WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.879 Okay, let's get into it. Today we are doing a 00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:05.459 deep dive into one of the, I mean, just one of 00:00:05.459 --> 00:00:08.380 the most glittering but ultimately tragic figures 00:00:08.380 --> 00:00:11.320 in all of American literature, Francis Scott 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:13.660 Key Fitzgerald. That's right. He was the voice, 00:00:13.779 --> 00:00:16.300 really the definitive voice of the roaring 20s. 00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:18.839 A man who absolutely lived the high life he wrote 00:00:18.839 --> 00:00:21.500 about only to, well, to watch it all crumble. 00:00:21.579 --> 00:00:24.960 His own spectacular personal and professional 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:28.519 decline happening in real time. And that arc, 00:00:28.600 --> 00:00:30.660 you know, that glittering rise, the brutal fall, 00:00:30.739 --> 00:00:34.179 and then this posthumous canonization, that's 00:00:34.179 --> 00:00:36.920 what makes Fitzgerald such a perpetually fascinating 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:39.420 figure for you to study. So that's our mission 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:41.799 for this deep dive. Exactly. To really pull apart 00:00:41.799 --> 00:00:44.119 and extract the most important insights about 00:00:44.119 --> 00:00:47.619 his dual identity. And that identity is just 00:00:47.619 --> 00:00:49.479 split right down the middle, isn't it? Completely. 00:00:49.579 --> 00:00:51.939 On one hand, he's the ultimate chronicler of 00:00:51.939 --> 00:00:54.579 the jazz age. He basically defined that entire, 00:00:54.780 --> 00:00:57.259 you know, morally permissive era for the rest 00:00:57.259 --> 00:00:59.320 of the country. But on the other side, he was 00:00:59.320 --> 00:01:02.539 a really serious modernist writer who just failed 00:01:02.539 --> 00:01:05.200 commercially. Financially, he failed during his 00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:08.040 lifetime, dying, believing his life and his work 00:01:08.040 --> 00:01:11.340 were in his eyes. Total failures. It's the American 00:01:11.340 --> 00:01:14.140 myth of success and failure just distilled into 00:01:14.140 --> 00:01:15.939 one man. Yeah. And when you look at the sheer 00:01:15.939 --> 00:01:18.420 output, it's just extraordinary, especially for 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:20.840 a relatively short life. It's a huge body of 00:01:20.840 --> 00:01:24.079 work. Huge. He published four completed novels, 00:01:24.319 --> 00:01:27.180 one tragically unfinished one, The Last Tycoon, 00:01:27.400 --> 00:01:31.379 four story collections, and a staggering 164 00:01:31.379 --> 00:01:35.719 short stories. Wow. That volume alone, it tells 00:01:35.719 --> 00:01:38.120 you about an immense drive, but also, as we're 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:40.219 going to see, it points to a tremendous, almost 00:01:40.219 --> 00:01:42.469 crippling financial necessity. I think that's 00:01:42.469 --> 00:01:44.010 the thing that's so fascinating here and what 00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:45.689 we really need to wrestle with right away is 00:01:45.689 --> 00:01:48.069 that central paradox of his career. Fitzgerald 00:01:48.069 --> 00:01:50.409 achieved this, you know, transcendent success. 00:01:50.530 --> 00:01:52.629 He was a celebrity author in the 1920s. He made 00:01:52.629 --> 00:01:55.609 a fortune. But he absolutely did not get the 00:01:55.609 --> 00:01:57.730 critical or financial acclaim that was really 00:01:57.730 --> 00:02:00.150 commensurate with his talent. Not until decades 00:02:00.150 --> 00:02:03.230 after he died in 1940. That reversal of fortune 00:02:03.230 --> 00:02:06.150 is almost unprecedented in American literature. 00:02:07.069 --> 00:02:09.969 He died poor, thinking he was irrelevant. And 00:02:09.969 --> 00:02:12.870 yet now he is, without question, regarded as 00:02:12.870 --> 00:02:14.849 one of the greatest American writers of the 20th 00:02:14.849 --> 00:02:16.889 century. Required reading. His books are taught 00:02:16.889 --> 00:02:18.990 all over the world. Globally, yeah. And he didn't 00:02:18.990 --> 00:02:21.789 just write about the Jazz Age. He kind of, he 00:02:21.789 --> 00:02:24.389 named it. He literally named it. He popularized 00:02:24.389 --> 00:02:26.969 the term in his short story collection, Tales 00:02:26.969 --> 00:02:29.689 of the Jazz Age. So he was both the product and 00:02:29.689 --> 00:02:32.550 the narrator of that specific chaotic time. Which 00:02:32.550 --> 00:02:35.289 makes me wonder, though, was the Jazz Age truly 00:02:35.289 --> 00:02:37.830 this era of disillusionment? Or was it maybe 00:02:37.830 --> 00:02:40.689 just the invention of a few high profile writers 00:02:40.689 --> 00:02:43.370 like Fitzgerald who then, you know, profited 00:02:43.370 --> 00:02:46.330 from romanticizing their own bad behavior? That's 00:02:46.330 --> 00:02:48.550 a critical question. Yeah. And it speaks directly 00:02:48.550 --> 00:02:51.770 to the the inherent contradiction in his person. 00:02:51.849 --> 00:02:54.710 and his writing style, his friend, the great 00:02:54.710 --> 00:02:57.169 literary critic Edmund Wilson, he gave one of 00:02:57.169 --> 00:02:59.889 the best syntheses of Fitzgerald's unique voice. 00:03:00.169 --> 00:03:02.409 Okay, what did he say? Wilson really captured 00:03:02.409 --> 00:03:05.729 this war between the man and his material. He 00:03:05.729 --> 00:03:07.889 noted that Fitzgerald was romantic, but also 00:03:07.889 --> 00:03:12.030 cynical. He was bitter, yet ecstatic. Astringent, 00:03:12.030 --> 00:03:14.960 but also incredibly lyrical. That sounds like 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:16.860 Wilson was maybe being a little generous. I mean, 00:03:16.879 --> 00:03:19.360 overlooking Fitzgerald's self -destructive vanity 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:21.819 by just calling it an Irish gift. Well, perhaps. 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:24.879 But Wilson went on to praise his ability to turn 00:03:24.879 --> 00:03:26.680 language into something. And this is the quote, 00:03:26.780 --> 00:03:30.169 iridescent. And surprising. Iridescent and surprising. 00:03:30.330 --> 00:03:32.949 I like that. It implies a writer who had this 00:03:32.949 --> 00:03:36.270 innate, almost magical ability with words, yet 00:03:36.270 --> 00:03:38.270 was constantly dragging himself through the mud 00:03:38.270 --> 00:03:40.750 of his own anxieties and his own excesses. Yeah, 00:03:40.789 --> 00:03:43.030 you can see why his writing always feels so urgent 00:03:43.030 --> 00:03:46.110 and just deeply conflicted. It's incredible that 00:03:46.110 --> 00:03:49.150 this lyrical voice, so capable of such a clear 00:03:49.150 --> 00:03:52.189 -eyed social critique, came from someone so cynical 00:03:52.189 --> 00:03:55.030 and, frankly, so self -absorbed. So let's trace 00:03:55.030 --> 00:03:57.530 that cynicism back. Let's go to the source. His 00:03:57.530 --> 00:03:59.909 childhood. Fitzgerald was the permanent outsider, 00:04:00.090 --> 00:04:02.050 and that started very early. You have to begin 00:04:02.050 --> 00:04:04.770 there. With his relatively humble beginnings 00:04:04.770 --> 00:04:07.870 in St. Paul, Minnesota, he was born into a middle 00:04:07.870 --> 00:04:11.270 -class Catholic family in 1896. And he was named 00:04:11.270 --> 00:04:14.389 after his famous distant cousin, Francis Scott 00:04:14.389 --> 00:04:17.329 Key. The man who wrote the Star -Spangled Banner. 00:04:17.689 --> 00:04:20.250 So you have this profound connection to the national 00:04:20.250 --> 00:04:23.870 identity baked right into his name. But the family's 00:04:23.870 --> 00:04:27.829 financial reality was much less grand. The family 00:04:27.829 --> 00:04:30.430 history here is like a microcosm of the American 00:04:30.430 --> 00:04:32.769 promise and its failure, which became his life's 00:04:32.769 --> 00:04:35.629 theme. It really is. His mother, Mary McQuillan 00:04:35.629 --> 00:04:38.189 Fitzgerald, came from an Irish immigrant family 00:04:38.189 --> 00:04:40.689 that got rich as wholesale grocers. So she has 00:04:40.689 --> 00:04:43.189 some security. But his father, Edward, he ran 00:04:43.189 --> 00:04:45.029 a wicker furniture business that failed just 00:04:45.029 --> 00:04:47.269 a year after Scott was born. That failure is 00:04:47.269 --> 00:04:49.379 key. It forced the family to move to Buffalo, 00:04:49.519 --> 00:04:51.720 New York, and Edward worked for Procter & Gamble 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:54.620 until he was fired in 1908. Fired? Fired. And 00:04:54.620 --> 00:04:57.019 the records we have show his father really struggled 00:04:57.019 --> 00:04:59.560 with destitution and alcoholism after that. So 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:01.579 you've got young Scott growing up with this deep 00:05:01.579 --> 00:05:04.579 internal conflict. His mother's inheritance lets 00:05:04.579 --> 00:05:06.839 them keep up this comfortable middle -class lifestyle. 