Author(s): Jeffrey Meyers (Royal Society of Literature)

Biography

F. Scott Fitzgerald, a romantic and tragic figure who exquisitely personified the decades between the two world wars, was a gifted, acclaimed author who nonetheless "could neither change his domestic life nor stop writing about it." Jeffrey Meyers offers a frank, ambitious foray into Fitzgerald's private affairs, discussing his family (particularly his troubled, schizophrenic wife Zelda), extramarital liaisons, and alcoholism in Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. Meyers also details the turbulent friendships Fitzgerald had with such literary giants as Ernest Hemingway and Edmund Wilson. He also explores the writings of Fitzgerald during poignant times in Fitzgerald's life, in particular Zelda's several commitments to local sanitariums and his stint as a screenwriter in Hollywood. At the pinnacle of his career, Fitzgerald exemplified the attitude, style and behavior of the upper class during the Roaring Twenties that he chronicled in The Great Gatsby. Meyers details why this same man wrote The Crack-Up, which, in a three part series in Esquire, explores Fitzgerald's own sense of failure and depression.