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"The United States is a spiritual kindergarten, where absolutely confused children in Qian Qian are trying to spell the wrong building blocks.

Write the word' God'. "

-American poet E.A. Robinson

Fitzgerald was a veritable "golden boy" in the noisy United States in the 1920s.

He created a real million-dollar myth-at its peak, each of his short stories was worth four thousand dollars, almost one dollar a word. T.S., who has always been reserved and steady, even asserted that Fitzgerald's novel was "the first step of American novel since Henry James" after reading his The Great Gatsby. At that time, he was a beautiful woman with everything, wandering around the reception of European and American giants and becoming the spokesperson and idol of young people of that era. Hemingway, his best friend of the same age, is just an obscure young man of literature and art at this time. However, only twenty years later, when Hemingway stood on the podium in Stockholm, Fitzgerald's book had been quietly forgotten. Nowadays, Hemingway's name has become the literary common sense of readers in China, but few readers in China know Fitzgerald. This contrast was probably foreseen long ago. The sentimental Fitzgerald wrote in his diary shortly after breaking up with Hemingway: "I talked to the failed authority, while Ernest talked to the successful authority." We will never sit at the same table face to face again. " However, if Hemingway's literary character is unparalleled, Fitzgerald's later Failure and Poverty also has irreplaceable significance in the history of literature. Through Hemingway, what we see is a kind of publicity of human male strength; Through Fitzgerald, we can see more about the whole American society at that time.

F Scott Fitzgerald 1896 was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA on September 24th. His grandfather, Peter F. McQuilin, was a businessman in Sao Paulo. He has the typical characteristics of a local middle-class businessman: honesty, acumen and shrewdness. When he died, the wholesale grocery business he founded had a wealth worth more than one million dollars. In his will, he gave $250,000 to Fitzgerald's mother and his four other children. So Fitzgerald can be called a country aristocrat, largely because of his mother's family background. When Fitzgerald became a famous playwright and athlete at Princeton University, the local newspaper in Sao Paulo also reported his every move there in detail, which shows that McQuilin's name was still very famous in Sao Paulo at that time. His father Edward Fitzgerald is also a businessman. Shortly after his son was born, he moved to beaufort, new york with his children. However, his father didn't do well in the east, and soon he moved back to Sao Paulo, where Fitzgerald spent his childhood. Although Fitzgerald's parents are over 500 years old and their family's financial situation seems to be at the end of the road, their love for Fitzgerald Jr. is unparalleled.

In order not to let Fitzgerald lose his aristocratic scenery, his father sent him to the best private high school in Sao Paulo. Fitzgerald began his literary career here as a teenager. He began to publish novels in the school magazine and kept a rich diary. 19 1 1 year, Fitzgerald transferred to Newman Private Middle School, a Catholic boarding school in Hagensek, New Jersey, for two years. During this period, he went to new york several times, watched several plays and continued his literary creation, including several plays. 17 years old, Fitzgerald was admitted to Princeton, a famous aristocratic university, where he met his first girlfriend, Ginova King, and began his romantic history on Christmas 19 15. This rich Chicago girl created Fitzgerald's unique view of future women-infatuation and fear of those charming and shallow women. They broke up soon, and Fitzgerald, like his father, fled back to Sao Paulo in despair. He spent nine boring months in his hometown, and then returned to Princeton at 19 16 to pick up his fragmented campus dream. In his first novel, Paradise on Earth, he recreated this experience with gorgeous words. At that time, this confused teenager pursued all kinds of fantasies and was at arm's length about literary creation, but he just believed that the road would be ahead. 19 17 When Princeton started school in the autumn, Fitzgerald chose to give up his studies and was drafted into the army in the face of the temptation of World War I. At this time, he has been engaged to the lovely Alabama heiress Shanerda Seri and is about to begin military exploration. Life seems to have brought some changes to his emotional and rational hesitation.

