Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Extract

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (24 September 1896–21 December 1940), writer, was born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of Edward Fitzgerald, a businessman, and Mary “Mollie” McQuilan. Fitzgerald was always haunted by his father’s taking a job as a salesman for Procter & Gamble in 1898 following the business collapse of his St. Paul furniture factory, the American Rattan and Willow Works. Between 1898 and 1908, the years of his father’s employment by Procter & Gamble, the family lived in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York. By the time they moved back to St. Paul in July 1908, Fitzgerald knew that his mother was the financial support of the family and that his father’s confidence had ebbed. His father was fifty-five when he lost his job as a salesman. Fitzgerald said twenty-eight years later, “That morning he had gone out a comparatively young man, a man full of strength, full of confidence. He came home that evening, an old man, a completely broken man. He had lost his essential drive. … He was a failure the rest of his days” (Bruccoli, ...