Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Epic indeed, this is the definitive biography of Fitzgerald, plain and simple. There’s no reason to own another.” —Library Journal
 
The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” These works and more elevated F. Scott Fitzgerald to his place as one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century. After struggling to become a screenwriter in Hollywood, Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon when he died of a heart attack in 1940. He was only forty-four years old.
 
Fitzgerald left behind his own mythology. He was a prince charming, a drunken author, a spoiled genius, the personification of the Jazz Age, and a sacrificial victim of the Depression. Here, Matthew J. Bruccoli strips away the façade of this flawed literary hero. He focuses on Fitzgerald as a writer by tracing the development of his major works and his professional career. Beginning with his Midwest upbringing and first published works as a teenager, this biography follows Fitzgerald’s life through the successful debut of This Side of Paradise, his turbulent marriage to Zelda Sayre, his time in Europe among The Lost Generation, the disappointing release of The Great Gatsby, and his ignominious fall. As former US poet laureate James Dickey said, “the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshalled by Bruccoli over thirty years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need.”
1112173346
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Epic indeed, this is the definitive biography of Fitzgerald, plain and simple. There’s no reason to own another.” —Library Journal
 
The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” These works and more elevated F. Scott Fitzgerald to his place as one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century. After struggling to become a screenwriter in Hollywood, Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon when he died of a heart attack in 1940. He was only forty-four years old.
 
Fitzgerald left behind his own mythology. He was a prince charming, a drunken author, a spoiled genius, the personification of the Jazz Age, and a sacrificial victim of the Depression. Here, Matthew J. Bruccoli strips away the façade of this flawed literary hero. He focuses on Fitzgerald as a writer by tracing the development of his major works and his professional career. Beginning with his Midwest upbringing and first published works as a teenager, this biography follows Fitzgerald’s life through the successful debut of This Side of Paradise, his turbulent marriage to Zelda Sayre, his time in Europe among The Lost Generation, the disappointing release of The Great Gatsby, and his ignominious fall. As former US poet laureate James Dickey said, “the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshalled by Bruccoli over thirty years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need.”
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Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Matthew J. Bruccoli
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Matthew J. Bruccoli

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Overview

“Epic indeed, this is the definitive biography of Fitzgerald, plain and simple. There’s no reason to own another.” —Library Journal
 
The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” These works and more elevated F. Scott Fitzgerald to his place as one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century. After struggling to become a screenwriter in Hollywood, Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon when he died of a heart attack in 1940. He was only forty-four years old.
 
Fitzgerald left behind his own mythology. He was a prince charming, a drunken author, a spoiled genius, the personification of the Jazz Age, and a sacrificial victim of the Depression. Here, Matthew J. Bruccoli strips away the façade of this flawed literary hero. He focuses on Fitzgerald as a writer by tracing the development of his major works and his professional career. Beginning with his Midwest upbringing and first published works as a teenager, this biography follows Fitzgerald’s life through the successful debut of This Side of Paradise, his turbulent marriage to Zelda Sayre, his time in Europe among The Lost Generation, the disappointing release of The Great Gatsby, and his ignominious fall. As former US poet laureate James Dickey said, “the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshalled by Bruccoli over thirty years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need.”

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781504075251
Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 06/28/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 692
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Matthew J. Bruccoli was an English professor at the University of South Carolina and the preeminent expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald, having written more than fifty books on the literary figure. Bruccoli’s other notable subjects include Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and John O’Hara. He passed away in 2008.

