The Great Gatsby (1925) is a novel that many critics, and Fitzgerald himself, consider to be a masterpiece of American literature of that period. In the authoritative Oxford list of the "One Hundred Major Books of the Century," overtaking Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," "The Great Gatsby" took second place, behind only Joyce's "Ulysses." Jazz is the key word that can be used to "discover" the essence and meaning of the novel. America, the 20s of the XX century - the time of "prohibition" and gangster "showdowns", a time of enchanting holidays organized by the "new Americans" against the backdrop of general poverty. It was with this novel that Fitzgerald "created" a generation that would later be called "lost."Francis Scott Fitzgerald is an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in St.Paul, Minnesota in 1896 and as a teenager he wrote stories for the literary magazine and articles for the college humour magazine. In 1913 Fitzgerald entered Princeton University but he left it in 1917 to join the US Army. While he was stationed in Alabama, Fitzgerald met his muse Zelda Sayre and they became engaged. After he left the army in 1919 he moved to New York and sold his first short story "Babes in the wood". Encouraged by the success of the story Fitzgerald returned to St.Paul and rewrote the novel he had started in the army, "This side of Paradise", a largely autobiographical story about love and greed. It was published in 1920 and was an immediate success for a 24-year-old writer. After an intense romance Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre got married in 1920. In 1921 their daughter was born and then the family moved to France. Life in the wealthy community there gave the writer a lot of ideas for his most brilliant novel "The Great Gatsby"which was published in 1925. The book is a shrewd depiction of the degrading Jazz age society. In the following years the Fitzgeralds travelled back and forth between the United States and France. Fitzgerald worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter, then he took up a well-paid contract with a film studio. However, he only completed one film script before being sacked because of his problems with alcohol. In the 1930s Fitzgerald and Zelda were living separately because she was suffering from a mental breakdown and then she spent the remaining years in mental health clinics. They never got divorced but the writer started a relationship with a journalist. And it was in her apartment that he died of a heart attack in 1940, at the age of 44. With their good looks and wild lifestyle, the Fitzgeralds represented the 1920s jazz age, the age of wealth, extravagance and ambition. They were both talented people and Francis Scott Fitzgerald is known as one of the finest novelists of America. "The Great Gatsby"is now considered a classic of American fiction and is often called the Great American Novel.
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