coercion by power and force (What Really Happened and What Now). In this editorial in my local Pittsburgh newspaper, the editor (who wrote an editorial in support of Trump's reelection on Election Day 2020) describes why the events of January 6 posed "an existential threat to our system of government. This is not only because Mr. Trump’s is a toxic, disorderly and unstable mind", but because his actions were intended to subvert the Constitutional order of government which has formed the basis of our freedom, prosperity, morality, and yes, our civic religion.
--What was once religion and theology are now power and politics (The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart). Those who call themselves capital-C political Conservatives are quick to identify America as a Christian nation, converting a civic religion into a ruling religion of political power. Those who call themselves capital-C Christians are the strongest supporters of Trump despite his un-Christlike beliefs, words, and actions, resulting in the break-ups in churches described in this article.
--What was once cultural is now political and governance (Maryland's three western counties want to secede to West Virginia). Growing up in the most distant of those three rural counties at the western tip of Maryland, I often thought that a triangle drawn from Cumberland in that state, Morgantown in West Virginia, and Pittsburgh would form a culturally distinct and consistent region, one that quite apart from politics and power could agree on pop (not soda), small-town lifestyles, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Now, sadly I learned from this story that local Republican politicians want to join to West Virginia for purely political power that would gladly shatter that cultural distinctive for political power.
As a small-c conservative, a born-again Christian, and a farm-raised boy who had lived most of his live in that rural Appalachian triangle, these three articles drove home that Fitzgerald was right: the pursuit of power and financial success unanchored to the great traditions of morality and spirituality will not conserve (the oft-forgotten root of the word now used only in a political context) but destroy us, as it did him, and as he like Henry Adams saw it potentially destroying America in the 20th century. Unable to manage his addictions, his relationship with Zelda, and his creative talents in a world that worshipped money and power, he died a young man of 44 on a last attempt to recover his talent as a screenwriter in Hollywood.
So my catholic reading tastes brought me to this powerful intersection of Adams, Fitzgerald, the rising American 20th century, and the 21st century which is still being weighed in the balance. Might we be found wanting? It has been years since I read The Great Gatsby. The year of his death in 1940, that book sold fewer than 100 copies and earned his estate a royalty check of $13.13. Today, my local public library has a six-volume set of his collected novels and short stories. Gatsby is taught in literature classes around the world and seen by millions in multiple screen versions. I'm starting to read volume 1 tomorrow. Brown's biography is a classic.
David Brown's biography of the historian and Adams' family descendant The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams and the Stewart O'Nan novelization of F. Scott Fitzgerald's last years West of Sunset brought me to....this biography of Fitzgerald by Brown. First I read O'Nan's story, which inspired me to learn more about the real biography of Fitzgerald. Then I read Brown's Adams biography because I have always been fascinated by both his writing and his position as the last public figure of the Adams family dynasty in decline. Then, while searching for a good biography of Fitzgerald, I found Brown's earlier biography, with an additional connection in true catholic reader fashion: Brown highlights the convergence of the two authors' criticisms of the trend of history in the turn to the 20th century, along with Fitzgerald's claim that he met the older Adams as a young boy (despite the lack of historical documentation).
In Paradise Lost, Brown tells the story of Fitzgerald's life by showing how his fiction both reflected and shaped the cultural, moral, and political mores of his times: the Jazz Age progression from young flappers in his first novel This Side of Paradise to disillusioned social climbers in his best-known The Great Gatsby, the early descent to mid-life crises in Tender is the Night (considered by some critics his best novel), and the literally dying cry of a burned-out creative husk of the artist in the posthumously published The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald's writings have always been recognized as extremely autobiographical, but Brown shows his skill as at the same time an observer, reflector, and shaper of the world he described.
The biography within the context is that of a boy and then a man always on the outside looking in. Born in 1896, from his father's side he inherited gentleman-farmer poverty with a southern sensitivity to class and the "Lost Cause", while from his mother's side in Minnesota he learned the 20th century ethos of capitalist striving for financial and social success; throughout his life he never fit in either world,
With America's landed gentry passing from the scene, Fitzgerald's literary imagination was drawn to the new urban set—the bonds traders and the bootleggers, the Freudians and the flappers—suddenly in saddle. More than agents of affluence, these archetypes of the “Roaring Twenties” now set the cultural tone and tempo, seizing from small-town America the socializing power to shape a civilization. As a popular short-story writer, Fitzgerald enjoyed access to the new money, and it gave him a vantage of cultural insight that would have been otherwise closed. Still, he never thought of himself, even during his peak earning years, as being part of the nouveau riche. His deepest allegiances, rather, were to that rapidly fading complex of courtly antebellum beliefs that he connected with his father's fashionable Chesapeake Bay roots. More specifically, as a midwesterner, as an Irish Catholic, and (despite a steady stream of royalties and advances) as a perpetually in-debt author, he felt every bit the social and economic outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts . . . that had such a prevailing impact on his work. (p. 3)
As a struggling artist failed out of Princeton trying to make a living and establish a career based on his writing, Fitzgerald (the F. Scott coming from his father's distant relationship to the writer of the "Star Spangled Banner") met flighty Alabama belle Zelda, who withheld her hand in marriage until he sold his first writings and proved himself marriage-worthy. When his first novel became a best seller, with their marriage in 1920 they inaugurated the roaring decade as America's foremost and one of its first celebrity couples.