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:10.699 He has the appearance of wealth, access to good 00:05:10.699 --> 00:05:13.000 schools. Right, the veneer. But just beneath 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:15.660 that veneer is the constant, gnawing instability 00:05:15.660 --> 00:05:19.160 of his father's failure. He was always striving 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:21.439 to meet the standard of the genuinely wealthy 00:05:21.439 --> 00:05:24.500 people around him, but he never had the old money 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:28.089 or the true status to compete. That was his formative 00:05:28.089 --> 00:05:31.050 anxiety. He later admitted this was the absolute 00:05:31.050 --> 00:05:33.810 key to his sensibility. He knew what wealth looked 00:05:33.810 --> 00:05:36.449 like. He could mimic it perfectly. But he understood 00:05:36.449 --> 00:05:39.230 the desperation of not belonging. Which made 00:05:39.230 --> 00:05:41.329 him the perfect observer of the wealthy. The 00:05:41.329 --> 00:05:43.550 perfect observer. Yeah. Because he envied and 00:05:43.550 --> 00:05:45.629 resented them in equal measure. And this is where 00:05:45.629 --> 00:05:47.569 his family history gets really interesting. There's 00:05:47.569 --> 00:05:49.529 this footnote that sounds like something he would 00:05:49.529 --> 00:05:51.769 have made up for a story. It really does. Yeah. 00:05:51.930 --> 00:05:55.040 His father's first cousin, twice removed. was 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:58.680 mary surratt who was hanged in 1865 for conspiring 00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:01.560 to assassinate abraham lincoln it's an incredibly 00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:05.879 potent deep american lineage it encapsulates 00:06:05.879 --> 00:06:08.860 both national triumph and national tragedy you 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:10.379 have the guy who wrote the national anthem on 00:06:10.379 --> 00:06:13.060 one side and on the other a figure associated 00:06:13.060 --> 00:06:15.439 with the profound irreparable break of the civil 00:06:15.439 --> 00:06:18.040 war and the assassination of its great leader 00:06:18.040 --> 00:06:22.199 this duality, the soaring ideal of America and 00:06:22.199 --> 00:06:26.079 its dark, hidden failures. It feels like it subconsciously 00:06:26.079 --> 00:06:28.699 predisposed Fitzgerald to his central themes. 00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:31.860 The decay hidden beneath glittering surfaces. 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:34.399 Exactly. It suggests the seeds of that cynicism 00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:36.680 were there right from the beginning. The real 00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:39.060 literary seed, though, that got planted when 00:06:39.060 --> 00:06:41.019 he attended the Newman School in New Jersey. 00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:43.259 Yes, that's where he met Father Sigourney Fay. 00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:46.490 He became a crucial early mentor. Fay was this 00:06:46.490 --> 00:06:49.050 accomplished, well -read figure who saw Scott's 00:06:49.050 --> 00:06:51.430 talent very early on and really encouraged his 00:06:51.430 --> 00:06:53.790 literary ambitions. And that encouragement carries 00:06:53.790 --> 00:06:56.110 him right into Princeton University. Where he 00:06:56.110 --> 00:06:57.970 enrolled as one of the only Catholics in the 00:06:57.970 --> 00:07:01.189 student body, which, again, instantly cemented 00:07:01.189 --> 00:07:03.470 his status as an outsider looking in. But he 00:07:03.470 --> 00:07:05.569 thrived there intellectually. He jumped right 00:07:05.569 --> 00:07:07.870 into the campus literary scene, writing for the 00:07:07.870 --> 00:07:10.149 Princeton Triangle Club, the Princeton Tiger, 00:07:10.490 --> 00:07:13.399 the Nassau Lit. And this is where he forges the 00:07:13.399 --> 00:07:15.839 relationships that will define his entire professional 00:07:15.839 --> 00:07:19.699 life. He befriends two key people, John Peel 00:07:19.699 --> 00:07:22.199 Bishop, who became an important modernist poet, 00:07:22.379 --> 00:07:25.360 and the great literary critic, Edmund Wilson. 00:07:25.540 --> 00:07:27.519 Wilson, who would later be the one to champion 00:07:27.519 --> 00:07:30.980 him after his death. But the defining personal 00:07:30.980 --> 00:07:33.779 drama, the one that really launched the rocket 00:07:33.779 --> 00:07:36.220 of his career, that began during Christmas break 00:07:36.220 --> 00:07:38.879 of his sophomore year. Right. He was 18. He meets 00:07:38.879 --> 00:07:41.639 Ginevra King. A 16 -year -old Chicago debutante. 00:07:41.819 --> 00:07:43.899 She was the original muse, the lightning strike. 00:07:44.060 --> 00:07:46.420 She represented everything he desired and everything 00:07:46.420 --> 00:07:48.839 he could not have. And this is where that crucial 00:07:48.839 --> 00:07:51.220 class barrier narrative just slams right into 00:07:51.220 --> 00:07:53.980 his life. It really does. Ginevra was fabulously 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:57.000 wealthy, upper class, privileged, the ultimate 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:00.319 golden girl of the Midwest. Her family, especially 00:08:00.319 --> 00:08:02.720 her father, just saw Fitzgerald as a completely 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:05.660 unsuitable social climber. And her father's words 00:08:05.660 --> 00:08:07.220 to him, or at least the ones that have been passed 00:08:07.220 --> 00:08:10.160 down, they became this line that just haunts 00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:13.519 American literature. It's the ultimate articulation 00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:16.459 of Fitzgerald's deepest anxiety. Poor boys shouldn't 00:08:16.459 --> 00:08:19.120 think of marrying rich girls. It's so brutal 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:23.220 in its simplicity, but it also perfectly crystallizes 00:08:23.220 --> 00:08:26.879 this rigid class system in America that Fitzgerald 00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:29.959 spent his entire career trying to dissect. That 00:08:29.959 --> 00:08:32.320 phrase, whether it was spoken exactly like that 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:34.200 or just internalized through a thousand social 00:08:34.200 --> 00:08:37.519 slights, it became the absolute central recurring 00:08:37.519 --> 00:08:41.080 theme of his entire body of work. The unfairness 00:08:41.080 --> 00:08:43.820 of it all. The unfairness. This idea that a poor 00:08:43.820 --> 00:08:47.139 young man, intelligent and ambitious, can't transcend 00:08:47.139 --> 00:08:49.559 his status purely because of a lack of generational 00:08:49.559 --> 00:08:52.379 wealth. And the literary result is just undeniable. 00:08:52.679 --> 00:08:54.899 Ginevra, the girl who got away because of class, 00:08:55.179 --> 00:08:57.779 she becomes the model for Isabelle Bourget in 00:08:57.779 --> 00:09:00.480 this side of paradise. And most famously. Daisy 00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:03.299 Buchanan. The elusive, wealthy, and ultimately 00:09:03.299 --> 00:09:05.539 careless Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. 00:09:05.700 --> 00:09:08.620 The rejection was emotionally catastrophic for 00:09:08.620 --> 00:09:12.230 him. We know how profound it felt because a suicidal 00:09:12.230 --> 00:09:15.029 Fitzgerald get enlisted in the U .S. Army during 00:09:15.029 --> 00:09:17.049 World War One. And he was specifically hoping 00:09:17.049 --> 00:09:19.429 to die in combat. This wasn't just patriotic 00:09:19.429 --> 00:09:22.009 service. No, this was a desperate, self -destructive 00:09:22.009 --> 00:09:25.529 reaction to the pain of social rejection. And 00:09:25.529 --> 00:09:27.750 he was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, where he 00:09:27.750 --> 00:09:31.529 served remarkably under Captain Dwight D. Eisenhower. 