Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald ( September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940) is the archetype of the youthful, handsome, tragic, Romantic American writer burdened with the heat of genius and the sting of excessive appetite. Fitzgerald was America’s first pop-star writer. He ushered in the Jazz Age with his first novel, This Side of Paradise and a collection of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers. Fitzgerald attended Princeton, where he wrote and drank incessantly, did poorly, and made friends with the literary critic, Edmund Wilson, the man Fitzgerald called his aesthetic conscience. He did not graduate, but entered the Army in 1917 as World War I came to its close. Assigned to Camp Sheridan outside Montgomery, Alabama, he met and pursued Zelda Sayre (1900-1948), the golden girl from Alabama who possessed Fitzgerald from first sight. He courted her, and they were engaged until she broke it off, concerned that the writer and ad man would not be able to provide for her. Fitzgerald returned to his Minnesota home where he rewrote his first novel, which Scribner & Sons accepted for publication in 1919. With the success of Paradise Zelda agreed to marry the young writer. Fitzgerald and Zelda moved to Paris where he became friends with Hemingway and other ex-patriots. He wrote five novels in all. The Great Gatsby (1925) is considered his masterpiece, and The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald had been alcoholic since his college days, and during the 20’s his legendary drinking damaged his health. In his mid-forties he suffered two severe heart attacks, the second taking his life at the home of Sheila Graham on December 21, 1940. His influence on writers is felt to this day. Despite all the press and stories and legends, F. Scott Fitzgerald was “all that” and more. In effect Fitzgerald was better than Fitzgerald.