Fortuitous timing kept their ball bouncing. The Fitzgeralds’ earliest days as a married couple coincided with Scott's rising celebrity, and rather than simply enjoy the moment, they were determined to push it forward, prolonging its intensity and exhausting its possibilities. As if performing, they played up several personalities (the writer, the belle, the flapper, the moralist, the drunkard . . .) before attentive audiences. What they lacked was a stretch of time off the society pages to develop a deeper rapport, though in fact neither seemed to want this. (p. 77)
Just over a decade later, after the years of alcohol abuse and very public spats stressed fragile psyches leaving Zelda resident in a string of psychiatric wards and Scott in and out of rehab resorts, he wrote bitterly, belittlingly, and unfairly to one of her caregivers "My God, my books made her a legend and her single intention . . . is to make me a non-entity." (p. 220).
This sad image, Brown writes, is unfortunately the impression left by many biographers focused on their sad and sensational story; by focusing on the bibliographic and cultural context, he restores depth and significance to both the life and work of Fitzgerald. While often remembered as the glitzy documentarian and popularizer of the superficial Jazz Age lifestyle of get rich quick, live life fast, and forget about tomorrow, Fitzgerald actually looked backward to the 19th century for his stress on morality, class, and decency. The modern dominance of money as the measure of success and the struggle for money as the only worthwhile metric of success was a sad distortion of the real America dream.
If Paradise questioned the implications of America’s new money mania, it further denounced its abettors and defenders—the lost generation, not Fitzgerald’s storied Jazz Age cohort, mind you, but rather its parents. They were the ones, he argued, that allowed the robber barons to rule, that foolishly sent their sons off to fight a “war to end all wars,” and that promised purity through Prohibition. (p. 87)
The very same day I read this page my news and email feeds alerted me to evidence that a century later the same fractures between conservative morality and financial striving for success measured in dollars and power not only still exist but have intensified:
--What was once governance by law is now attempted coercion by power and force (What Really Happened and What Now). In this editorial in my local Pittsburgh newspaper, the editor (who wrote an editorial in support of Trump's reelection on Election Day 2020) describes why the events of January 6 posed "an existential threat to our system of government. This is not only because Mr. Trump’s is a toxic, disorderly and unstable mind", but because his actions were intended to subvert the Constitutional order of government which has formed the basis of our freedom, prosperity, morality, and yes, our civic religion.
--What was once religion and theology are now power and politics (The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart). Those who call themselves capital-C political Conservatives are quick to identify America as a Christian nation, converting a civic religion into a ruling religion of political power. Those who call themselves capital-C Christians are the strongest supporters of Trump despite his un-Christlike beliefs, words, and actions, resulting in the break-ups in churches described in this article.
--What was once cultural is now political and governance (Maryland's three western counties want to secede to West Virginia). Growing up in the most distant of those three rural counties at the western tip of Maryland, I often thought that a triangle drawn from Cumberland in that state, Morgantown in West Virginia, and Pittsburgh would form a culturally distinct and consistent region, one that quite apart from politics and power could agree on pop (not soda), small-town lifestyles, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Now, sadly I learned from this story that local Republican politicians want to join to West Virginia for purely political power that would gladly shatter that cultural distinctive for political power.
As a small-c conservative, a born-again Christian, and a farm-raised boy who had lived most of his live in that rural Appalachian triangle, these three articles drove home that Fitzgerald was right: the pursuit of power and financial success unanchored to the great traditions of morality and spirituality will not conserve (the oft-forgotten root of the word now used only in a political context) but destroy us, as it did him, and as he like Henry Adams saw it potentially destroying America in the 20th century. Unable to manage his addictions, his relationship with Zelda, and his creative talents in a world that worshipped money and power, he died a young man of 44 on a last attempt to recover his talent as a screenwriter in Hollywood.
So my catholic reading tastes brought me to this powerful intersection of Adams, Fitzgerald, the rising American 20th century, and the 21st century which is still being weighed in the balance. Might we be found wanting? It has been years since I read The Great Gatsby. The year of his death in 1940, that book sold fewer than 100 copies and earned his estate a royalty check of $13.13. Today, my local public library has a six-volume set of his collected novels and short stories. Gatsby is taught in literature classes around the world and seen by millions in multiple screen versions. I'm starting to read volume 1 tomorrow. Brown's biography is a classic.