00:09:31.610 --> 00:09:34.909 A fascinating little historical detail. The future 00:09:34.909 --> 00:09:38.360 literary giant. just chafing under the authority 00:09:38.360 --> 00:09:40.799 of the future president and supreme allied commander. 00:09:41.120 --> 00:09:44.240 And he did not like him. The sources say he intensely 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:47.399 disliked Eisenhower, found him stiff, authoritative. 00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:49.559 So while he was waiting to be deployed, fearing 00:09:49.559 --> 00:09:51.840 he would die in Europe, he hastily wrote this 00:09:51.840 --> 00:09:54.899 massive 120 ,000 -word manuscript. The romantic 00:09:54.899 --> 00:09:57.659 egotist. In just three months, he was desperate 00:09:57.659 --> 00:09:59.860 to publish a novel to leave some artifact of 00:09:59.860 --> 00:10:02.679 his existence before he died in battle. Scribner's 00:10:02.679 --> 00:10:06.110 thankfully rejected it. But the editor, the great 00:10:06.110 --> 00:10:09.029 Max Perkins, was impressed. He wisely praised 00:10:09.029 --> 00:10:11.409 the writing and encouraged him to revise it. 00:10:11.610 --> 00:10:13.750 So Fitzgerald didn't die on the Western Front. 00:10:14.230 --> 00:10:17.370 But he did meet his next great muse, who would 00:10:17.370 --> 00:10:19.710 demand a very different kind of sacrifice. And 00:10:19.710 --> 00:10:23.389 that, of course, was Zilda Sayre. In 1918, while 00:10:23.389 --> 00:10:26.490 he was garrisoned near Montgomery, Alabama, he 00:10:26.490 --> 00:10:29.429 met the 17 -year -old Southern Belle. And if 00:10:29.429 --> 00:10:32.129 Ginevra was that polished, old -money ideal, 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:35.740 Zelda was the dazzling, reckless embodiment of 00:10:35.740 --> 00:10:38.820 the modern American spirit. She was part of Montgomery's 00:10:38.820 --> 00:10:41.820 exclusive country club set, and her family owned 00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:44.460 the first White House of the Confederacy. So 00:10:44.460 --> 00:10:46.740 she's linked to this deep south, complicated, 00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:50.059 aristocratic past. And just like Ginevra, Zelda 00:10:50.059 --> 00:10:52.750 initially rejected his marriage proposal. But 00:10:52.750 --> 00:10:54.590 this rejection, unlike the first one, was based 00:10:54.590 --> 00:10:56.370 purely on hard numbers. His lack of financial 00:10:56.370 --> 00:10:59.210 prospects. Exactly. His Catholic background was 00:10:59.210 --> 00:11:02.129 a concern for her Episcopalian family, but money 00:11:02.129 --> 00:11:04.549 was the clear primary barrier. And this second 00:11:04.549 --> 00:11:06.570 rejection was pivotal. It drove him out of the 00:11:06.570 --> 00:11:08.750 army to New York City and forced him to chase 00:11:08.750 --> 00:11:11.929 success, not as an artistic fulfillment, but 00:11:11.929 --> 00:11:14.309 as a financial imperative. He had to prove he 00:11:14.309 --> 00:11:16.409 could afford the life Zelda had always known. 00:11:16.629 --> 00:11:21.399 And he struggled. Profoundly. He failed spectacularly 00:11:21.399 --> 00:11:24.539 to get a newspaper job and ended up writing advertising 00:11:24.539 --> 00:11:27.539 copy, living in this cramped single room on the 00:11:27.539 --> 00:11:29.600 west side. This is where we get that great little 00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:32.299 historical detail of his most famous piece of 00:11:32.299 --> 00:11:35.600 ad copy. Created for an Iowa laundry. We keep 00:11:35.600 --> 00:11:38.690 you clean and muscatine. It's just a perfect 00:11:38.690 --> 00:11:41.950 illustration of the contrast between the soaring 00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:44.450 ambition of the Princeton literary star and the 00:11:44.450 --> 00:11:46.929 mundane reality of a struggling ad man. And the 00:11:46.929 --> 00:11:49.409 volume of failure before the breakthrough is 00:11:49.409 --> 00:11:52.860 just astonishing. He was rejected over 120 times 00:11:52.860 --> 00:11:55.940 for his stories. 120 times. And sold only one 00:11:55.940 --> 00:11:59.240 Babes in the Woods for a pittance of $30. He 00:11:59.240 --> 00:12:01.360 was living in relative poverty, writing about 00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:03.240 a world he desperately wanted to join but just 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:05.740 couldn't afford. The difficulty of breaking in, 00:12:05.799 --> 00:12:08.179 despite his obvious talent, it really speaks 00:12:08.179 --> 00:12:10.340 to the sheer tenacity that you need to succeed. 00:12:10.620 --> 00:12:12.600 And the financial pressure? It finally led to 00:12:12.600 --> 00:12:15.100 the second breaking point. Zelda finally broke 00:12:15.100 --> 00:12:17.929 off the engagement in June of 1919. And this 00:12:17.929 --> 00:12:21.110 rejection, coming after Ginevra, was just catastrophic. 00:12:21.590 --> 00:12:24.370 He threatened to jump from a window ledge, carried 00:12:24.370 --> 00:12:27.769 a revolver, contemplated suicide. It was total 00:12:27.769 --> 00:12:30.590 rock bottom. So defeated and rudderless, he quits 00:12:30.590 --> 00:12:32.710 advertising, moves back to his parents' home 00:12:32.710 --> 00:12:35.950 in St. Paul, and he stakes everything on one 00:12:35.950 --> 00:12:38.490 last desperate attempt to become a successful 00:12:38.490 --> 00:12:40.789 novelist. And this wasn't just an artistic choice. 00:12:40.850 --> 00:12:43.830 This was... Survival. It was. He abstained from 00:12:43.830 --> 00:12:46.370 alcohol, from parties, living like a monk, and 00:12:46.370 --> 00:12:49.889 just aggressively revised the romantic egotist 00:12:49.889 --> 00:12:51.809 into this side of paradise. And that desperation, 00:12:52.009 --> 00:12:54.769 it fueled the lightning strike. Published on 00:12:54.769 --> 00:12:57.509 March 26, 1920, the novel, which was basically 00:12:57.509 --> 00:12:59.809 about his Princeton years and his romances with 00:12:59.809 --> 00:13:02.330 Ginevra and Zelda, became an instant cultural 00:13:02.330 --> 00:13:05.690 sensation. It sold 40 ,000 copies in the first 00:13:05.690 --> 00:13:07.950 year alone. It cemented his reputation overnight. 00:13:08.480 --> 00:13:10.860 Critics like H .L. Mencken called it the best 00:13:10.860 --> 00:13:13.340 American novel of the year. Columnists saw it 00:13:13.340 --> 00:13:15.659 as the first realistic American college novel, 00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:17.580 something that actually captured the cynical, 00:13:17.759 --> 00:13:20.659 fast -moving spirit of the postwar youth. And 00:13:20.659 --> 00:13:23.740 his paychecks reflected that. He went from making 00:13:23.740 --> 00:13:27.259 $30 a story to magazine rates of $1 ,000 almost 00:13:27.259 --> 00:13:30.659 instantly. And this fame, this financial success, 00:13:30.940 --> 00:13:34.059 it immediately brought Zelda back. She resumed 00:13:34.059 --> 00:13:36.299 the engagement because he could now afford the 00:13:36.299 --> 00:13:39.139 affluent lifestyle she was accustomed to. But 00:13:39.139 --> 00:13:41.360 this is a critical point that foreshadows their 00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:44.980 entire tragedy. Fitzgerald married her even though 00:13:44.980 --> 00:13:47.600 his feelings were at an all -time low. He told 00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:50.139 a friend, I wouldn't care if she died, but I 00:13:50.139 --> 00:13:52.240 couldn't stand to have anybody else marry her. 00:13:52.480 --> 00:13:54.840 Wow. It's a chilling line. They married on April 00:13:54.840 --> 00:13:57.700 3, 1920, and Fitzgerald later claimed neither 00:13:57.700 --> 00:14:04.250 of them still loved the other. So the marriage 00:14:04.250 --> 00:14:06.610 was based not on love, but on financial security 00:14:06.610 --> 00:14:09.129 and social validation. This is where the definition 00:14:09.129 --> 00:14:12.049 of the jazz age celebrity really begins. They 00:14:12.049 --> 00:14:14.429 moved into the Biltmore Hotel in New York and 00:14:14.429 --> 00:14:17.429 instantly became known for their just juvenile, 00:14:17.529 --> 00:14:19.889 outrageous behavior. We have these wonderful, 00:14:20.110 --> 00:14:22.990 unbelievable anecdotes. Scott doing handstands 00:14:22.990 --> 00:14:25.309 in the lobby, Zelda sliding down the banisters. 