F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Outsider Who Wrote the Jazz Age

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Imagine dying at 44, absolutely convinced you are just a total irredeemable failure. Like, it's 1940, your books are completely out of print, you're drowning in debt, and you think the world has just entirely forgotten you ever existed.

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

Yeah, it's a staggering disconnect. I mean, to die believing your life's work amounted to basically nothing.

SPEAKER_1 (0:20)

Right. Yet today, millions of high schoolers are reading your defining novel. It sells millions of copies, it defines an entire era of American history, and you are considered one of the greatest writers this country has ever produced.

SPEAKER_2 (0:33)

It really is wild when you look at the trajectory.

SPEAKER_1 (0:36)

It is. Welcome to the deep dive, everyone. If you're listening to this, you probably know the myth of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like, you picture him as the ultimate mascot of the 1920s.

SPEAKER_2 (0:45)

Oh, for sure. The wealthy, carefree partier holding a champagne glass. Exactly.

SPEAKER_1 (0:49)

Well, jazz plays in the background. But today, our mission is to basically tear that myth down.

We are taking an encyclopedic look at the facts behind his most famous work to construct an original biographical portrait of the man himself.

SPEAKER_2 (1:04)

And we're going to find out that his real life was, well, infinitely messier.

SPEAKER_1 (1:09)

So much messier.

SPEAKER_2 (1:09)

And more painful and frankly more fascinating than the glossy legend you usually hear.

SPEAKER_1 (1:13)

Yeah. So to even begin to understand the man, we have to look at the soil he grew in. We're talking about the 1920s, the Jazz Age.

SPEAKER_2 (1:21)

Right. But you have to remember why the Jazz Age even happened. America was just coming out of the meat grinder of World War I and a devastating global pandemic.

SPEAKER_1 (1:32)

The Spanish Flu, right?

SPEAKER_2 (1:33)

Exactly. So you have an entire generation of young people who basically looked at the older generation and said, your strict Victorian rules led us into trenches and mustard gas. Like, why should we listen to you anymore?

SPEAKER_1 (1:46)

So the old social contract was just completely shredded.

SPEAKER_2 (1:48)

Shredded and thrown right out the window. So you get this massive wave of post-war disillusionment paired with an economic boom. There's a rebellious youth culture rising up, a loosening of social norms.

SPEAKER_1 (2:01)

The flapper movement.

SPEAKER_2 (2:02)

Yeah, the flappers. And then you add prohibition to the mix.

SPEAKER_1 (2:04)

Right, which is huge.

SPEAKER_2 (2:06)

Right, because banning alcohol didn't stop people from drinking. It just made drinking illicit, dangerous, and glamorous.

SPEAKER_1 (2:14)

Yes, bee peesies popped up everywhere.

SPEAKER_2 (2:15)

Exactly. It fueled a frantic, almost desperate kind of hedonism. People weren't just partying to celebrate, they were partying to forget.

SPEAKER_1 (2:24)

Fitzgerald becomes the face of that party.

SPEAKER_2 (2:26)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (2:27)

But the reality is that he was fundamentally an outsider looking in through the window.

To understand his lifelong, agonizing obsession with wealth and status, we really have to rewind to his early life. Because he was not born into East Coast royalty.

SPEAKER_2 (2:42)

Not at all. He was a young man from Minnesota, and he manages to make his way to Princeton, which is an elite Ivy League school.

SPEAKER_1 (2:49)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (2:49)

But putting a Midwestern kid with moderate means into Princeton in the 1910s is just a recipe for severe classing side.

SPEAKER_1 (2:57)

Oh, I can imagine.

SPEAKER_2 (2:58)

Yeah. He is suddenly surrounded by the upper crust, the sons of industrial titans and old money families. He's breathing their air, but he knows he doesn't actually possess their pedigree.

SPEAKER_1 (3:09)

It's like playing a massive multiplayer video game, where everyone around you started with the cheat codes and an unlimited bank account. You're just trying to figure out what the buttons do.

SPEAKER_2 (3:18)

That's a perfect way to put it. You're in the game, but you aren't really playing the same game.

SPEAKER_1 (3:22)

Right.

And then comes 1915 He's 18, and he falls madly, obsessively in love with a 16-year-old girl named Ginevra King.

SPEAKER_2 (3:31)

Ginevra King is basically the catalyst for almost everything that follows in his life. She is a prominent Chicago socialite.

To Fitzgerald, she isn't just a girl he has a crush on. She is an avatar for everything he desperately wants.

SPEAKER_1 (3:46)

Like the effortless status, the immense wealth.

SPEAKER_2 (3:49)

Absolute belonging in that inner circle.

SPEAKER_1 (3:51)

But the reality of the class divide comes crashing down on him, hard. Because her family firmly rejects him.

Not because he isn't smart or charming, but simply because his financial prospects are practically non-existent.

SPEAKER_2 (4:05)

Right. The historical takeaway from her father's alleged warning to him is just brutal. Yeah.