June 15, 2023
In writing Paradise Lost, David Brown found a formula in telling the story of Fitzgerald's life, legacy, and foibles, and it's reasonably consistent throughout. First, there is the surface information: who he was, where he was, and how he was remembered at various stages of his life. Then, Brown explores the cultural and political mores, ones that Fitzgerald heralded as much as he was informed by them. Finally, he combines the two into the moral navel gazing that the late author probably would very likely appreciate.
What we're left with is a deeply vulnerable portrait of a man simply riddled with complexes, much of it tied to wealth, status, and trying to toe his way into an obsessively defined club and stay there, hoping to feel purposeful, his laurels earned. He was a talented man and he knew it, though he knew seemingly less about being truly satisfied with anything. It does also paint a rich and compelling picture of Zelda and their tremulous life together, and is careful to avoid sugarcoating Fitzgerald's problematic behavior and clearer abuses. I did notice that Brown tends to run off into the weeds, and often, trying to capture the contingent significance of Fitzgerald's works and phases by analyzing just as exhaustively those of his peers. It's all in the interest of good context, but it distracted often.
If this isn't as full and complete a picture of the man as can be put into a single volume, then I suppose I've been fooled.
What we're left with is a deeply vulnerable portrait of a man simply riddled with complexes, much of it tied to wealth, status, and trying to toe his way into an obsessively defined club and stay there, hoping to feel purposeful, his laurels earned. He was a talented man and he knew it, though he knew seemingly less about being truly satisfied with anything. It does also paint a rich and compelling picture of Zelda and their tremulous life together, and is careful to avoid sugarcoating Fitzgerald's problematic behavior and clearer abuses. I did notice that Brown tends to run off into the weeds, and often, trying to capture the contingent significance of Fitzgerald's works and phases by analyzing just as exhaustively those of his peers. It's all in the interest of good context, but it distracted often.
If this isn't as full and complete a picture of the man as can be put into a single volume, then I suppose I've been fooled.
May 26, 2018
The charm of learning about Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald is that we have the lens of hindsight and time. But most importantly, it’s a mixed media of art mimicking life. Scott & Zelda’s novels/short stories are almost autobiographies by themselves…part truth bombs, part pity party, and definitely very much ‘romantic egotistical’.
This book does a very decent job at trying to find an accurate balance of their stories.
This book does a very decent job at trying to find an accurate balance of their stories.
February 1, 2021
This critical biography of Fitzgerald captures both the exuberance and the gloom of his roaring riveting life. I am doing my research on Fitzgerald short stores specifically and the events and references captured in this book have been massively helpful. It is excellent for anybody looking to dwell on the intricacies of a talented young man’s paradise and imagination dwindling away to a tragic nothingness and even so making magic through words as he tread on to the road to oblivion.
August 13, 2017
This is a great book to read about F Scott Fitzgerald. To think he only wrote one novel after the age of 28 and he died so young. A tragic ending of both his and Zelda's short lives. As he wrote at the end of The Great Gatsby ..."so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past".
May 9, 2019
Sometimes when a historian turns to a literary figure the results are refreshing. Think of David Donald writing about Thomas Wolfe and now David S. Brown. I doubt that a literary critic could have written Brown’s account, for example, of a masterpiece, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”: “Scott’s critical account of the colonizing of the American West anticipates a school of historiography that would begin to gain influence in the 1970s and 1980s.” Brown calls the story a “powerful condemnation of greed, a direct rebuke to the speculative orgy that was already then coming to grip the 1920s.” The story was too much for The Saturday Evening Post, which regularly paid Fitzgerald $1,500 per story, and he had to accept $300 for its appearance in Smart Set, H. L. Mencken’s bolder magazine unconcerned about ruffling Americans’ good feelings about prosperity. The story is set on the Montana ranch and homestead of Percy Washington, a direct descendant of the President. It is also the home of that diamond, the size of a small mountain or of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The “Washington compound,” as Brown calls it, is “distinguished by a grotesque luxury of jeweled, ivoired, and furred elegance; a small army of slaves sees to every need.” This fantastical “state within a state,” built on killing and kidnapping, is ultimately no more than a redoubt that is destroyed when the secret shenanigans are exposed and the secluded empire is bombed into ruins even as Braddock Washington, Percy’s father, attempts to lift the diamond heavenward to appease God. “Playing off various episodes in American history, Fitzgerald presents in ‘Diamond’ a nation in danger of losing its soul,” Brown concludes.
And so it is with F. Scott Fitzgerald in Brown’s tragic biography, in which his subject is forever in danger of losing his soul, corrupted by the easy money proffered for his short stories, and all to prone to lavish it all the luxurious lifestyle he came to regard as symptomatic of the country’s lapse from the promise of its beginnings. The empire of liberty becomes the empire of wealth. An earlier generation of historians, led by Frederick Jackson Turner, who equated the settling of the West with the forging of liberty is reproached in Fitzgerald’s prose which questions “the very idea of the American frontier as a source of democratic vitality.” As Brown concludes, the “diamond rejected by God symbolizes the mining culture that placed ruthless extraction at the center of its enterprise.”