00:14:25.509 --> 00:14:27.940 Behavior that got them asked to leave. So they 00:14:27.940 --> 00:14:30.500 moved to the Commodore Hotel and famously spent 00:14:30.500 --> 00:14:32.700 half an hour just spinning in the revolving door, 00:14:32.820 --> 00:14:35.299 completely drunk. Dorothy Parker recalled seeing 00:14:35.299 --> 00:14:37.940 them riding on the roof of a taxi. She said they 00:14:37.940 --> 00:14:40.039 looked as though they had just stepped out of 00:14:40.039 --> 00:14:43.419 the sun. Everyone wanted to meet them. They were 00:14:43.419 --> 00:14:46.279 the living, breathing epitome of this new cultural 00:14:46.279 --> 00:14:49.019 moment. And Fitzgerald became the flag bearer 00:14:49.019 --> 00:14:52.000 for this youth and revolt. He helped define the 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:56.580 Jazz Age as this morally permissive era. a disillusionment 00:14:56.580 --> 00:14:59.139 with old social norms, and an obsession with 00:14:59.139 --> 00:15:02.539 self -gratification. He described it as a race 00:15:02.539 --> 00:15:05.700 along under its own power, served by great filling 00:15:05.700 --> 00:15:08.320 stations full of money. And that whole hedonistic 00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:11.039 lifestyle was just relentlessly fueled by alcohol. 00:15:11.340 --> 00:15:13.500 Those gin and fruit concoctions that let them 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:16.399 maintain that ecstatic public facade. But while 00:15:16.399 --> 00:15:18.940 it looked glamorous privately, it led to bitter 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:21.360 quarrels, deep jealousies, and constant accusations 00:15:21.360 --> 00:15:24.269 of infidelity. Confirming to both of them, probably, 00:15:24.269 --> 00:15:26.070 that their marriage was fundamentally doomed. 00:15:26.309 --> 00:15:29.629 In 1921, their daughter, Frances Scotty Fitzgerald, 00:15:29.690 --> 00:15:32.970 was born. And this brings us to another famous, 00:15:33.210 --> 00:15:36.210 darkly insightful anecdote that immediately found 00:15:36.210 --> 00:15:38.909 its way into his fiction. Right. As Zelda was 00:15:38.909 --> 00:15:41.149 coming out of the anesthesia after childbirth, 00:15:41.330 --> 00:15:44.230 she had this famous rambling remark. I hope it's 00:15:44.230 --> 00:15:46.299 beautiful and a fool. A beautiful little fool. 00:15:46.440 --> 00:15:48.659 And Fitzgerald used that line almost verbatim 00:15:48.659 --> 00:15:51.220 for Daisy Buchanan's dialogue in The Great Gatsby. 00:15:51.419 --> 00:15:54.639 It just shows how closely he mined their turbulent, 00:15:54.840 --> 00:15:58.000 chaotic, private life for his fiction right from 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:00.639 the very start. Everything was material, even 00:16:00.639 --> 00:16:03.039 his wife's semi -conscious words after delivering 00:16:03.039 --> 00:16:05.419 their child. Let's move now into the period that 00:16:05.419 --> 00:16:07.860 gave us his greatest work. His second novel, 00:16:07.980 --> 00:16:10.679 The Beautiful and Damned, in 1922, that propelled 00:16:10.679 --> 00:16:13.059 him even farther into the cultural elite. It 00:16:13.059 --> 00:16:15.799 sold 50 ,000 copies. And this book was even more 00:16:15.799 --> 00:16:18.299 explicitly modeled on their marriage. Anthony 00:16:18.299 --> 00:16:20.940 Patch was a version of Scott, and Gloria Patch 00:16:20.940 --> 00:16:23.500 represented what he saw as Zelda's chill -mindedness 00:16:23.500 --> 00:16:25.940 and selfishness. But the problem was, the financial 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:29.440 pressure, it didn't go away. It got worse. He 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:31.600 tried to maintain the success with a play, The 00:16:31.600 --> 00:16:34.899 Vegetable, in 1923, but it was an unmitigated 00:16:34.899 --> 00:16:37.600 disaster. A disaster the audience literally walked 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:39.960 out during the second act. So this flop was a 00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:43.399 crucial financial pivot point for him. He's mired 00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:46.059 in crushing debt from the play's failure, and 00:16:46.059 --> 00:16:48.279 he's forced into a pattern he deeply resented. 00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:51.100 Writing short stories just to restore his finances. 00:16:51.740 --> 00:16:55.029 This is the famous whoring of his talent. He 00:16:55.029 --> 00:16:57.429 saw most of these commercial stories as worthless, 00:16:57.529 --> 00:16:59.570 but he had to churn them out for the high rates 00:16:59.570 --> 00:17:02.250 paid by magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. 00:17:02.750 --> 00:17:05.670 He called it rotten stuff, but the money was 00:17:05.670 --> 00:17:07.849 necessary to pay the bills and keep Zelda happy. 00:17:08.190 --> 00:17:10.950 The one significant exception he noted was Winter 00:17:10.950 --> 00:17:13.890 Dreams, which he explicitly said was his first 00:17:13.890 --> 00:17:16.410 attempt at the Gatsby idea. So while he was trying 00:17:16.410 --> 00:17:18.490 to make money in Great Neck, Long Island to be 00:17:18.490 --> 00:17:21.049 near Broadway, he's exposed to this incredible 00:17:21.049 --> 00:17:23.450 extravagance of the neighboring mansions, which 00:17:23.450 --> 00:17:25.630 would, of course, define the setting of his third 00:17:25.630 --> 00:17:28.309 novel. Critically, he encountered a real -life 00:17:28.309 --> 00:17:31.470 figure who provided the blueprint for Jay Gatsby, 00:17:31.630 --> 00:17:34.549 his wealthy neighbor, Max Gerlach. And here's 00:17:34.549 --> 00:17:36.470 where the legend of Gatsby just meets reality. 00:17:37.170 --> 00:17:40.250 Gerlach was a fascinating figure, a gentleman 00:17:40.250 --> 00:17:43.839 bootlegger, a former WWI major. who flaunted 00:17:43.839 --> 00:17:46.599 his nouveau riche status by throwing these unbelievably 00:17:46.599 --> 00:17:49.220 lavish parties. He never wore the same shirt 00:17:49.220 --> 00:17:52.000 twice and regularly used the phrase old sport 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:54.660 to address everyone he met. He was the guy. He 00:17:54.660 --> 00:17:56.579 was the guy. He fostered myths about himself, 00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:59.460 that he was related to the German Kaiser. He 00:17:59.460 --> 00:18:01.920 was the embodiment of that mysterious self -made 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:04.700 man who had achieved financial success but lacked 00:18:04.700 --> 00:18:07.099 the social history to back it up. He was the 00:18:07.099 --> 00:18:10.359 perfect template for Jay Gatsby. So in May 1924, 00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:12.740 Fitzgerald moves the family to the French Riviera 00:18:12.740 --> 00:18:14.980 to work on this new novel. He's determined to 00:18:14.980 --> 00:18:17.359 make it a conscious artistic achievement, deliberately 00:18:17.359 --> 00:18:19.759 shifting away from the autobiographical realism 00:18:19.759 --> 00:18:22.019 of his first two books. But the personal chaos, 00:18:22.220 --> 00:18:24.720 it followed them. While they were abroad, a major 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:27.400 marital crisis developed that caused a permanent 00:18:27.789 --> 00:18:30.730 irreparable breach. Zelda became infatuated with 00:18:30.730 --> 00:18:33.829 a French naval aviator, Edward Jazon, and she 00:18:33.829 --> 00:18:35.890 asked for a divorce. And Fitzgerald, in this 00:18:35.890 --> 00:18:38.650 desperate, panicked reaction, he locked her in 00:18:38.650 --> 00:18:41.230 the house. Wow. Jazon left, apparently having 00:18:41.230 --> 00:18:44.289 had no intention of marrying Zelda, but the humiliation 00:18:44.289 --> 00:18:47.420 and the breach of trust were permanent. Zelda 00:18:47.420 --> 00:18:50.140 then overdosed on sleeping pills. They eventually 00:18:50.140 --> 00:18:52.839 smoothed it over publicly, but they never truly 00:18:52.839 --> 00:18:54.940 discussed it. They just let the damage fester. 00:18:55.079 --> 00:18:57.460 And The Great Gatsby was published shortly after 00:18:57.460 --> 00:19:01.019 that on April 10th, 1925. And despite being lauded 00:19:01.019 --> 00:19:03.900 by literary giants like T .S. Eliot, who praised 00:19:03.900 --> 00:19:06.279 its control and narrative mastery. Eliot loved 00:19:06.279 --> 00:19:08.319 it, right? He called it a huge step forward. 00:19:08.460 --> 00:19:11.039 A huge step, exactly. And Willa Cather, Edith 00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:13.920 Wharton, they all saw it as a massive leap forward. 