Ironically, however, these two dreams were shattered. Before Fitzgerald's troops went abroad, the war was over, and his engagement with Hilda fell through with a pile of rejection letters. It turned out that Fitzgerald managed to keep an advertising job with a monthly salary of $90 after he retired from the army in 19 15, and at the same time wrote his own novels in order to marry the jade girl as soon as possible. But the magazine rudely rejected his manuscript, and Hilda rejected Fitzgerald. In his own words, he "rolled and crawled" back to Sao Paulo. In his hometown, he continued to write, waiting for an opportunity to return to new york to win his beauty and social status.

God finally smiled at him this time. When the manuscript of Paradise on Earth was accepted by Writer magazine on 19 19, the good fortune of life came to him. The American dream was like a lottery ticket, which was suddenly converted into rolling dollars. American literary circles began to grab this genius's works, and Fashion Classroom, Saturday Post and Writers Magazine accepted his nine short stories at one time. Hilda also smiled at her fiance who had been abandoned by her in the past. 1920, they held a sacred wedding in St. Patrick's Cathedral in new york, announcing to the world that "Golden Boy" and "Jade Girl" began to combine.

This recovered marriage is of decisive significance to Fitzgerald. From then on, he finally believed that money was a magic wand that could turn ruins into temples, and Shanerda was his fairy princess with a price tag attached to her slender wings. Fitzgerald himself described his strong sense of money after he retired from the army. His novel is the ace of spades in his hand, and the bet is Hilda. Fitzgerald later wrote in his diary, "I fell in love with a whirlwind, and I had to weave a big net from my mind to catch it." At that time, my mind was full of tinkling of silver dollars and copper coins, just like the music box that kept ringing around the poor. "

But Fitzgerald did catch the whirlwind. He and his wife shuttled back and forth with wine, champagne, kisses and lavish revelry at the most luxurious party in new york, printing money on his typewriter to pay for their astonishingly expensive life. During this period, he wrote quite a few excellent short stories, and also finished his second novel "Beautiful Misfortune", which was published in serial form at 192 1 and in a single book at 1922. 192 1 year later, Fitzgerald and his wife moved the battlefield of enjoyment to Europe, and Fitzgerald became the guest of Paris Art Salon, including of course Ms. Stein's living room, where Pound, Joyce, Hemingway and other masters all went in and out. After returning to Sao Paulo, Shanerda gave birth to their first daughter, Frances, and then they returned to new york to start a new carnival. They rented a big house in Nike in Gerrit, Long Island, new york, which provided the background for the writing of The Great Gatsby. While pursuing art and dollars, Fitzgerald had to pay tribute to his grumpy wife with all kinds of strange gadgets to consolidate her love for herself. Fitzgerald even said later that Hilda "asked me to work for her, not just my own dream."

1924, with the rich income brought by the reprint of the novel, the Fitzgerald family traveled abroad again, which will last for two years. The Great Gatsby was published in 1925. Although Fitzgerald personally thinks that he has finally written a masterpiece, and although critics edmund wilson and Eliot speak highly of this book, readers have different views on it. From the perspective of economic benefits, it is far less rewarding than the first two novels. In fact, Fitzgerald never got rich again. Neither the Great Gatsby nor his last novel Tender is the Night has become a bestseller.

During these years in Europe, Fitzgerald spent most of his time in holiday resorts. They go to high-end hotels, work day and night, and live in luxury. Fitzgerald also began to drink, and Hilda began an endless quarrel. At this time, Shanerda was dreaming all day. For a while, she wants to engage in ballet, and for a while, she wants to be a writer by herself. In this mental confusion, Shanerda's spirit collapsed. Fitzgerald also felt that his inspiration was drying up, his talent was fading away, and the premonition that he would become unknown began to attack his heavy heart. He found it more and more difficult to continue writing. At the age of 30, he decided to flee Jiang Lang.

