Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald
About The Author

   American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is most typically associated with his novel "The Great Gatsby" and most commonly regarded as literary spokesman for the "Lost Generation" of Americans in the 1920s. Few American writers published as many successful short stories during the "roaring" decade and, in such, Fitzgerald's accomplishments are not to be taken lightly.
  It was only after publication of his second short story collection in 1922 that F. Scott Fitzgerald was recognized as the "eloquent spokesperson" for the Jazz Age. His many short stories addressed the aspirations of his unique generation. Included among the more noted titles were: "Bernice Bobs her Hair," "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Debutante," "Absolution," and "Winter Dreams."
  Of course, the highpoint of Fitzgerald’s fame as a writer came with the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925. Nick, the narrator of Gatsby, reflects on the Jazz Age because "it bore him up, flattered him, and gave him more money than he had dreamed of, simply for telling people that he felt as they did, that something had to be done with all the nervous energy stored up and unexpended in the War." Nick says of Gatsby, "He has an extraordinary gift for hope"--a quality that was much-needed in Gatsby's day & age.  One of Fitzgerald's later works, "Babylon Revisited," (1931) can be viewed as touching upon somewhat similar themes but is considered "more complicated emotionally."
   In conclusion, one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's great skills as a writer was his distillation of language. The reader almost overhears the conversations as much as he reads them. And of all the things that might have ended his life, Fitzgerald fell victim to a fatal heart attack on December 21, 1940. Interestingly, the inscription on his tombstone is Nick Carroway's final sentence in The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."