00:19:14.539 --> 00:19:16.960 But commercially. It was a total flop. A complete 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:20.000 dud. I mean, it sold fewer than 23 ,000 copies 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:22.380 in the first year. That's nothing compared to 00:19:22.380 --> 00:19:24.720 his other books. Nothing. And get this. His domestic 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:28.660 royalties in 1929, so four years later, amounted 00:19:28.660 --> 00:19:33.220 to, what was it, $5 .10. Wow. Just wow. Five 00:19:33.220 --> 00:19:36.420 dollars. So you realize the man who wrote the 00:19:36.420 --> 00:19:38.799 great American novel made less than six dollars 00:19:38.799 --> 00:19:41.700 from it four years after it came out. That financial 00:19:41.700 --> 00:19:44.599 anxiety must have just been a constant suffocating 00:19:44.599 --> 00:19:48.839 cloud over his art. The time in France also coincided 00:19:48.839 --> 00:19:52.160 with the rise of the lost generation. Fitzgerald 00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:53.980 befriended the American expatriate community 00:19:53.980 --> 00:19:57.420 in Paris, including Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, 00:19:57.539 --> 00:20:00.420 and most importantly, Ernest Hemingway. He really 00:20:00.420 --> 00:20:03.079 admired Hemingway, saw him as a kind of literary 00:20:03.079 --> 00:20:05.859 conscience. He did. But their friendship is one 00:20:05.859 --> 00:20:08.480 of the most fraught in literary history. Constantly 00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:11.420 strained, often poisonous, and largely because 00:20:11.420 --> 00:20:14.049 of Zelda. The infamous Hemingway -Zelda conflict. 00:20:14.349 --> 00:20:16.970 Right. Hemingway outright disliked Zelda. He 00:20:16.970 --> 00:20:19.450 called her insane and an evil shadow in his memoir, 00:20:19.609 --> 00:20:21.910 A Movable Feast. And he believed she was the 00:20:21.910 --> 00:20:23.849 one corrupting Scott's talent. He fundamentally 00:20:23.849 --> 00:20:26.250 believed that. He argued she pressured Scott 00:20:26.250 --> 00:20:28.009 to write the lucrative short stories instead 00:20:28.009 --> 00:20:30.289 of focusing on novels just to maintain their 00:20:30.289 --> 00:20:33.329 extravagant lifestyle. This necessity, Hemingway 00:20:33.329 --> 00:20:36.250 argued, was whoring his talent. And Zelda didn't 00:20:36.250 --> 00:20:38.750 help her own case, did she? She confirmed her 00:20:38.750 --> 00:20:41.309 commercial preference, saying she always felt 00:20:41.309 --> 00:20:43.930 a story in the Saturday Evening Post was tops. 00:20:44.269 --> 00:20:46.569 Because of the high pay and the wide readership, 00:20:46.569 --> 00:20:49.789 it was a cultural divide. The perceived purity 00:20:49.789 --> 00:20:52.390 of the novel versus the lucrative commercialism 00:20:52.390 --> 00:20:54.890 of the mass market short story. And the conflict 00:20:54.890 --> 00:20:58.720 got intensely personal. And cruel. Very cruel. 00:20:59.279 --> 00:21:01.839 Hemingway detailed how Zelda used homophobic 00:21:01.839 --> 00:21:04.480 slurs, accusing Fitzgerald of having a homosexual 00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:07.380 relationship with him, a claim Fitzgerald denied, 00:21:07.519 --> 00:21:09.859 but which clearly shook him. It raises this important 00:21:09.859 --> 00:21:12.630 question about his dynamic. If he was so desperate 00:21:12.630 --> 00:21:15.549 for external validation, from Ginevra, from Zelda, 00:21:15.730 --> 00:21:17.509 from Hemingway, that he felt he needed to prove 00:21:17.509 --> 00:21:20.329 his masculinity. Right. He even had sex with 00:21:20.329 --> 00:21:23.109 a prostitute to prove his heterosexuality. But 00:21:23.109 --> 00:21:25.809 Zelda found the condoms beforehand, which just 00:21:25.809 --> 00:21:28.309 sparked another bitter, jealous quarrel. The 00:21:28.309 --> 00:21:30.690 sheer drama surrounding them was constant. It 00:21:30.690 --> 00:21:33.210 was almost designed for public consumption, but 00:21:33.210 --> 00:21:36.119 so deeply destructive privately. The incident 00:21:36.119 --> 00:21:38.660 where Zelda threw herself down a flight of marble 00:21:38.660 --> 00:21:41.299 stairs because Fitzgerald was engrossed in a 00:21:41.299 --> 00:21:43.339 conversation with Isadora Duncan and ignored 00:21:43.339 --> 00:21:46.319 her. It's just a perfect illustration of her 00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:48.940 escalating desperate attempts to control all 00:21:48.940 --> 00:21:51.140 the attention. The return to America didn't stabilize 00:21:51.140 --> 00:21:53.920 anything. Their marriage was a wreck. The need 00:21:53.920 --> 00:21:56.079 for money was ever more pressing and it forced 00:21:56.079 --> 00:21:59.180 him into a truly unhappy professional detour. 00:21:59.960 --> 00:22:03.680 Hollywood. In 1927, he accepts a screenwriting 00:22:03.680 --> 00:22:06.869 invitation. a massive financial commitment that 00:22:06.869 --> 00:22:09.670 he needed to pay off debts. But the novelty faded 00:22:09.670 --> 00:22:12.730 fast. They were known for these wild, juvenile 00:22:12.730 --> 00:22:15.609 pranks. Like boiling expensive watches in a pot 00:22:15.609 --> 00:22:17.869 of tomato sauce, which just outraged their new, 00:22:17.970 --> 00:22:20.569 staid Hollywood acquaintances. And Fitzgerald, 00:22:20.609 --> 00:22:22.710 desperately seeking some kind of intellectual 00:22:22.710 --> 00:22:25.710 connection, found a new muse in the 17 -year 00:22:25.710 --> 00:22:28.190 -old starlet Lois Moran. He was captivated by 00:22:28.190 --> 00:22:30.920 her youth and her admiration for him. She inspired 00:22:30.920 --> 00:22:33.039 the character Rosemary Hoyt in Tender is the 00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:35.779 Night, the beautiful, fresh young actress. He 00:22:35.779 --> 00:22:38.079 also wrote her into the short story Magnetism. 00:22:38.440 --> 00:22:40.940 This pattern of finding muses and immediately 00:22:40.940 --> 00:22:44.039 mining their lives for fiction was just a constant 00:22:44.039 --> 00:22:46.619 in his career. And naturally, Zelda's jealousy 00:22:46.619 --> 00:22:49.880 manifested violently. She set fire to her own 00:22:49.880 --> 00:22:53.000 expensive clothes in a bathtub as a self -destructive 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:56.460 act, and she disparaged Moran as a breakfast 00:22:56.460 --> 00:22:59.240 food. After only two months in Hollywood, the 00:22:59.240 --> 00:23:02.440 unhappy couple left. And this period really marks 00:23:02.440 --> 00:23:05.839 the start of the final devastating descent, primarily 00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:08.619 because of Zelda's escalating mental health crisis. 00:23:09.160 --> 00:23:13.079 By 1930, her behavior became truly violent and 00:23:13.079 --> 00:23:15.099 erratic. The incident along the Grand Corniche 00:23:15.099 --> 00:23:17.579 in France. That's just terrifying. Where she 00:23:17.579 --> 00:23:19.640 seized the car's steering wheel in an attempt 00:23:19.640 --> 00:23:21.980 to drive herself, Scott, and their daughter over 00:23:21.980 --> 00:23:24.380 a cliff. That was the ultimate sign of collapse. 00:23:24.720 --> 00:23:26.619 It's absolutely horrifying. Scene of domestic 00:23:26.619 --> 00:23:28.900 terror that must have haunted him. And following 00:23:28.900 --> 00:23:32.299 this, in June 1930, doctors finally diagnosed 00:23:32.299 --> 00:23:34.460 her with schizophrenia. She spent the rest of 00:23:34.460 --> 00:23:36.579 her life in and out of expensive psychiatric 00:23:36.579 --> 00:23:39.039 treatment. First in Switzerland, and later at 00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:41.460 the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins. H .L. Mencken 00:23:41.460 --> 00:23:44.000 noted privately that Zelda was only half sane. 00:23:44.259 --> 00:23:47.299 He expressed deep regret that Fitzgerald couldn't 00:23:47.299 --> 00:23:49.420 focus on writing great novels because he was 00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:51.960 forced to churn out magazine stories just to 00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:54.839 pay for her extremely expensive psychiatric care. 00:23:55.019 --> 00:23:58.119 It truly highlights the terrible cost of that 00:23:58.119 --> 00:24:00.640 required affluent lifestyle. And here's where 00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:03.400 the literary theft and conflict really peaked. 00:24:04.009 --> 00:24:06.410 Fitzgerald was working on his fourth novel, which 00:24:06.410 --> 00:24:08.730 drew heavily on the disintegration of their marriage. 00:24:08.890 --> 00:24:10.869 The story of a promising young man marrying a 00:24:10.869 --> 00:24:13.470 mentally ill woman. The very material of their 00:24:13.470 --> 00:24:17.279 lives. And Zelda preempted him. She did. While 00:24:17.279 --> 00:24:19.240 she was hospitalized, she wrote and sent her 00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:21.839 own fictionalized account, Save Me the Waltz, 00:24:21.839 --> 00:24:25.200 to Scribner's. Fitzgerald was furious. He saw 00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:27.960 as a theft of his novel's plot material. He privately 00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:30.180 called her a plagiarist and a third -rate writer. 