F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Important Works

Fitzgerald’s first novel tells the story of Amory Blaine, a handsome, spoiled young man who attends Princeton University, becomes involved in literary activities, and has several disastrous romances. Immature though it seems today, This Side of Paradise when it was published was considered a revelation of the new morality of the young during the early Jazz Age. Fitzgerald’s debut novel made him famous and provided the prosperity he and his wife, Zelda, needed to lead a lavish lifestyle. A portrait of the Lost Generation, the novel addresses Fitzgerald’s later theme of love distorted by social climbing and greed.

While Fitzgerald and Zelda loved living in the limelight, they also feared that it would ruin them. The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald’s second novel, reflects that fear. The story describes the lives of a handsome young married couple who choose to wait for an expected inheritance rather than involve themselves in productive, meaningful lives. Their lives deteriorate as they throw mindless parties, waiting for the money. When they finally get it, the couple has grown apart and care about nothing. Tales of the Jazz Age is Fitzgerald’s second collection of short stories and includes the critically acclaimed story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.”

Widely considered his greatest work, The Great Gatsby is set in the Jazz Age, a term popularized by Fitzgerald. It captures the prosperity of a postwar America, filled with jazz music and illegal alcohol. A story about the promise and failure of the American Dream, it centers around the character of Jay Gatsby, a young man who rises from rags to riches, and his love for a wealthy young woman. The book was unsuccessful when it was first published. Reviews were mixed, and the first printing sold slowly. The novel, however, was rediscovered a few years after Fitzgerald died and grew in popularity, becoming a standard text of high school curricula. It is now considered a masterpiece of American fiction. Several film adaptations have been made of the book, most notably a production directed by Jack Clayton in 1974, starring Robert Redford as Gatsby, and one in 2013 directed by Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.

The years after The Great Gatsby were difficult and unhappy for the Fitzgeralds. He began to drink too much, and Zelda declined into a state of mental breakdown. This semiautobiographical novel took Fitzgerald until 1934 to complete. It is the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients. As she slowly recovers, she drains him of his energy and life. While a heartrending book, it was not a commercial success.

Fitzgerald wrote The Crack-Up as an essay chronicling his spiritual and physical deterioration during the mid-1930s. The essay was first published in 1936 in Esquire magazine. After his death, the essay was published in book form, along with miscellaneous other works of his, as The Crack-Up: With Other Uncollected Pieces, Note-Books, and Unpublished Letters (1945), edited by his longtime friend, literary critic Edmund Wilson.

In 1939 Fitzgerald began writing a novel about Hollywood, describing the story of a studio executive who works obsessively and loses control of the studio and his life. It was Fitzgerald’s final attempt to portray his dream of the promises of American life and the man who could realize them. Fitzgerald died before he could complete the book. Wilson edited this work as well, and The Last Tycoon appeared the year after Fitzgerald’s death. It contained six completed chapters, an abridged conclusion, and some of Fitzgerald’s notes.