F. Scott Fitzgerald Author Page - Biography and Books

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Jack London A life lived backwards, with events happening in reverse order forms the strange and unexpected framework of one of F Scott Fitzgerald's rare short stories. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was published in Collier's in 1927 and the idea came to Fitzgerald apparently from a quote of Mark Twain's in which he regretted that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst at the end. Fitzgerald's concept of using this notion and turning the normal sequence of life on its head resulted in this delightful, thought provoking fantasy tale. The story was later incorporated in a Fitzgerald anthology, Tales of the Jazz Age. The story opens with a young, high society couple who are shocked beyond belief when they discover that their much awaited first born child resembles an elderly gent of seventy, complete with a white beard and whiskers, sitting up and querulously demanding to know, “Are you my father?” Their young son is born to live out a peculiar destiny. And so begins a grotesque journey through life, with the child, Benjamin “growing down” instead of up.

Set in the Baltimore of the 1860s the story is also a satire of contemporary American society of the time. Though Fitzgerald maintains a cool and light tone throughout the story, it is in fact, deeply reflective and a very interesting take on the human condition.

For contemporary readers who are familiar with the problems of aging and “second childhood” Benjamin Button's difficulties with dealing with the demands of his chronological age vs his mental age are extremely interesting. As we find more and more older people succumbing to Alzheimer's disease and dementia, requiring the kind of care that an infant does, the story is strangely prophetic of the condition of geriatric care in our century. The plot is not exactly new to literature, with several stories and novels being written on a similar theme by many other writers. However, Fitzgerald's take on growing old and how we humans deal with it is what sets The Curious Case of Benjamin Button apart.

The style is extremely readable, the premise is intriguing and refreshingly different and appeals to readers of all ages. The story was adapted into a film in 2008 and continues to fascinate Fitzgerald fans the world over.

The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and veteran of the Great War from the Midwest—who serves as the novel's narrator—takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island, in the fictional village of West Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious multi-millionaire who holds extravagant parties but does not participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer. She reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes," an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment that Tom uses like a hotel room for Myrtle, as well as other women whom he also sleeps with. At Tom's New York apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party takes place. It ends with Tom physically abusing Myrtle, breaking her nose in the process, after she says Daisy's name several times, which makes him angry. Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party and they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick because they were in the same division in the Great War. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy through a purely chance meeting in 1917 when Daisy and her friends were doing volunteer service work with young officers headed to Europe. From their brief meetings and casual encounters at that time, Gatsby became (and still is) deeply in love with Daisy. Gatsby had hoped that his wild parties would attract an unsuspecting Daisy, who lived across the bay, to appear at his doorstep and allow him to present himself as a man of wealth and position. Having developed a budding friendship with Nick, Gatsby uses him to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair over the summer. At a luncheon at the Buchanans' house, Daisy speaks to Gatsby with such undisguised intimacy that Tom realizes she is in love with Gatsby. Though Tom is himself an adulterer, he is outraged by his wife's infidelity. He forces the group to drive into New York City and confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, asserting that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand. In addition to that, he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal whose fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy decides to stay with Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt her.

On the way back, Gatsby's car strikes and kills Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later learns from Gatsby that Daisy, not Gatsby himself, was driving the car at the time of the accident. Myrtle's husband, George Wilson, falsely concludes that the driver of the yellow car is the secret lover he suspects his wife had. He learns that the yellow car is Gatsby's, fatally shoots him, and then turns the gun on himself. Nick organizes an unsettlingly small funeral for Gatsby which none of Gatsby's associates, only one of his partygoers and his estranged father Henry Gatz, attend. Later, Nick runs into Tom in New York and finds out that Tom told George that the yellow car was Gatsby's and gave him Gatsby's address. Disillusioned with the East, Nick moves back to the Midwest.