00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:31.839 It wasn't just personal, it was professional. 00:24:32.079 --> 00:24:34.259 She had staked a claim on his artistic material. 00:24:34.660 --> 00:24:37.740 Yet despite his anger, he persuaded Maxwell Perkins 00:24:37.740 --> 00:24:40.619 to publish her novel. It failed, both commercially 00:24:40.619 --> 00:24:43.240 and critically. And Fitzgerald's own work, Tender 00:24:43.240 --> 00:24:46.799 is the Night. finally came out in 1934, a nine 00:24:46.799 --> 00:24:49.759 -year gap from Gatsby. It received mixed reviews, 00:24:50.039 --> 00:24:52.559 partly because its complex structure confused 00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:55.460 critics, but primarily because Depression -era 00:24:55.460 --> 00:24:58.319 audiences just saw Fitzgerald as an irrelevant 00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:01.339 symbol of jazz age excess. And this brings us 00:25:01.339 --> 00:25:03.420 squarely into the Great Depression and the cruel 00:25:03.420 --> 00:25:06.339 reality of his financial decline. His glamorous 00:25:06.339 --> 00:25:08.539 material was suddenly completely out of step 00:25:08.539 --> 00:25:10.829 with the national mood. As one journalist noted, 00:25:11.029 --> 00:25:13.490 Americans could no longer afford champagne or 00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:16.109 trips to Montparnasse. Fitzgerald's works were 00:25:16.109 --> 00:25:19.309 deemed elitist and materialistic, and his popularity 00:25:19.309 --> 00:25:22.109 just plummeted. The financial situation was dire 00:25:22.109 --> 00:25:26.450 and humiliating. By 1936, his book Royalties 00:25:26.450 --> 00:25:30.009 amounted to a pitiful $80. $80 for the year. 00:25:30.150 --> 00:25:32.690 He was in constant crushing debt, relying on 00:25:32.690 --> 00:25:34.809 loans from his agent, Harold Ober, and his editor, 00:25:34.890 --> 00:25:37.890 Perkins, just to keep Zelda institutionalized 00:25:37.890 --> 00:25:40.230 and his daughter in school. He eventually severed 00:25:40.230 --> 00:25:42.490 ties with Ober, his most loyal agent, purely 00:25:42.490 --> 00:25:44.670 out of shame. He believed the agent had lost 00:25:44.670 --> 00:25:47.109 faith in him because of his deepening alcoholism 00:25:47.109 --> 00:25:49.710 and unreliability. And his health was crumbling, 00:25:49.789 --> 00:25:52.769 too. The heavy drinking led to serious physical 00:25:52.769 --> 00:25:56.420 ailments. cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, 00:25:56.680 --> 00:26:00.460 recurring tuberculosis. Between 1933 and 1937, 00:26:00.700 --> 00:26:03.720 he was hospitalized eight times for alcoholism 00:26:03.720 --> 00:26:06.420 alone. The public low point came in September 00:26:06.420 --> 00:26:10.799 1936. A journalist, Michel Mock, publicly reported 00:26:10.799 --> 00:26:13.319 on Fitzgerald's alcoholism and career failure 00:26:13.319 --> 00:26:15.799 in a nationally syndicated article. And that 00:26:15.799 --> 00:26:18.420 piece, exposing his private struggle to the nation, 00:26:18.599 --> 00:26:21.440 it so deeply damaged Fitzgerald's reputation 00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:23.900 that it prompted him to attempt suicide after 00:26:23.900 --> 00:26:26.420 reading it. He later referred to this whole period 00:26:26.420 --> 00:26:29.039 of decline in his short story, The Crackup. The 00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:31.259 necessity to pay for Zelda's confinement drove 00:26:31.259 --> 00:26:34.339 the final Hollywood act. In 1937, he accepted 00:26:34.339 --> 00:26:37.960 a lucrative MGM contract, nearly $30 ,000 a year, 00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:40.579 his highest salary ever. But the bulk of it was 00:26:40.579 --> 00:26:42.579 immediately consumed by Zelda's medical bills 00:26:42.579 --> 00:26:45.180 and Scotty's school expenses. It was the salary 00:26:45.180 --> 00:26:47.400 of a major success paying for the fallout of 00:26:47.400 --> 00:26:49.539 a major failure. This period offered a brief, 00:26:49.559 --> 00:26:52.720 sad attempt to reclaim the past. In 1938, he 00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:54.779 reunited with Ginevra King, the original muse. 00:26:55.079 --> 00:26:57.799 He was hoping to keep the illusion perfect, as 00:26:57.799 --> 00:27:00.019 he told his daughter. But his uncontrollable 00:27:00.019 --> 00:27:02.839 alcoholism ruined the meaning, and a disappointed 00:27:02.839 --> 00:27:06.940 Ginevra returned to Chicago. The past. could 00:27:06.940 --> 00:27:09.200 not be resurrected his final companion was the 00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:12.279 gossip columnist sheila graham and there's this 00:27:12.279 --> 00:27:14.440 truly depressing moment when he tried to buy 00:27:14.440 --> 00:27:17.640 her a set of his novels as a gift only to realize 00:27:17.640 --> 00:27:19.819 the bookstores had stopped carrying his works 00:27:19.819 --> 00:27:22.579 that moment the realization that he was largely 00:27:22.579 --> 00:27:24.859 forgotten as an author must have been utterly 00:27:24.859 --> 00:27:27.750 demoralizing His screenwriting output was minimal, 00:27:27.970 --> 00:27:30.589 often uncredited. He only got sole credit for 00:27:30.589 --> 00:27:33.730 Three Comrades in 1938, despite doing dialogue 00:27:33.730 --> 00:27:36.430 polish for huge projects like Gone with the Wind. 00:27:36.589 --> 00:27:39.269 Which he disparaged as an old wives tale. Of 00:27:39.269 --> 00:27:41.549 course he did. Director Billy Wilder famously 00:27:41.549 --> 00:27:44.569 summarized Fitzgerald's Hollywood foray. He said 00:27:44.569 --> 00:27:46.769 it was like a great sculptor who was hired to 00:27:46.769 --> 00:27:49.349 do a plumbing job. His talent was being wasted 00:27:49.349 --> 00:27:52.230 and he knew it. He mocked himself in the Pat 00:27:52.230 --> 00:27:54.769 Hobby stories, writing about the miserable life 00:27:54.769 --> 00:27:56.769 of a Hollywood hack who couldn't keep a job. 00:27:56.950 --> 00:27:59.809 And yet he used his spare time, despite his failing 00:27:59.809 --> 00:28:02.609 health, to work on his final unfinished novel, 00:28:02.910 --> 00:28:05.630 The Last Tycoon, based on the film executive 00:28:05.630 --> 00:28:08.470 Irving Thalberg. And in a moment of profound 00:28:08.470 --> 00:28:12.349 reflection, nearing the end, he wrote this regretful 00:28:12.349 --> 00:28:15.450 letter to his daughter. about his one great triumph. 00:28:19.930 --> 00:28:29.049 That quote, that focus on duty to art over duty 00:28:29.049 --> 00:28:32.109 to lifestyle, it forces us to turn our attention 00:28:32.109 --> 00:28:34.890 from the tragedy of the man to the triumph of 00:28:34.890 --> 00:28:37.349 his artistry. Right. Let's look closely at the 00:28:37.349 --> 00:28:39.789 literary evolution of his novels versus the commercial 00:28:39.789 --> 00:28:42.109 demands of his short stories, because that is 00:28:42.109 --> 00:28:44.589 the heart of his crackup. We see a clear, discernible 00:28:44.589 --> 00:28:47.230 progression in his novels. His authorial voice 00:28:47.230 --> 00:28:49.730 clearly matured with each successive work, despite 00:28:49.730 --> 00:28:52.470 all the external chaos. This side of paradise, 00:28:52.789 --> 00:28:55.329 while a sensation, was criticized by his friend 00:28:55.329 --> 00:28:57.609 Edmund Wilson for its poor form and construction, 00:28:57.950 --> 00:29:00.950 its reliance on textual fragments, letters, poetry. 