Fitzgerald and his wife returned to the United States in 193 1, and soon after, Shanerda's father died. 1932, Shanerda had another mental breakdown. So the family moved to Baltimore. Here, while recovering, Shanerda began to write "Save me a waltz". This is an autobiographical novel. According to her own statement, she wrote this book just to treat herself. However, the sensitive Fitzgerald thinks that his wife wrote this book to belittle her husband as "an insignificant person" and even lost to her in literary creation.

Shanerda's physical condition deteriorated further. Facing the chaotic personal life, Fitzgerald slipped into the glass with more despair. Although he no longer has the style of the past and even lacks stable remuneration income, he has not stopped writing. During this period, he created his last important work, Tender is the Night. Fitzgerald wrote this book intermittently between the onset of illness, in his half-drunk and half-awake afternoon, before he looked at his wife's dying bed. Dramatically reappears the emotional entanglement between him and his wife, which can be said to be a confession and summary of his first half of life. Shanerda, who tried to commit suicide, had a nervous breakdown for the last time on 1934 and was taken to the clinic of Johns Hopkins University.

From 65438 to 0936, Fitzgerald inherited a lot of property from his dead mother, but he was still heavily in debt. In order to make a living, for his precious daughter and for his wife to live in the best mental nursing home, he began to write plays for Hollywood. Illness, alcoholism and chaos enveloped him for the rest of his life. Apart from living alone with her daughter, this once dissolute playboy can no longer maintain any social interaction.

From 65438 to 0939, Fitzgerald began his new work The Last Tycoon. The novel was not finished in the end. In Fitzgerald's own words, in this novel, he is "fleeing to a luxurious and romantic past that will never return". 1940, Fitzgerald died of a second heart attack. Seven years later, Sandra Fitzgerald was burned to death in a nursing home. The golden legend of the Fitzgerald family is over. However, Fitzgerald's "failure" is rare among other writers in his sadness, vitality and talent. Because after his death, critics and readers have gradually realized that his works and his life are not only the dramatic reappearance of the whole "1920s", but also the reappearance of American culture itself. It is precisely because of Fitzgerald's weakness, his imagination and his lack of romantic temperament of "rational control" (in edmund wilson's words) that Fitzgerald vividly described the "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" of American upper class in the 1920s. His amazing insight into all sentient beings is more meaningful today than at any time in history.

Throughout the writer's life, the most repentant thing is undoubtedly Fitzgerald's infatuation with the "American dream" piled up by dollars. The 1920s was the most extraordinary and turbulent decade in American history. The whole society is full of materialism, and people's quasi-religious fanaticism about money is no less than that of fundamentalists in the Middle East. Hollywood movies, naked women in playboy and inflammatory slogans on street billboards fascinate countless young people, expecting infinite opportunities in the new world, expecting a perfect and suffocating Eden, and then flying over the Grand Canyon with huge soap bubbles and arriving at the coast of arachis duranensis in an open morning. Writers like Hemingway can't stand the smoke of materialism in the continental United States, so they turn to the non-political field and ride horses and hunt leisurely under the magnificent snow-capped mountains of Kilimanjaro in Africa. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, walked to a mirage with a smile-at least on the surface. Hemingway once scornfully described the rich as "the rich poor", while Fitzgerald firmly believed that "the rich" was really different from you and me. Influenced by this deep-rooted belief, Fitzgerald's creation has a certain utilitarian color from the beginning In fact, writing is just one of the many means for Fitzgerald to gain social status and "leadership". In his youth, he also devoted himself to club politics and sports with the same enthusiasm, especially the "dance class", as a means to obtain the position he dreamed of since childhood. Even in middle school, Fitzgerald never felt that he had any special talent in literature. Just for some special reason, he was forced to use his own creation as the key and opened the door that he had no other way to open. This became the biggest defect of his later literary career.