In Brown’s narrative, F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s life––all his successes, his excesses, his drinking, his fraught marriage to Zelda, his hatred of Hollywood, which was also his refuge––make him an epic figure, one whose life and work seem destined to be told again and again because so much of him is the nation writ small but also large because he left his work unfinished and his life on the verge of repair. Fitzgerald, in short, made himself into a symbol as suggestive as any character he created, and his life a plot that any novelist would be honored to write.
What sets this biography apart from the others is its emphasis on Fitzgerald “historical sensibility.” For all his reputation as a trend setter and chronicler of the 1920s, living it up with Zelda in New York and Paris, Fitzgerald, Brown insists, “leaned towards the aristocratic, the premodern, and the romantic,” embodied in his courtly, if ineffectual father. Like Faulkner, Fitzgerald “never lost his boyish enthusiasm for the valor of Civil War generals” even as he became uneasy over the rise of corporations and labor unions, which became the crux of the unfinished The Last Tycoon, featuring Monroe Stahr as a throwback to the founding generation of Americans whom, Fitzgerald believed, were not so pecuniary. Stahr believes in creating great art in motion pictures even if it means losing money. He says art is what the studio owes it audience while pocketing profits from formulaic pictures. Stahr, in other words, like Fitzgerald himself sought some kind of modus vivendi between making money and masterpieces. Fitzgerald came to Hollywood to earn enough to settle his enormous debts, but he also came to redeem the industry by writing great films. His failure to make his mark as a screenwriter surely informs his portrait of the tragic Monroe Stahr battling the bankers and studio executives, although Brown does not make the connection explicit.
The Fitzgerald-Faulkner comparison is not one that Brown makes but a student of their work is drawn to the parallels apparent in Brown’s narrative: their conservative modernism, alcoholism, obsession with Southern belles and the gentlemanly code––no matter how many times their belles let them down and they behaved in ungentlemanly fashion––and their creation of two defining work of the American imagination and history: The Great Gatsby and Absalom, Absalom! Both novels are dominated by great innocents: Jay Gatsby and Thomas Sutpen, both of whom have to re-invent themselves into facsimiles of the governing class even as they expose that class’s bankruptcy. Curiously, Faulkner never seems to have acknowledged Fitzgerald’s work and Fitzgerald had hardly more to say about Faulkner. And yet their sense of “living in history,” as Brown puts it, seems nearly the same, even though their subject matter is so dissimilar.
Faulkner would never have deemed Hollywood a serious enough subject for a novel, which is a pity because like Fitzgerald his time there––in the 1930s––is not only a crucial part of his biography but also the moment when the vectors of history converge, when the corporations and unions are fighting it out while European refugee writers and filmmakers arrive making the biographies of these two American novelists even more significant as the world heads toward war. If Brown misses any opportunities, it might be his parochial view of Fitzgerald as an American first, rather than as, again like Faulkner a world class writer inspired by Keats and Swinburne––influences Brown acknowledges but does not trace deeply enough, perhaps, in Fitzgerald’s oeuvre.
As for the rest: Brown is in line with recent biographies that show how Fitzgerald diminished Zelda even as he supported her, paying for her institutionalizations and honoring their early, happy, and productive days of married life. Brown’s coda, explaining what happened to Zelda after Scott’s death (she perished in a fire while under treatment for one of her periodic mental lapses), suggests that she also remained loyal to her only husband and to his mission to become a great writer. Brown also shows how even friends like Edmund Wilson never quite understood Fitzgerald, branding him as unintellectual, when, in fact, Fitzgerald’s analytical powers accord well with the work of Thorstein Veblen, Charles Beard, and other important American historians and sociologists.
Brown also shows that many writers deplored Fitzgerald’s self-revealing Crack-up essays about his struggles with his health and career which, arguably, are forerunners of the confessional poetry and nonfiction touched off by the work of Norman Mailer in the late 1950s and Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath in the 1960s, although Brown does not secure these connnections.
Brown knows no better way to end his biography than with Fitzgerald’s last lines in The Great Gatsby, still as magnificent as anything ever written by an American: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
And so it is with F. Scott Fitzgerald in Brown’s tragic biography, in which his subject is forever in danger of losing his soul, corrupted by the easy money proffered for his short stories, and all to prone to lavish it all the luxurious lifestyle he came to regard as symptomatic of the country’s lapse from the promise of its beginnings. The empire of liberty becomes the empire of wealth. An earlier generation of historians, led by Frederick Jackson Turner, who equated the settling of the West with the forging of liberty is reproached in Fitzgerald’s prose which questions “the very idea of the American frontier as a source of democratic vitality.” As Brown concludes, the “diamond rejected by God symbolizes the mining culture that placed ruthless extraction at the center of its enterprise.”
