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F. Scott. Fitzgerald.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 and spent his childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota with his parents. His father was a failed businessman and the family lived off his mother’s small inheritance. He attended Princeton in 1917, however, after experiencing academic difficulty, he joined the army briefly. After his discharge from the army in 1919, Fitzgerald was an overnight success selling 40000 copies of his novel This Side of Paradise in 1920. He married his wife Zelda the same year as his first publication and they lived an extravagant life with Scott being labelled the playboy of American Literature.

Fitzgerald plays an integral role to the narrative of That Summer in Paris, a text which portrays the development of Morley Callaghan as a writer, but which also seems to have the ambition of setting the record straight on the infamous boxing match between Hemingway and Callaghan in which Fitzgerald acted as timekeeper. The trio are intrinsically linked through writing, which also brought them together as friends. In October 1924, while Fitzgerald was working on The Great Gatsby, he came across Hemingway’s work in a collection published by The Three Mountains Press and edited by Ezra Pound, Fitzgerald proceeded to recommend Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins from Scribner’s although the consequent publication of In Our Time in 1925 was by Boni & Liveright. Hemingway then meets Callaghan, expresses interest in his writing and urges him to send his work to Paris for him to pass on. However, it is actually Fitzgerald who ends up recommending Callaghan’s work to Perkins and it is through this recommendation that Callaghan actually manages to get to Paris and live the life which he has been fantasizing about. Fitzgerald appears to have nothing but a positive effect on Callaghan’s life and with the use of Many Eyes we can see Callaghan being nostalgic about the positivity Fitzgerald had on his life.

 

 

image:http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/f/f_scott_fitzgerald/index.html

reference: Mathew J. Bruccoli, Scott And Ernest, The Bodley Head Ltd. 1978.