Book Description

Personal reminiscences of Fitzgerald - many previously unpublished - by those who knew him, allowing the reader to construct a composite biography. Fitzgerald once wrote: "There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good." Since his untimely death in 1940, Fitzgerald has been scrutinized in nine major biographies, each of which seeks to construct a single narrative that conveys the biographer's interpretation of Fitzgerald. In contrast, F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered presents over sixty first-hand accounts of Fitzgerald, many of them previously unpublished, by those who knew him at all stages of his life - from his time as an adolescent in St. Paul and an undergraduate at Princeton through his meeting and marrying Zelda Sayre and his first successes, the high points and increasing dissipation of the 1920s in New York, Paris, and the Riviera and the 1930s in Baltimore and North Carolina, to his final years in Hollywood. The guiding principle is not to provide a single interpretation of Fitzgerald's life but to present these accounts in all their variety and even contradiction, inviting the reader to form a biographical portrait based upon them. Making these reminiscences available to scholars, students, and fans of Fitzgerald is particularly timely given the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby in 2025.