In Brown’s narrative, F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s life––all his successes, his excesses, his drinking, his fraught marriage to Zelda, his hatred of Hollywood, which was also his refuge––make him an epic figure, one whose life and work seem destined to be told again and again because so much of him is the nation writ small but also large because he left his work unfinished and his life on the verge of repair. Fitzgerald, in short, made himself into a symbol as suggestive as any character he created, and his life a plot that any novelist would be honored to write.
What sets this biography apart from the others is its emphasis on Fitzgerald “historical sensibility.” For all his reputation as a trend setter and chronicler of the 1920s, living it up with Zelda in New York and Paris, Fitzgerald, Brown insists, “leaned towards the aristocratic, the premodern, and the romantic,” embodied in his courtly, if ineffectual father. Like Faulkner, Fitzgerald “never lost his boyish enthusiasm for the valor of Civil War generals” even as he became uneasy over the rise of corporations and labor unions, which became the crux of the unfinished The Last Tycoon, featuring Monroe Stahr as a throwback to the founding generation of Americans whom, Fitzgerald believed, were not so pecuniary. Stahr believes in creating great art in motion pictures even if it means losing money. He says art is what the studio owes it audience while pocketing profits from formulaic pictures. Stahr, in other words, like Fitzgerald himself sought some kind of modus vivendi between making money and masterpieces. Fitzgerald came to Hollywood to earn enough to settle his enormous debts, but he also came to redeem the industry by writing great films. His failure to make his mark as a screenwriter surely informs his portrait of the tragic Monroe Stahr battling the bankers and studio executives, although Brown does not make the connection explicit.
The Fitzgerald-Faulkner comparison is not one that Brown makes but a student of their work is drawn to the parallels apparent in Brown’s narrative: their conservative modernism, alcoholism, obsession with Southern belles and the gentlemanly code––no matter how many times their belles let them down and they behaved in ungentlemanly fashion––and their creation of two defining work of the American imagination and history: The Great Gatsby and Absalom, Absalom! Both novels are dominated by great innocents: Jay Gatsby and Thomas Sutpen, both of whom have to re-invent themselves into facsimiles of the governing class even as they expose that class’s bankruptcy. Curiously, Faulkner never seems to have acknowledged Fitzgerald’s work and Fitzgerald had hardly more to say about Faulkner. And yet their sense of “living in history,” as Brown puts it, seems nearly the same, even though their subject matter is so dissimilar.
Faulkner would never have deemed Hollywood a serious enough subject for a novel, which is a pity because like Fitzgerald his time there––in the 1930s––is not only a crucial part of his biography but also the moment when the vectors of history converge, when the corporations and unions are fighting it out while European refugee writers and filmmakers arrive making the biographies of these two American novelists even more significant as the world heads toward war. If Brown misses any opportunities, it might be his parochial view of Fitzgerald as an American first, rather than as, again like Faulkner a world class writer inspired by Keats and Swinburne––influences Brown acknowledges but does not trace deeply enough, perhaps, in Fitzgerald’s oeuvre.
As for the rest: Brown is in line with recent biographies that show how Fitzgerald diminished Zelda even as he supported her, paying for her institutionalizations and honoring their early, happy, and productive days of married life. Brown’s coda, explaining what happened to Zelda after Scott’s death (she perished in a fire while under treatment for one of her periodic mental lapses), suggests that she also remained loyal to her only husband and to his mission to become a great writer. Brown also shows how even friends like Edmund Wilson never quite understood Fitzgerald, branding him as unintellectual, when, in fact, Fitzgerald’s analytical powers accord well with the work of Thorstein Veblen, Charles Beard, and other important American historians and sociologists.
Brown also shows that many writers deplored Fitzgerald’s self-revealing Crack-up essays about his struggles with his health and career which, arguably, are forerunners of the confessional poetry and nonfiction touched off by the work of Norman Mailer in the late 1950s and Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath in the 1960s, although Brown does not secure these connnections.
Brown knows no better way to end his biography than with Fitzgerald’s last lines in The Great Gatsby, still as magnificent as anything ever written by an American: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
March 12, 2021
When he died in December of 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was all but forgotten, fallen low from his Roaring Twenties zenith because of alcohol, writer's block, and his wife Zelda's mental decline. Within a decade of his passing, a renaissance began in which his works were re-examined and re-evaluated, and interest in the man behind them started to capture the public imagination. Contrary to Fitzgerald's own admonition that "there are no second acts in American life," his posthumous reputation had enhanced the stature of his work and life in ways that were unimaginable in 1940, when he was buried without much ceremony by a few close friends and relatives.
