F. Scott Fitzgerald: The American Dreamer

by John Tessitore

Describes the life and character of F. Scott Fitzgerald and how his writings had an impact on the Jazz Age.

112 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

John Tessitore grew up on Long Island and is a long-time resident of Massachusetts. He has been a newspaper reporter, a magazine writer, and a biographer. He has taught British and American history and literature at colleges around Boston and has directed national policy studies on education, civil justice, and cultural policy. He now runs his own strategic communications business. His poems have appeared in the American Journal of Poetry, Canary, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Wild Roof, The Ekphrastic Review, and other journals and anthologies. His chapbooks, I Sit At This Desk and Dream: Notes from a Sunday Morning on Instagram (2021), We Are Becoming Unbound (2022), All the Lonely American Roads (2022), Parchment: A Prayer Quintet, Body Songs (2023), and For a minute there, it seemed like something was happening. (2023), are available in print and for Kindle, as is his novella Jigsaw Men (2023).

Reviews

[Damian · Rating 3 out of 5]

F. Scott Fitzgerald The American Dreamer by John Tessotore. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda are the main characters in this story. The setting is in St. Paul, but he ends up living in many countries throughout his lifetime. He was born into a family of famous people that went back to the 17th century.He always wanted to be famous, great and powerful like others that he admired. He was a stubborn dreamer, and egotistical child who was not popular. He had trouble making friends. He was ashamed of his family because his father kept losing his job and they had financial problems. Fitzgerald and his sister were sent to live with their grandparents. He went to school with wealthy boys. In order to make friends he tried to impress them with his athletic abilities, but he was small and that didn't work out. The only thing that bought him success and happiness was the school newspaper. He wrote plays and some were produced. He was not doing well in his other subjects so his parents sent him to a stricter school where grades improved, but still had trouble making friends. There he made friends with Charles Donahue who was popular at school. This put him in the right circle of school life. A priest named Father Cyril Fay was attracted to him because they had things in common. He became Fitzgerald's mentor, like the father he didn't have. He made him feel special and destined for greatness. He went to Princeton University so he could learn proper manners and make personal connections he would need to succeed in the world. He joined the Triangle Club because he thought they could help him get his plays produced. His friendships grew after he was elected into a fraternity, but he was put out of the Triangle Club because of low grades. At this time he also got tuberculosis and left school to go home. He was very depressed and did not know if he would return. He did go back and during his senior year the US entered World War I. He enlisted not because of patriotic reasons but because he thought he could become famous as a soldier and this would help him in the world. Once again, he missed a chance for social advancement because he was not a good solider. He met Zelda Sayer and he fell in love. She did not feel the same, because he had nothing and was not famous. Once he started to be published, she married him. They had one child. Zelda was very unhappy with the dull life of motherhood.He began to drink heavily and this affected his work. His wife had an affair and tried to commit suicide. He knew his fame would not last unless he produced first rate work. Every time they moved, he thought this would solve their problem. They were both living destructive lives. Finally Zelda's physical and mental health became very serious. She was hospitalized several times and finally was told she was schizophrenic. Fitzgerald became ill and went off by himself and had a breakdown. He wrote at this time about his experiences and called these essays Crack-Up. The essays talk about fighting to change his life and his rebirth. The internal conflict he had was that he wanted to be rich, famous and powerful. He struggled with the right way to go about this. He felt that what people thought of him was more important than how he felt about himself. I think he wanted to be accepted as part of the group and maybe that is why he lived the life of partying and drinking. He made his own group, but it was destructive. He depended on outside people to help him feel good about himself.His happiness depended on how others felt about him. He lived a destructive life that affected his brilliance. I would give this book a 3 star rating. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in writing so that they can see some of the struggles they may have to face. Text-to-world connection. There are many people like Fitzgerald. They are brilliant at what they do, but they are also fighting demons that cause problems for them. They destroy their lives because they are driven by desire for fame, power and money. Maybe if he had put his writing as his main goal, he might have been more successful.