Synopses & Reviews
A self-portrait of a great writer. A Short Autobiography charts Fitzgerald's progression from exuberant and cocky with "What I think and Feel at 25", to mature and reflective with "One Hundred False Starts" and "The Death of My Father." Compiled and edited by Professor James West, this revealing collection of personal essays and articles reveals the beloved author in his own words.
Review
"An intellectual autobiography [that] should inspire Fitzgerald readers new or returning...a pleasure to read." -Library Journal
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“Jaunty, funny, sparkling, and self-mocking, and beneath the glinting wit, deeply reflective.” -Booklist
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“Frequently funny and fast-paced.” -Associated Press
Review
“Fitzgerald never wrote an autobiography, but this is the next best thing: A collection of 19 personal essays written over the course of his career. They include lighthearted, amusing pieces clearly designed to appeal to magazine editors and casual readers, as well as grimmer fare carved from the center of a broken heart..” -Chicago Tribune
About the Author
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, attended Princeton University, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and the couple divided their time between New York, Paris, and the Riviera, becoming a part of the American expatriate circle that included Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos. Fitzgerald was a major new literary voice, and his masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of fourty-four, while working on The Love of the Last Tycoon. For his sharp social insight and breathtaking lyricism, Fitzgerald stands as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.James L. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He is the current president of the Society for Textual Scholarship. He is a biographer, literary historian, and scholarly editor. His most recent two books are William Styron: A Life (1998) and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005), both published by Random House. West has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. he has held Fulbright appointments at Cambridge University in England and at the UniversitÉ de LiÈge in Belgium, and he has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome. West is at work on a revised edition of the Styron biography and on an edition of Styron's fiction about the Marine Corps, to be published this fall by Random House under the title The Suicide Run.