Emotional Bankruptcy

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: "This Side of Paradise", "The Beautiful and Damned", "The Great Gatsby" (his most famous), and "Tender Is the Night". A fifth, unfinished novel, "The Love of the Last Tycoon", was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair.

Fitzgerald's work has been adapted into films many times. His short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", was the basis for a 2008 film. "Tender Is the Night" was filmed in 1962, and made into a television miniseries in 1985. "The Beautiful and Damned" was filmed in 1922 and 2010. "The Great Gatsby" has been the basis for numerous films of the same name, spanning nearly 90 years: 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000, and 2013 adaptations. In addition, Fitzgerald's own life from 1937 to 1940 was dramatized in 1958 in "Beloved Infidel".

• Language: English
• Publisher: BoD E-Short
• Release date: Mar 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9783734774621

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896, St. Paul, Minnesota-1940, Hollywood, California) creó uno de los mitos de la literatura del siglo XX, el gran Gatsby, y contribuyó de un modo fundamental a la invención de su época. Su primera novela, A este lado del paraíso (1920), narró la educación sentimental de su generación, y sus cuentos inventaron la Edad del Jazz y configuraron las emociones y la imaginería de los años veinte. Hermosos y malditos (1922) adivinó el fin de la fiesta inagotable («la mayor orgía de la historia», según el propio Fitzgerald) y lo preparó para escribir El gran Gatsby (1925). Pasó por Hollywood, a la busca de dinero en el nuevo paraíso cinematográfico, y fracasó. La Depresión económica de 1929 la vivió como depresión y quiebra personal: Suave es la noche (1934), su cuarta novela, volvió a demostrar la extraordinaria capacidad de Fitzgerald para sentir y contar la compenetración indisoluble entre los grandes hechos históricos y la historia íntima de los individuos. En diciembre de 1933 su mujer, Zelda Sayre, había sido internada en una clínica psiquiá­trica. En 1937 Fitzgerald volvió a Hollywood como guionista. Su nombre sólo aparecería en los créditos de una película sonora: Tres camaradas, y por bebedor fue despedido de su último trabajo en Holly­wood, donde murió de un ataque al corazón. Su novela final, inacabada, El último magnate, hablaba de la desilusión de Hollywood. T. S. Eliot había juzgado así El gran Gatsby: «Me parece el primer paso que da la ficción americana desde Henry James.»

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Table Of Contents

I

II

III

Copyright

I

There's that nut with the spyglass again, remarked Josephine. Lillian Hammel unhooked a lace sofa cushion from her waist and came to the window. He's standing back so we can't see him. He's looking at the room above.

The peeper was working from a house on the other side of narrow Sixty-eighth Street, all unconscious that his activities were a matter of knowledge and, lately, of indifference to the pupils of Miss Truby's finishing school. They had even identified him as the undistinguished but quite proper young man who issued from the house with a brief case at eight every morning, apparently oblivious of the school across the street.

What a horrible person, said Lillian.

They're all the same, Josephine said. I'll bet almost every man we know would do the same thing, if he had a telescope and nothing to do in the afternoon. I'll bet Louie Randall would, anyhow.

Josephine, is he actually following you to Princeton? Lillian asked.

Yes, dearie.

Doesn't he think he's got his nerve?

He'll get away with it, Josephine assured her.

Won't Paul be wild?

I can't worry about that. I only know half a dozen boys at Princeton, and with Louie I know I'll have at least one good dancer to depend on. Paul's too short for me, and he's a bum dancer anyhow.

Not that Josephine was very tall; she was an exquisite size for seventeen and of a beauty that was flowering marvelously day by day into something richer and warmer. People gasped nowadays, whereas a year ago they would merely have stared, and scarcely glanced at her a year before that. She was manifestly to be the spectacular débutante of Chicago