"Paradise Lost" offers a cogent, interesting look at Fitzgerald's life and makes the argument that, far from celebrating the excesses of his era (a common misconception) or wanting to emulate the rich, Fitzgerald was a moralist who charted the ways in which the "American Dream" was being corrupted and perverted by the pursuit of material wealth and status that he documented in all of his major works. David S. Brown offers deep dives into each of the four novels, as well as a look at Fitzgerald's last unfinished novel "The Last Tycoon," and traces the ways in which each book (especially "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender Is the Night") sought to capture the doomed romanticism of an earlier era in American life when it came full-bore into collision with the stock market-driven madness of the booming good times just after the First World War.
Fitzgerald's life can't help but be bound up in his role as the chronicler of the Jazz Age (he coined the phrase, after all), but Brown shows that Fitzgerald was less interested in the all-night parties than in the mornings after, when the hangover of so much prosperity seemed to undermine aspects of the American character that Fitzgerald felt were important. Despite his Minnesota birth, Fitzgerald had Southern relations in his family and romanticized the Confederacy and antebellum South in ways that modern readers could find problematic. He clung to a notion of American morality that, far from being enhanced by money and excess, was destroyed by it. Fitzgerald also had a tumultuous relationship with his wife, Zelda Sayre, which he didn't help by being jealous of her efforts to break out from under his shadow (she would take up novel-writing in her own stead, seeming to embarrass Scott with her efforts because she was mining their personal life as much as he was). His relationship with their only child, daughter Scottie, was also fraught with tension, especially after Fitzgerald openly talked about the failure of his marriage to Zelda in letters to his child away in boarding school.
But perhaps because of all that turmoil, Fitzgerald produced works that have endured well past the cultural moment in which they appeared. I've read "Gatsby" and "Tender," and fully intend to read his previous two novels ("This Side of Paradise" and "The Beautiful and Damned") as well as any short-story collections I can get my hands on. In that sense, I've become one of those readers that Brown talks about, enamored with Fitzgerald's works despite the fact that his life was so tragic in many ways (and in some aspects, that tragedy was self-inflicted). Reading "Gatsby" in high school is a far different experience than reading "Gatsby" in middle age; Fitzgerald's work has shown the ability to survive and even thrive with critical re-evaluation. His friends and contemporaries like Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway might have undercut him in his life and in their reminisces of their times together, but it's fair to say that Fitzgerald has often proven more adaptable to the slings and arrows of critical examination than many of his peers. This is a good overview of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his work, and it would be a pity if you didn't read it.
"Paradise Lost" offers a cogent, interesting look at Fitzgerald's life and makes the argument that, far from celebrating the excesses of his era (a common misconception) or wanting to emulate the rich, Fitzgerald was a moralist who charted the ways in which the "American Dream" was being corrupted and perverted by the pursuit of material wealth and status that he documented in all of his major works. David S. Brown offers deep dives into each of the four novels, as well as a look at Fitzgerald's last unfinished novel "The Last Tycoon," and traces the ways in which each book (especially "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender Is the Night") sought to capture the doomed romanticism of an earlier era in American life when it came full-bore into collision with the stock market-driven madness of the booming good times just after the First World War.
Fitzgerald's life can't help but be bound up in his role as the chronicler of the Jazz Age (he coined the phrase, after all), but Brown shows that Fitzgerald was less interested in the all-night parties than in the mornings after, when the hangover of so much prosperity seemed to undermine aspects of the American character that Fitzgerald felt were important. Despite his Minnesota birth, Fitzgerald had Southern relations in his family and romanticized the Confederacy and antebellum South in ways that modern readers could find problematic. He clung to a notion of American morality that, far from being enhanced by money and excess, was destroyed by it. Fitzgerald also had a tumultuous relationship with his wife, Zelda Sayre, which he didn't help by being jealous of her efforts to break out from under his shadow (she would take up novel-writing in her own stead, seeming to embarrass Scott with her efforts because she was mining their personal life as much as he was). His relationship with their only child, daughter Scottie, was also fraught with tension, especially after Fitzgerald openly talked about the failure of his marriage to Zelda in letters to his child away in boarding school.
But perhaps because of all that turmoil, Fitzgerald produced works that have endured well past the cultural moment in which they appeared. I've read "Gatsby" and "Tender," and fully intend to read his previous two novels ("This Side of Paradise" and "The Beautiful and Damned") as well as any short-story collections I can get my hands on. In that sense, I've become one of those readers that Brown talks about, enamored with Fitzgerald's works despite the fact that his life was so tragic in many ways (and in some aspects, that tragedy was self-inflicted). Reading "Gatsby" in high school is a far different experience than reading "Gatsby" in middle age; Fitzgerald's work has shown the ability to survive and even thrive with critical re-evaluation. His friends and contemporaries like Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway might have undercut him in his life and in their reminisces of their times together, but it's fair to say that Fitzgerald has often proven more adaptable to the slings and arrows of critical examination than many of his peers. This is a good overview of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his work, and it would be a pity if you didn't read it.
