100 years after ‘The Great Gatsby,’ remembering F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remember in the first few months of 2020, when flapper attire and Gatsby parties were all the rage? COVID-19 put a swift halt to the trend, but as the 100 year anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald publishing “The Great Gatsby” approaches, we’ll be seeing some “Jazz Age” stylings around the Twin Cities. 

For one thing, Friends of the St. Paul Public Library is planning a whole year of programming in partnership with different organizations. This year, there will be an exhibition on view at the Minnesota Historical Society’s Gale Family Library and Minneapolis Institute of Art, plus talks, readings, performances, and walking tours – you can see the full line-up here. 

First up is a book launch and conversation for “F Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography,” at the Arlington Hills Community Center, 1200 Payne Ave. It’s a celebration for the multi-author biography published by the University of Minnesota Press published in July of 2024. Editors Niklas Salmose and David Rennie will be there, along with two of the book’s contributors – David Page, a retired writing instructor from Inver Hills who has worked on numerous Fitzgerald-related writing and video projects and Ross Tangedal, an associate professor of English and director of Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. 

I had a chance to read this book over the summer, and I enjoyed digging into the author’s life chapter by chapter. Because each author takes on a different period from Fitzgerald’s life, you get different angles and perspectives as you go through the book. In Tangedal’s chapter, he explores the modernist architecture of Buffalo, N.Y. as possibly an impactful early memory for young Fitzgerald. Page, meanwhile, focuses on the author’s formative years in St. Paul. Some of the writers lean toward literary analysis, others touch on philosophy, popular culture, as well well as broader trends in American society. 

In the introduction, the editors write that the seeds for the book began back in 2018, when scholars gathered for the 18th International Ernest Hemingway Conference, relaxing on a very hot day under a tree, sipping rosé. The group decided to take a plural approach to the new endeavor, inspired by Fitzgerald’s own quote from his “Notebooks,” that an author is “too many people, if he’s any good.” 

I first read “The Great Gatsby” in high school in my English class. I remember a discussion during that year about which book we thought was the “Great American Novel.” Our class was eager to suss it out, and to find out the opinion of our teacher. Since the day Ms. Reed admitted she felt “Gatsby” deserved the honor, I’ve held the book with some reverence, though I don’t know how valuable picking one “Great American Novel” really is. 

There was a lot in “A Composite Biography” that was news to me, and I’m guessing you will find tidbits that you find surprising as well. Here are a few details I learned reading the book: 

F. Scott Fitzgerald was named after Francis Scott Key, who wrote the text for “The Star-Spangled Banner” 

It turns out Fitzgerald was a distant cousin of Key, and was also related to Mary Surratt, who was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, according to writer Helen Turner. 

Fitzgerald’s father, Edward Fitzgerald, bragged about aiding Confederate spies

The elder Fitzgerald was from Maryland, a slave state that didn’t secede from the Union, and his family had been “deeply embedded” in Southern culture for generations before the war, Turner tells us. Throughout his young life, Scott heard elaborate stories about his father ferrying spies across the Potomac river and other acts of allegiance toward the Southern side.

He kept a detailed ledger of his life 

In about 1919 or 1920, Fitzgerald began a ledger where he recorded every piece of fiction he published – noting both American and British magazine publishers and American and British book publishers of the same stories. He also kept track of money he earned from his writings, his transactions with Hollywood producers, and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald’s earnings. Perhaps most interesting, he has an autobiography section, beginning with the year he was born. That was in part sourced from his mother’s baby book and later from his own memories. You can actually see a pdf and transcription of the ledger here. 

Fitzgerald’s ledger reveals the way white supremacy culture played out for the author from an early age

A chapter focused on Fitzgerald’s life in 1902 and 1903 by Joel Kabot (a speechwriter for U.S. Sen. Chris Coons), draws on the author’s autobiography to look at two encounters with African American boys. In 1902, Fitzgerald visited Maryland (his family was living in upstate New York at the time), and mentions that he made friends with an African American child, “name forgotten – name Ambrose,” Fitzgerald wrote. A year later, he returned to Maryland for another visit, and reports that he “turned on his two Black friends Roscoe and Forrest,” and describes along with another boy tying them up. The ugly incident is worth noting when thinking about Fitzgerald’s later writing. In “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald confronts racism directly, painting the racist character Tom in a negative light. On the other hand, his early story, “The Offshore Pirate,” is steeped in cringe-worthy stereotypes of its supporting Black characters. 

Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Ice Palace,” was partially inspired by the St. Paul Winter Carnival

In Page’s chapter about Fitzgerald living in St. Paul in 1908 and 1909, he mentions that an early muse of Fitzgerald’s named Violet Stockton had a maternal grandfather who laid the cornerstone of the first Ice Palace in 1866. According to Page, the ice palace of the Winter Carnival inspired Fitzgerald’s story of the same name. 

Fitzgerald took dancing lessons at a place called the Ramalay School of Dance on Grand Avenue 

Page briefly mentions Fitzgerald was invited by the mother of one of his friends to take dance lessons and would spend long Saturday afternoons at the school, learning from Professor William H. Baker, who was also a bartender at the White Bear Yacht Club.

Fitzgerald’s first publication was in St. Paul Academy’s student magazine, “Now and Then” 

The story was a murder mystery about a newspaper reporter. 

Garrison Keillor may have been wrong about Fitzgerald’s feelings toward St. Paul

In Walter Raubicheck’s chapter about the years 1920 and 1920, he cites a speech “Prairie Home Companion” humorist Garrison Keillor gave in 2002 saying that Fitzgerald didn’t like St. Paul very much. Raubicheck writes this wasn’t entirely true. 

“The Midwest for Fitzgerald was the embodiment of an America older and more rooted than the one that created modern New York,” he writes, noting that in “The Great Gatsby,” narrator Nick Carraway returns to the midwest disgusted by the moral decay of the east coast. 

He never graduated from college 

Reading David Rennie’s and James L. W. West III’s chapters about Fitzgerald’s time at Princeton, I kept thinking about Jason Schwartzman’s character, Max Fischer, in the movie “Rushmore.” Fitzgerald excelled at extra-curricular activities, but his poor academic performance made his status at the college precarious, and he’d often be barred from performing with the school’s theatrical club, which produced his works. He ultimately dropped out and enlisted in the army during World War I.

He and Zelda once were banned from the White Bear Yacht Club

After Fitzgerald published his smash hit, “This Side of Paradise” in 1920, he and Zelda partied like there was no tomorrow in New York City, eventually getting kicked out of the Commodore Hotel. In 1922, the couple moved to St. Paul, in part because Zelda was pregnant. The couple managed to be excluded from the White Bear Yacht Club, still in existence today. 

He saw Zelda’s life as his material

Before I read “A Composite Biography,” I had heard about Zelda’s famous “review” of “The Beautiful and the Damned,” Fitzgerald’s second novel, where she jokes that her husband stole her diary and letters and plagiarized them. It’s a tongue in cheek piece, but it turns out he did borrow liberally from his wife’s life throughout their relationship. 

But it goes farther. It’s not just that Fitzgerald was appropriating aspects of Zelda’s life in his writing – he would get sore when she used it herself for her own writing projects. The conflict reached a fever pitch while Fitzgerald was writing “Tender is the Night,” a novel inspired in part by Zelda’s experiences in mental health institutions. Zelda, meanwhile, secretly sent her own autobiographical novel to editor Maxwell Perkins because she feared her husband’s wrath. 

Scott Donaldson, in his chapter about 1932-1933, even includes a sadistic private note Fitzgerald wrote that seems to be a plot borrowed from the play “Gaslight,” to drive Zelda to insanity, though it seems he never acted on the plan.

Ernest Hemingway lost his patience for Fitzgerald’s literary critique

Things started out swimmingly between the two authors, with Fitzgerald admiring the younger author’s work and introducing him to his editor, Perkins. Ermest Hemingway partially took Fitzgerald’s advice on his novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” according to Jade Broughton Adams, though he told Perkins the cuts Fitzgerald suggested were his own idea. Later, when Fitzgerald wrote a detailed nine-page report on “A Farewell to Arms,” Hemingway “derided” his former mentor, according to Delesalle-Nancey. Soon after, Fitzgerald forgot to call time while acting as timekeeper for a boxing match between Hemingway and Canadian author Morley Callaghan, and their friendship was damaged.  

“The Crack-Up” was under-appreciated

“The Crack-Up” was first published as a series of essays in Esquire Magazine in 1936 and later released as a collection posthumously. While the essays have since earned praise as being one of Fitzgerald’s greatest achievements, they were universally panned at the time. Among the largest critics? Hemingway, according to Elisabeth Bouzonviller.

This is just a sample of the rich material in this extensive, intriguing biography. If you want to hear more from some of the authors, head to the Gatsby At 100 series opening event on Saturday, Jan. 18 at noon – both in person and live stream (free). More information here.

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