Terna é a Noite

American writer born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and died on December 21, 1940. At the age of 13, he wrote The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage, a story about a detective that was published in the newspaper of the school he attended. After going through a Catholic school, he entered Princeton University in 1913, but he focused more on developing his literary skills than on studying the subjects of his course. In 1917, for example, he wrote scripts and lyrics for musical shows and humorous texts for magazines. As he realized that he would not be able to finish the course, in 1917 he enlisted in the army, where he reached the rank of second lieutenant. At the time, the United States of America was involved in World War I and Fitzgerald was convinced that he was going to die in combat. So he wrote the novel The Romantic Egoist in a hurry. The following year, he went to work in New York and, although successful in the advertising world, Fitzgerald quit his job in 1919 to devote himself to the novel This Side of Paradise, where he used material from The Romantic Egoist. In the same year, he began to write articles for popular magazines. In order to earn more money, he gave up writing novels and began writing fiction stories for newspapers. Their love stories were considered innovative and refreshing. In 1920, he finally published This Side of Paradise, with which he achieved tremendous success. The following year, he published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. Francis Scott Fitzgerald and his wife entered a phase of great luxuries by attending numerous parties, spending a lot of money and accumulating debts. In 1924, the novelist moved to France, where he wrote one of his most remarkable books, The Great Gatsby, which despite receiving good reviews was a sales failure. This novel would be adapted to the theater and, later, to the cinema, gaining another visibility. The best known film version is the 1974 film version, directed by Jack Clayton, with Robert Redford as the protagonist. Fitzgerald returned to the United States in 1931, having tried to write some scripts for films. However, he only managed to finish one, Three Comrades, in 1938. Soon after, he was fired due to his alcoholism problems. In 1939, he began writing the novel The Love of The Last Tycoon, which he would never finish because he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. However, based on what he had already written, the film The Last Tycoon was made in 1976. Under the direction of Elia Kazan were actors Robert de Niro, Robert Mitchum and Jack Nicholson. F. Scott Fitzgerald also wrote a number of short stories, including Babylon Revisited, which inspired the film The Last Time I Saw Paris, starring Elizabeth Taylor.
In Infopédia [Online]. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.