August 8, 2024
I listened to the audio book, which is read by someone with a type of deep male voice I associate with dull lectures. Normally I'd find that a bit boring, but here it works somehow.
What stood out to me about this biography was Fitzgerald's love-hate relationship with the ultrawealthy. He comes across as believing that the American worship of industry and money is ruining the world, while simultaneously striving to be part of the monied, privileged class. This dichotomy is certainly present in The Great Gatsby, with Nick Carraway exhibiting these conflicting beliefs. He's working to move up socially, while at the same time he's completely repulsed by Daisy and Tom's behavior and the carelessness their money makes possible. Yet he accepts new-money Gatsby, because the reason Gatsby amassed his money was out of love for Daisy, which is better than out of love of money, I guess.
It's also interesting that, 100 years after Fitzgerald's prime writing years, the US is going through something like this again, in a slightly different way, with billionaire spending influencing so much, corporations as people, and the not-rich generally feeling as if their struggles aren't understand by those in control.
I did a quick search on online writings about Fitzgerald and capitalism and while I found some scholarly writings, I also found a review of this book in a conservative publication arguing against these conclusions. Perhaps the supporters of billionaire-type wealth and corporations-as-people protecting their own? I don't know, but it was interesting.
What stood out to me about this biography was Fitzgerald's love-hate relationship with the ultrawealthy. He comes across as believing that the American worship of industry and money is ruining the world, while simultaneously striving to be part of the monied, privileged class. This dichotomy is certainly present in The Great Gatsby, with Nick Carraway exhibiting these conflicting beliefs. He's working to move up socially, while at the same time he's completely repulsed by Daisy and Tom's behavior and the carelessness their money makes possible. Yet he accepts new-money Gatsby, because the reason Gatsby amassed his money was out of love for Daisy, which is better than out of love of money, I guess.
It's also interesting that, 100 years after Fitzgerald's prime writing years, the US is going through something like this again, in a slightly different way, with billionaire spending influencing so much, corporations as people, and the not-rich generally feeling as if their struggles aren't understand by those in control.
I did a quick search on online writings about Fitzgerald and capitalism and while I found some scholarly writings, I also found a review of this book in a conservative publication arguing against these conclusions. Perhaps the supporters of billionaire-type wealth and corporations-as-people protecting their own? I don't know, but it was interesting.
May 6, 2020
All things considering, a neutral portrait of Fitzgerald, celebrating the opulence of his words, evaluating his canon and influence on the 2oth century American literature, chronicling his tumultuous and often disappointing personal and professional relationships. Brown doesn't shy from Fitzgeralds flaws --alcoholism, arrogance, a hypocritical yet unsurprising reversal of conservatism in his marriage as Zelda's instability grew--yet frames his struggles within analysis of his works, whose themes were deeply autobiographical.
I especially enjoyed the analysis of Fitzgerald's many short stories, which are often viewed as fluff, but taken as a whole provide insight into Fitzgerald's politics, values, and transformation from a Philosopher of the Jazz Age through his own Crack Up and beyond. Good read for the Fitzgerald acolyte...quite long and academic for the casual fan.
I especially enjoyed the analysis of Fitzgerald's many short stories, which are often viewed as fluff, but taken as a whole provide insight into Fitzgerald's politics, values, and transformation from a Philosopher of the Jazz Age through his own Crack Up and beyond. Good read for the Fitzgerald acolyte...quite long and academic for the casual fan.
January 16, 2023
David Brown does an excellent job balancing Fitzgerald and his personal life with that of his writings.
Reading this biography really points out how much of that personal life made its way into the fiction.
According to Brown, Fitzgerald was driven by his need to write 'great' works...and time has shown that he indeed do just that with "The Great Gatsby", "Tender Is The Night", "This Side Of Paradise" and a host of short stories.
Brown provides chapters for each of the novels as he provides insights into their importance as well as some of the biographical detail that made its way into the story.
Brown shares the alcoholism faced by Fitzgerald, the economic and personal struggles that Zelda and Fitzgerald endured, their time spent in Europe and the friendship with Hemingway and of course Max Perkins.
Great introduction to the life and works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Reading this biography really points out how much of that personal life made its way into the fiction.
According to Brown, Fitzgerald was driven by his need to write 'great' works...and time has shown that he indeed do just that with "The Great Gatsby", "Tender Is The Night", "This Side Of Paradise" and a host of short stories.
Brown provides chapters for each of the novels as he provides insights into their importance as well as some of the biographical detail that made its way into the story.
Brown shares the alcoholism faced by Fitzgerald, the economic and personal struggles that Zelda and Fitzgerald endured, their time spent in Europe and the friendship with Hemingway and of course Max Perkins.