00:29:01.269 --> 00:29:04.250 It was experimental, but kind of a mess. And 00:29:04.250 --> 00:29:06.750 Fitzgerald was acutely sensitive to that kind 00:29:06.750 --> 00:29:09.650 of criticism. He read those reviews, and Beautiful 00:29:09.650 --> 00:29:12.339 and Damned was a direct attempt to improve. it 00:29:12.339 --> 00:29:15.240 showed superior form and construction and a move 00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:18.710 toward an ironical pessimistic style He was consciously 00:29:18.710 --> 00:29:21.029 learning the craft. But The Great Gatsby was 00:29:21.029 --> 00:29:23.930 the masterpiece precisely because it was a conscious 00:29:23.930 --> 00:29:27.230 artistic pivot. He intentionally departed from 00:29:27.230 --> 00:29:29.569 the sprawling realism of his first two novels 00:29:29.569 --> 00:29:33.109 to create a pure, controlled, creative work. 00:29:33.349 --> 00:29:36.490 He refined his prose. He consciously emulated 00:29:36.490 --> 00:29:39.650 the literary styles of Joseph Conrad and notably 00:29:39.650 --> 00:29:42.829 Willa Cather. Her novel, A Lost Lady, influenced 00:29:42.829 --> 00:29:45.019 him greatly. Because it also features a wealthy 00:29:45.019 --> 00:29:47.200 married socialite who kind of symbolizes the 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:49.079 decay of the American dream. Exactly. He was 00:29:49.079 --> 00:29:51.079 moving away from biography and toward myth. And 00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:53.000 the literary world, they recognized it. With 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:55.160 Gatsby, critics acknowledged he had upgraded 00:29:55.160 --> 00:29:59.299 from being a brilliant improvisateur to a conscientious 00:29:59.299 --> 00:30:02.500 and painstaking artist. He was deliberately using 00:30:02.500 --> 00:30:05.180 symbolic language and setting the green light, 00:30:05.259 --> 00:30:07.359 the valley of ashes, to communicate these really 00:30:07.359 --> 00:30:10.180 deep themes. Gertrude Stein, a notoriously tough 00:30:10.180 --> 00:30:13.559 critic. She argued that Fitzgerald had surpassed 00:30:13.559 --> 00:30:15.579 his contemporaries, including Hemingway. Really? 00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:18.720 Yes, due to his masterful ability to write in 00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:21.740 natural sentences. She called him a genius who 00:30:21.740 --> 00:30:24.579 would be read when many of his well -known contemporaries 00:30:24.579 --> 00:30:27.160 are forgotten. What's fascinating here is the 00:30:27.160 --> 00:30:30.660 stark contrast with his short fiction. His novels 00:30:30.660 --> 00:30:34.039 showed this artistic progression. His 164 short 00:30:34.039 --> 00:30:37.579 stories overall showed the opposite. And again, 00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:40.720 the reason is simple and heartbreaking. Money. 00:30:41.119 --> 00:30:43.900 Money was the primary impetus. He lamented, I 00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:45.740 have to write a lot of rotten stuff that bores 00:30:45.740 --> 00:30:47.799 me and makes me depressed. He actively tailored 00:30:47.799 --> 00:30:50.180 them to commercial tastes, often rewriting stories 00:30:50.180 --> 00:30:53.359 to add these forced happy plot twists. The saccharine 00:30:53.359 --> 00:30:55.400 denouement that the editors of slick magazines 00:30:55.400 --> 00:30:57.900 demanded. And he was rewarded handsomely for 00:30:57.900 --> 00:30:59.720 this self -betrayal, which is why he kept doing 00:30:59.720 --> 00:31:02.859 it. He was earning up to $4 ,000 per story at 00:31:02.859 --> 00:31:05.420 his peak. The equivalent of a major annual salary 00:31:05.420 --> 00:31:08.519 today. Just for churning out 15 to 20 stories 00:31:08.519 --> 00:31:10.920 a year for the Saturday Evening Post. This gave 00:31:10.920 --> 00:31:13.400 him the high life, but it just drained his artistic 00:31:13.400 --> 00:31:16.480 energy. It created what his friend John Dos Passos 00:31:16.480 --> 00:31:19.920 called literary schizophrenia. The daily battle 00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:22.299 of deciding whether to do good writing that satisfies 00:31:22.299 --> 00:31:25.000 the conscience or cheap writing that satisfies 00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:28.359 the pocketbook. He debased his undeniable gift 00:31:28.359 --> 00:31:31.160 by transforming these complex tales into social 00:31:31.160 --> 00:31:34.700 romances with inevitably happy endings for the 00:31:34.700 --> 00:31:36.930 commercial market. Okay, so let's look at the 00:31:36.930 --> 00:31:39.930 enduring thematic power that transcends the quality 00:31:39.930 --> 00:31:42.910 gap between the two forms. First, the generational 00:31:42.910 --> 00:31:45.990 zeitgeist. Right. Fitzgerald was the foremost 00:31:45.990 --> 00:31:49.049 chronicler of the Jazz Age. He defined a generation 00:31:49.049 --> 00:31:52.069 who were adolescents during World War I, largely 00:31:52.069 --> 00:31:54.609 untouched by its horrors and dedicated to the 00:31:54.609 --> 00:31:57.279 fear of poverty and the worship of success. And 00:31:57.279 --> 00:31:59.700 as Stein suggested, his fiction didn't just record 00:31:59.700 --> 00:32:01.680 this generation, it kind of created it in the 00:32:01.680 --> 00:32:03.640 public's mind, giving them a self -consciousness. 00:32:03.859 --> 00:32:06.220 He became the standard bearer for youth and revolt. 00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:08.819 He ridiculed critics who denounced his use of 00:32:08.819 --> 00:32:11.720 modern alien slang and his depictions of premarital 00:32:11.720 --> 00:32:14.759 sex, arguing they wanted to retain outdated ideas 00:32:14.759 --> 00:32:16.960 about society that just didn't exist anymore. 00:32:17.220 --> 00:32:20.059 What's so critical and so deeply relevant for 00:32:20.059 --> 00:32:23.660 you today is his continuous, deep -seated preoccupation 00:32:23.660 --> 00:32:27.049 with wealth, class, and the American dream. This 00:32:27.049 --> 00:32:29.910 theme is just deeply rooted in his lifelong status 00:32:29.910 --> 00:32:33.609 as a poor boy in a rich town, a poor boy in a 00:32:33.609 --> 00:32:36.289 rich boy's school, a poor boy in a rich man's 00:32:36.289 --> 00:32:39.089 club at Princeton. He harbored, and this is his 00:32:39.089 --> 00:32:41.210 phrase, the smoldering resentment of a peasant 00:32:41.210 --> 00:32:43.450 towards the wealthy, and he channeled that right 00:32:43.450 --> 00:32:45.970 into his art. His work satirized the leisure 00:32:45.970 --> 00:32:48.150 class. People who take all of the privileges 00:32:48.150 --> 00:32:50.029 of the European ruling class and assume none 00:32:50.029 --> 00:32:52.569 of its responsibilities. Even H .L. Mencken, 00:32:52.690 --> 00:32:55.029 who criticized him for focusing too much on the 00:32:55.029 --> 00:32:57.269 wealthy, admitted that he came the closest to 00:32:57.269 --> 00:32:59.589 capturing their idiotic pursuit of sensation, 00:33:00.009 --> 00:33:02.769 their almost incredible stupidity and triviality, 00:33:02.809 --> 00:33:05.529 their glittering swinishness. He nailed it. And 00:33:05.529 --> 00:33:08.170 the Great Gatsby specifically, it dissects the 00:33:08.170 --> 00:33:10.390 entrenched class disparities and it provides 00:33:10.390 --> 00:33:12.410 this stunning critique of the American class 00:33:12.410 --> 00:33:15.150 system. It argues for the limits of the lower 00:33:15.150 --> 00:33:17.970 class to transcend their birth status. Right. 00:33:18.109 --> 00:33:21.410 Even if poor Americans become rich, the nouveau 00:33:21.410 --> 00:33:24.809 riche, like Gatsby, they remain inferior to those 00:33:24.809 --> 00:33:27.920 with old money. Like the Buchanans. Gasti's immense 00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:30.099 wealth couldn't buy him the social history of 00:33:30.099 --> 00:33:33.059 the Buchanans. That sense of eternal, unbridgeable 00:33:33.059 --> 00:33:35.339 distance. That no matter what you achieve, there's 00:33:35.339 --> 00:33:37.700 always an inherent club you can't join. That 00:33:37.700 --> 00:33:40.160 is the ultimate American story. That kind of 00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:43.140 social anxiety and status conflict is just as 00:33:43.140 --> 00:33:45.400 relevant now as it was then. And this ties directly 00:33:45.400 --> 00:33:48.220 into the theme of... otherness and appropriation, 00:33:48.359 --> 00:33:50.759 Fitzgerald constantly felt like a societal outsider, 00:33:51.079 --> 00:33:53.880 a parvenu, and he used that feeling to fuel his 00:33:53.880 --> 00:33:55.819 writing. And this sense of otherness defines 00:33:55.819 --> 00:33:58.680 his greatest character. Jay Gatsby is fundamentally 00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:01.480 defined by his otherness and his obscure origins. 00:34:01.740 --> 00:34:04.119 Tom Buchanan belittles him as Mr. Nobody from 00:34:04.119 --> 00:34:07.079 Nowhere. Exactly. His success is seen as a threat 00:34:07.079 --> 00:34:09.639 precisely because he is an outsider who lacks 00:34:09.639 --> 00:34:12.800 the coveted status of old stock Americans. Scholars 00:34:12.800 --> 00:34:15.300 find the fiction so enduringly relevant today 00:34:15.300 --> 00:34:18.139 because it captures this perennial American experience 00:34:18.139 --> 00:34:20.980 of social anxiety, status conflict, and resentment 00:34:20.980 --> 00:34:24.380 towards outsiders, immigrants, the nouveau riche 00:34:24.380 --> 00:34:26.900 successful minorities. Before we wrap up the 00:34:26.900 --> 00:34:29.360 artistry section, we have to talk about his appropriative 00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:32.860 tendency. His habit of lifting material directly 00:34:32.860 --> 00:34:35.360 from the lives of others, something he did constantly, 00:34:35.579 --> 00:34:38.079 almost pathologically. It was part of his process. 