Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nations shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgeralds deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his fathers Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts of Lake Forest, Princeton, and Hollywoodplaces that left an indelible mark on his worldview.

In this comprehensive biography, Brown reexamines Fitzgeralds childhood, first loves, and difficult marriage to Zelda Sayre. He looks at Fitzgeralds friendship with Hemingway, the golden years that culminated with Gatsby, and his increasing alcohol abuse and declining fortunes which coincided with Zeldas institutionalization and the nations economic collapse.

Placing Fitzgerald in the company of Progressive intellectuals such as Charles Beard, Randolph Bourne, and Thorstein Veblen, Brown reveals Fitzgerald as a writer with an encompassing historical imagination not suggested by his reputation as the chronicler of the Jazz Age. His best novels, stories, and essays take the measure of both the immediate moment and the more distant rhythms of capital accumulation, immigration, and sexual politics that were moving America further away from its Protestant agrarian moorings. Fitzgerald wrote powerfully about change in America, Brown shows, because he saw it as the dominant theme in his own family history and life.