Great introduction to the life and works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
September 11, 2017
This is a unique biography of Fitzgerald in that it explores his life and work in the context of their historical perspective. The author, a historian, posits that Fitzgerald was not “just” the spokesman of the high times of the Jazz Age. He was that and more: a commentator on the times in which he lived and their significance as part of the long narrative of our nation’s striving to be a new world, a shining city on the hill if you will. He despairs about the influence of money and acquisition over the ideals of the more high-minded founders of our nation. He was always hopeful that those who sought the beauty and freedom of spirit would prevail, but he certainly was doubtful that his dreams would come true.
February 11, 2018
This biography is certainly well-researched and comprehensive, but I think in many ways Brown fails to completely prove his thesis - that Fitzgerald was mostly concerned with America's move from its agrarian roots to industrialization and quest for wealth. Brown states repeatedly that Fitzgerald was more than a Jazz Age chronicler - something that is not news to anyone with a passing familiarity with his novels and short stories. But Fitzgerald, born into a family with ties to the antebellum South and the early days in Chesapeake Bay, did carry a sense of history, and of hope and disillusion. "It is the history of all aspiration-not just the American Dream but the human dream and if I came at the end of it that too is a place in the line of pioneers."
January 27, 2018
This is the kind of scholarly analysis of FSF's works that carefully sets most of the novels/stories/essays inside the larger swirl of political, economic, philosophical changes that roiled America between the two World Wars. Some of this analysis works and some definitely doesn't, but even the missed connections help give depth and texture to what can seem such deceptively simple tales of seeking, love, and loss.
FSF has always felt mysterious to me, his stories concealing more than they tell, hinting at magic that never quite shows itself (as is perhaps necessary for magic). This biography did not "catch" him, but it got closer than the others I've read.
FSF has always felt mysterious to me, his stories concealing more than they tell, hinting at magic that never quite shows itself (as is perhaps necessary for magic). This biography did not "catch" him, but it got closer than the others I've read.
September 15, 2017
F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered by many to be one of the greatest American writers of all time. He was also a very complicated man who never seemed to be able to enjoy his success due to his insecurities and he died at an early age. The book takes you from his upbringing in the Mid-west to Paris and finally to Hollywood. Some of his great novels include 'The Great Gatsby', "Tender is the Night', and 'The Last Tycoon'. It wasn't until after his death that Fitzgerald was finally given the respect he sought for so long.
October 31, 2018
Not a traditional, comprehensive biography of Fitzgerald, but certainly a must-read for students and fans of the author of "The Great Gatsby." Brown positions Fitzgerald as a writer who, despite his fascination with the so-called Jazz Age, was repulsed by what it symbolized -- the rise of a money-oriented culture in which the ends justifies the means. I found Brown's thesis interesting, but began to feel, as this book went along, that he was stretching too often to justify it. Still, this is an important contribution to Fitzgerald studies and is well worth reading.
July 18, 2017
A thorough literary history of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's tumultuous life together. It's easy to see why Mr. Brown chose the title since the infamous couple wasted their talent on alcohol and partying.
The book is written like a college text and can be rather dry at times and I disagree with some of the conclusions Brown draws regarding Scott's political leanings but that's what books like this are for. If you're a fan of Fitzgerald it's a more than worthy read.
The book is written like a college text and can be rather dry at times and I disagree with some of the conclusions Brown draws regarding Scott's political leanings but that's what books like this are for. If you're a fan of Fitzgerald it's a more than worthy read.
November 11, 2025
Sad
A well researched and written biography. Narration a bit monotone, but ok. What strikes me most about F Scott Fitzgerald is his life was just so sad. After listening, I am struggling to remember uplifting moments. Zelda’s illness just made it all sadder. I still like his writing, but am left uninspired by the life story behind these works.
A well researched and written biography. Narration a bit monotone, but ok. What strikes me most about F Scott Fitzgerald is his life was just so sad. After listening, I am struggling to remember uplifting moments. Zelda’s illness just made it all sadder. I still like his writing, but am left uninspired by the life story behind these works.
July 9, 2017
Read with more than a few tears, as I must all dealing with FSF . . . a good balance of the negative and positive behavior-wise, as well as the same regarding works and contemporary reviews. A rather timely and fortuitous entry into my WC for my current WIP/research interests.
September 9, 2017
This was fine in places but very dry in others considering what an interesting person FSF should be to read about. This felt very academic rather than bringing him to life for the reader. Maybe I'm just not much of a biography person. I'd rather read Fitzgerald than read about Fitzgerald.
September 5, 2017
Excellent account of one of America's greatest writers
September 2, 2018
Nice biography of one of my favorite writers of all time.
January 29, 2019
Don’t read books about your heroes
May 1, 2021
An enlightening exploration of the progressive aspects of Fitzgerald's complex sensibility.
June 28, 2021
This is a must read biography.
Read
August 20, 2021Finished.
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