00:34:38.710 --> 00:34:42.590 He quoted verbatim entire letters from his mentor, 00:34:42.789 --> 00:34:45.090 Father Sigourney Faye, in this side of paradise. 00:34:45.389 --> 00:34:48.210 For the beautiful and damned, he inserted actual 00:34:48.210 --> 00:34:50.949 sentences from Zelda's diary. Which prompted 00:34:50.949 --> 00:34:54.230 her to jokingly note in a review that she recognized 00:34:54.230 --> 00:34:57.269 parts of her old diary that mysteriously disappeared 00:34:57.269 --> 00:34:59.989 after their marriage. He borrowed biographical 00:34:59.989 --> 00:35:02.750 incidents from his friend for the rich boy. He 00:35:02.750 --> 00:35:05.050 truly saw everything in his life and the lives 00:35:05.050 --> 00:35:07.309 of those around him as material for his craft. 00:35:07.710 --> 00:35:09.610 And the most striking instance is with Ginevra 00:35:09.610 --> 00:35:12.389 King. She wrote him a story as a parting gift 00:35:12.389 --> 00:35:14.190 about being trapped in a loveless marriage but 00:35:14.190 --> 00:35:16.349 pining for a former lover who attained wealth. 00:35:16.570 --> 00:35:18.949 And scholars note the plot similarities at the 00:35:18.949 --> 00:35:21.530 core of The Great Gatsby. He literally took the 00:35:21.530 --> 00:35:23.929 emotional narrative of his first great love and 00:35:23.929 --> 00:35:26.530 built his masterpiece around it, justifying it 00:35:26.530 --> 00:35:29.050 because, to him, it was his life, his experience 00:35:29.050 --> 00:35:31.949 to use. So we have this flawed, contradictory 00:35:31.949 --> 00:35:34.650 man, a plagiarist of his own life and others, 00:35:34.829 --> 00:35:39.769 who died on December 21st, 1940 at age 44, believing 00:35:39.769 --> 00:35:42.210 his life and work were total failures. He died 00:35:42.210 --> 00:35:45.650 of a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis. 00:35:45.849 --> 00:35:48.309 And the immediate critical response was harsh 00:35:48.309 --> 00:35:51.050 and dismissive. They saw him as a failed alcoholic 00:35:51.050 --> 00:35:54.400 and a mere chronicler of the jazz age. His New 00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:56.880 York Times obituary cemented his work forever 00:35:56.880 --> 00:36:00.099 to an era when gin was the national drink and 00:36:00.099 --> 00:36:02.880 sex the national obsession. And Dorothy Parker's 00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:05.340 famous line, uttered at his sparsely attended 00:36:05.340 --> 00:36:08.119 visitation, just encapsulated the tragedy. She 00:36:08.119 --> 00:36:10.840 murmured, the poor son of a bitch. A line taken 00:36:10.840 --> 00:36:13.519 directly from Al Eliza's observation at Gadsby's 00:36:13.519 --> 00:36:16.400 own sparsely attended funeral in the novel. The 00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:18.400 fiction had become prophetic of the author's 00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:21.190 own fate. Even in death, the complications continued. 00:36:21.409 --> 00:36:23.989 His lifelong status as an outsider. The Catholic 00:36:23.989 --> 00:36:25.869 Church initially denied burial in the family 00:36:25.869 --> 00:36:27.949 plot because he was a non -practicing Catholic. 00:36:28.170 --> 00:36:30.170 Forcing him to be buried in Rockville Cemetery 00:36:30.170 --> 00:36:33.530 until 1975, when his daughter successfully petitioned 00:36:33.530 --> 00:36:35.889 to have his remains and Zelda's moved to the 00:36:35.889 --> 00:36:38.050 Catholic St. Mary's Cemetery. But the critical 00:36:38.050 --> 00:36:40.250 reevaluation started almost immediately, and 00:36:40.250 --> 00:36:42.329 it was largely driven by the loyalty of his friends. 00:36:42.590 --> 00:36:45.050 Within one year, Edmund Wilson published The 00:36:45.050 --> 00:36:47.750 Unfinished The Last Tycoon, and he included the 00:36:47.750 --> 00:36:50.050 great Gatsby in the edition, which sparked new 00:36:50.050 --> 00:36:52.389 critical interest among scholars who saw the 00:36:52.389 --> 00:36:54.889 enduring quality of his best work. And here's 00:36:54.889 --> 00:36:56.690 where it gets really interesting for the novel's 00:36:56.690 --> 00:37:00.489 legacy, World War II. Right. Gatsby gained massive 00:37:00.489 --> 00:37:05.469 unexpected popularity when 123 ,000 Free Armed 00:37:05.469 --> 00:37:08.570 Services Edition copies were distributed to American 00:37:08.570 --> 00:37:11.690 soldiers overseas and to prisoners of war. This 00:37:11.690 --> 00:37:15.070 introduced the novel to a massive new non -academic 00:37:15.070 --> 00:37:16.889 audience, men who were fighting for America, 00:37:17.050 --> 00:37:19.570 reading about its failed ideals. That distribution 00:37:19.570 --> 00:37:22.489 was the catalyst. By 1960, the book was selling 00:37:22.489 --> 00:37:25.710 100 ,000 copies per year. Today, it has sold 00:37:25.710 --> 00:37:28.570 millions, is required reading, and is hailed 00:37:28.570 --> 00:37:31.989 by some, like Charles Jackson, as the only flawless 00:37:31.989 --> 00:37:34.820 novel in American literature and the strong contender 00:37:34.820 --> 00:37:37.000 for the great American novel. Fitzgerald became 00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:39.880 this cult figure by the 1950s, an Adonis of letters 00:37:39.880 --> 00:37:41.880 who was more widely known than he ever was during 00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:45.260 his lifetime. Adam Gopnik asserted that Fitzgerald, 00:37:45.280 --> 00:37:47.480 contrary to his own samest lament that there 00:37:47.480 --> 00:37:50.139 are no second acts in American lives, became 00:37:50.139 --> 00:37:53.380 an enduring legend of the West. He found his 00:37:53.380 --> 00:37:56.119 second act posthumously. His legacy is secured 00:37:56.119 --> 00:37:58.820 by his style, which influenced so many later 00:37:58.820 --> 00:38:01.039 writers like John O 'Hara and Richard Yates. 00:38:01.199 --> 00:38:04.260 And his work has been adapted across every medium, 00:38:04.480 --> 00:38:07.840 six major film versions of Gatsby alone. His 00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:10.980 life story is constantly being retold, from Beloved 00:38:10.980 --> 00:38:13.860 Infidel to Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. So 00:38:13.860 --> 00:38:16.039 what does this all mean? We've traced the arc 00:38:16.039 --> 00:38:18.460 of his life, the glittering youth who became 00:38:18.460 --> 00:38:21.039 the chronicler of the jazz age. The tragic descent 00:38:21.039 --> 00:38:24.139 into alcoholism and financial ruin caused by... 00:38:24.139 --> 00:38:26.119 by the need to maintain a cripplingly expensive 00:38:26.119 --> 00:38:28.679 lifestyle. And the final critical recognition 00:38:28.679 --> 00:38:30.840 that cemented his place in American letters. 00:38:31.059 --> 00:38:33.739 He was the perpetual outsider who wrote the quintessential 00:38:33.739 --> 00:38:36.039 story of what it means to be an American outsider. 00:38:36.400 --> 00:38:38.880 And this returns us to that profound regret he 00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:40.739 voiced to his daughter near the end of his life. 00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:43.519 He wished he had prioritized the artist over 00:38:43.519 --> 00:38:46.119 the careerist. That he should have finished Gatsby 00:38:46.119 --> 00:38:48.880 and declared, I've found my line. From now on, 00:38:48.900 --> 00:38:51.280 this comes first. This is my immediate duty. 00:38:51.460 --> 00:38:54.429 Without this, I am nothing. And this begs the 00:38:54.429 --> 00:38:56.489 essential provocative thought for you to consider. 00:38:57.150 --> 00:39:00.190 If Fitzgerald had successfully prioritized the 00:39:00.190 --> 00:39:03.030 artist over the careerist, could he have avoided 00:39:03.030 --> 00:39:05.150 the tragic decline that followed his greatest 00:39:05.150 --> 00:39:08.070 achievement? Or was the tragedy, the need for 00:39:08.070 --> 00:39:10.849 status, the pursuit of the unattonable Ginevra, 00:39:10.849 --> 00:39:13.050 and the demanding Zelda, the relentless consumption, 00:39:13.409 --> 00:39:16.550 was that inherent to the very material that fueled 00:39:16.550 --> 00:39:18.880 his greatest works in the first place? If he 00:39:18.880 --> 00:39:21.260 had rejected the high life, would we even have 00:39:21.260 --> 00:39:23.219 the Great Gatsby? That's the question his legacy 00:39:23.219 --> 00:39:24.280 asks of all of us.