[originaltext] (32)Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, a member of the "Lost Gene

(32)Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, a member of the "Lost Generation", was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he called "the Jazz. Age." He finished (33)four novels and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
     (34) Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896., He did poorly in school and was sent to a boarding school. He then managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. He never graduated, instead (34)enlisting in the army in 1917,as World War I neared its end.
     Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with seventeen-year-old Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her strong desire for wealth led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. (35)With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.
    Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money.
    As the Roaring Twenties dissolved the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which influenced his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.