Table of Contents

Illustrationsxv
Note for the Second Revised Editionxvii
Preface to the First Editionxix
Acknowledgmentsxxi
Chronologyxxiii
Taps At Reveille, 21 December 19401
The Romantic Egotist, 1896-19139
1Backgrounds and Childhood (1896-1908)11
2A Summit Avenue Boyhood (1908-1911)21
3The Newman School (1911-1913)30
Spires and Gargoyles, 1913-191739
4A Princeton Freshman (1913-1914)41
5Sophomore Year (1914-1915)52
6Junior Year (1915-1916)57
7Another Junior Year (1916-1917)65
The Last of the Belles, 1917-192077
8The Army and "The Romantic Egotist" (1917-1918)79
9Zelda Sayre (1918)87
10New York: Failure and Heartbreak (Spring 1919)92
11Return to St. Paul (Summer 1919)97
12The Emergence of a Professional (Fall 1919)101
13Zelda Recaptured (Winter 1919-1920)106
Early Success, 1920-1925113
14A Famous First Novel (April 1920)115
15This Side of Paradise (April 1920)121
16A Jazz-Age Marriage (Spring 1920)128
17Westport (Summer 1920)139
18New York and First Trip Abroad (Fall 1920-Summer 1921)145
19St. Paul and Revising The Beautiful and Damned (Summer 1921)149
20Birth of Scottie (Fall 1921)156
21The Beautiful and Damned (March 1922)159
22Writing The Vegetable (Spring-Summer 1922)164
23Great Neck and Ring Lardner (Fall 1922-Fall 1923)171
24Alcohol and the Failure of The Vegetable (1923)178
25"How to Live on $36,000 a Year" (Winter 1923-Spring 1924)185
26Second Trip Abroad: Valescure and Betrayal (Summer 1924)190
27Rome and Capri (Fall 1924-Spring 1925)206
28The Great Gatsby (April 1925)217
The Drunkard's Holiday, 1925-1931223
29Paris and Ernest Hemingway (Spring 1925)225
30Paris and Antibes (Spring-Summer 1925)232
31Paris and Planning a Fourth Novel (Fall 1925-Spring 1926)238
32Juan-les-Pins (Spring-Fall 1926)245
33Hollywood and "Ellerslie" (January 1927-Spring 1928)255
34Third Trip Abroad: A Summer in Paris (1928)263
35Fourth Trip Abroad (Spring 1929)269
36Paris and Cannes (Summer 1929)279
37Paris: Zelda's Collapse (Fall 1929-Spring 1930)286
38Prangins (Summer-Fall 1930)291
39Switzerland and Recovery (Fall 1930-Summer 1931)305
The Long Way Out, 1931-1934315
40Montgomery and Hollywood: Relapse (Fall-Winter 1931)317
41"La Paix" and Save Me the Waltz (Spring-Fall 1932)325
42Work on Tender Is the Night (Summer 1932)330
43Competition and Scandalabra (1932-1933)340
44A Novel of Deterioration (1933-1934)353
45Publication of Tender Is the Night (April 1934)358
46Reception of Tender Is the Night (1934)363
47Baltimore (1934)371
In the Darkest Hour, 1934-1937381
48False Starts (1934)383
49North Carolina (1935)393
50The Crack-Up (1935-1936)400
51Debts (1936-1937)408
The Last of the Novelists, 1937-1940417
52Hollywood (Summer 1937)419
53Sheilah Graham and M-G-M (Summer-Winter 1937)425
54Screenwriting (1937-1938)432
55College of One (1938-1939)439
56Free-lancing in Hollywood (1939)449
57Planning The Love of the Last Tycoon (Fall 1939)457
58Debts and Esquire Stories (1940)466
59Writing The Love of the Last Tycoon (1940)471
60Endings (1940)478
61Consequences488
Afterword: The Colonial Ancestors of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald495
Appendix 1Summary Movie Treatment for Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charles Warren509
Appendix 2From Fitzgerald's Ledger523
Appendix 3F. Scott Fitzgerald's Publications, Zelda Fitzgerald's Publications, Principal Works about Fitzgerald545
Appendix 4Literary Works Published 1913-1940573
Notes581
Index607

What People are Saying About This

James Dickey

Matthew J. Bruccoli is always able to look through the events themselves to the essential fact about Fitzgerald: his existence as an artist, and not only to how it came about, but what it came to. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur is exactly what Fitzgerald had. It is a perfect title for this book, for the grandeur is there, in the struggle to create memorable work. I fully expect that this will be the indispensable biography of a very great American writer, for the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshalled by Bruccoli over 30 years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need.

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