More Than Just a House

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: Jun 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9783738617801

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

This was the sort of thing Lew was used to--and he'd been around a good deal already. You came into an entrance hall, sometimes narrow New England Colonial, sometimes cautiously spacious. Once in the hall, the host said: Clare--or Virginia, or Darling--this is Mr. Lowrie. The woman said, How do you do, Mr. Lowrie, and Lew answered, How do you do, Mrs. Woman. Then the man suggested, How about a little cocktail? And Lew lifted his brows apart and said, Fine, in a tone that implied: What hospitality--consideration--attention! Those delicious canapés. M'm'm! Madame, what are they--broiled feathers? Enough to spoil a stronger appetite than mine.

But Lew was on his way up, with six new suits of clothes, and he was getting into the swing of the thing. His name was up for a downtown club and he had his eye on a very modern bachelor apartment full of wrought-iron swinging gates--as if he were a baby inclined to topple downstairs--when he saved the life of the Gunther girl and his tastes underwent revision.

This was back in 1925, before the Spanish-American--No, before whatever it is that has happened since then. The Gunther girls had got off the train on the wrong side and were walking along arm in arm, with Amanda in the path of an approaching donkey engine. Amanda was rather tall, golden and proud, and the donkey engine was very squat and dark and determined. Lew had no time to speculate upon their respective chances in the approaching encounter; he lunged at Jean, who was nearest him, and as the two sisters clung together, startled, he pulled Amanda out of the iron pathway by such a hair's breadth that a piston cylinder touched her coat.

And so Lew's taste was changed in regard to architecture and interior decoration. At the Gunther house they served tea, hot or iced, sugar buns, gingerbread and hot rolls at half-past four. When he first went there he was embarrassed by his heroic status--for about five minutes. Then he learned that during the Civil War the grandmother had been saved by her own grandmother from a burning house in Montgomery County, that father had once saved ten men at sea and been recommended for the Carnegie medal, that when Jean was little a man had saved her from the surf at Cape May--that, in fact, all the Gunthers had gone