The other half of the American dream, in Fitzgerald's view, is of course a woman. He has an almost morbid dual personality towards women. When he was a poor boy with nothing, his "goddess of love" sneered at him. Abandoned by his lover twice and climbed back to his hometown in Sao Paulo twice, he did not doubt the kind of "love" he was pursuing. He also worked harder to win the hearts of beautiful women with money and social status. Both Zelda and Daisy, the heroine in The Great Gatsby, are typical women in Fitzgerald's world-frivolous, vain, neurotic and parasitic in nature. Of course, Fitzgerald has never forgotten the harm caused by these beautiful women around him. When Fitzgerald was still struggling to start his own business, Shanda broke off his engagement and didn't agree to commit himself until he became famous. The whole idea of The Great Gatsby revolves around the unfair phenomenon that poor boys can't marry rich girls. But the betrayal of love didn't make him realize the hypocrisy and cheapness of the love he pursued-maybe he did, but he still didn't stop pursuing it-but made him more obsessed with wealth and the privileges it brought until his death. This spiritual self-hypnosis eventually made him a victim of women, but perhaps not as good as Gatsby.

In short, we can say that Fitzgerald spent most of his life working on how to "make the apprentice". However, this cannot fundamentally explain the characteristics of Fitzgerald's literary works and life experiences. The critic Arthur Mizler wrote in The Second Life of a Writer, "As a writer, the most striking thing about Fitzgerald is the duality of his self-consciousness". In his own unique way, he combined the selfless devotion to his work with the calm observation of the scientific spirit. "Perhaps another critic malcolm cowley's metaphor is more vivid. He said Fitzgerald was like "an uninvited little boy, with his face against the window, watching the party inside and wondering who would pay the bill."

Therefore, through his semi-autobiographical novel The Great Gatsby, we can deeply feel this wonderful contradiction. On the one hand, he cuts the subcutaneous tissue of the "American Dream" for readers with the calmness of a surgeon, and on the other hand, he passionately worships the value that does not exist. On the one hand, he clearly saw the vulgar nature of the woman he loved. On the other hand, he was willing to fight like a child for a smile. Although it is easy for him to fall in love with the illusion he despises, such as spiritual fudge, at the same time, he has a penetrating vision and an objective state of rational art, which makes him realize the absurdity of this infatuation itself, just like a person who repents his sins and continues to fall. In his early works, this duality of Fitzgerald's state of consciousness often leads to contradictory narratives. It is difficult for him to reconcile these two irreconcilable views: on the one hand, he believes that he should follow a certain moral code and preserve his self-esteem beyond all vulgar values, on the other hand, he is extremely painfully aware that vulgarity and sentimentality have completely replaced this moral code. When this sense of repentance became stronger and stronger, he simply adopted the "double protagonist" technique in The Great Gatsby. Looking at Gatsby with Nick as his moral concept, Gatsby is more a microcosm of his real life than himself.

James Joyce, an Irish novelist who traveled in France, once declared that he "forged a moral heart in my soul workshop that my country does not have." Although Fitzgerald did not hold high the banner of criticizing the national spirit, his works have gone far beyond the personal category and become a dramatic symbol of human and cultural reality. Fitzgerald can reproduce the decadence hidden under the prosperity of American upper class in his novel world precisely because he himself is almost the product of that era and that culture.

Fortunately, Fitzgerald was not forgotten on the bookshelf for long. By 1945, after edmund wilson edited and published Folders with serious comments, the whole critics began to pay attention to Fitzgerald and his works. In the past twenty years, research and commentary articles on The Great Gatsby have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. This book has become an important work for any literary anthologist to summarize American literature in the twentieth century. But this time, the process of "rediscovery" is far from complete.

If a writer like Hemingway succeeded in transcending the edge of human society because he ignored the social reality, then Fitzgerald's success came from his "failure" in his later years. After all, Fitzgerald told us more about American culture and tradition. Fitzgerald's Gatsby, naive all his life, rushed to the windmill waving Jin Mao like Don Quixote and counting his silk shirts like beading prayers, is the most memorable spiritual knight in the American jazz age.