Fitzgerald got there - the biography talks a lot about his "paunch." And when he wasn't drinking alcohol, he was drinking dozens of sodas. I kind of think that contributed to the heart attack that got him in the end, maybe even more than the drinking.
Extremes of broitude abound in Fitzy's biography - interesting how authentic tragedy and over-the-top boorishness can coexist so completely in one body. Why and how "Gatsby" got its second act in American letters would be a worthy topic too, as with "Moby Dick"; how the hell the works weren't recognized in their own time still baffles me, but busted reputations across the publishing world must've surely been a factor in each case. There's only so many Parisian porches you can figuratively piss on in life, I suppose 😆
I wrote about the weird spike in Gatsby popularity in another Fitzgerald piece a while back - it happened because in 1945 - basically right after he died. The Library of Congress or some other organization shipped hundreds of thousands of copies of a few different books to WW2 soldiers who were still overseas after World War II ended. Gatsby was one of them and became a "war novel" in its own right, because soldiers wanted to fantasize about being Gatsby while still in Europe. Interesting stuff!
Of all the books my junior high school English class went through The Great Gatsby was by far the most heavily engaged with and debated and was assigned immediately after Siddartha, which was considered so boring that the teacher stopped teaching it halfway through. It turns out "rich kids navigating problems with popularity, romance, friendship, and drug/alcohol abuse" was a lot more compelling to a bunch of upper-middle class kids in Seattle than "I've got to find enlightenment so I guess I'll go live in the woods".
Litverse always coming through with the context! 🤌 I can definitely imagine being stuck on a beach on Midway or Normandie and pining for a soft life of cocktail parties and opulence - moral turpitude be damned
✍️ takes notes....
How were all of the alcoholic Jazz Age writers not fat as all hell? It's not like alcohol doesn't have calories.
Fitzgerald got there - the biography talks a lot about his "paunch." And when he wasn't drinking alcohol, he was drinking dozens of sodas. I kind of think that contributed to the heart attack that got him in the end, maybe even more than the drinking.
Extremes of broitude abound in Fitzy's biography - interesting how authentic tragedy and over-the-top boorishness can coexist so completely in one body. Why and how "Gatsby" got its second act in American letters would be a worthy topic too, as with "Moby Dick"; how the hell the works weren't recognized in their own time still baffles me, but busted reputations across the publishing world must've surely been a factor in each case. There's only so many Parisian porches you can figuratively piss on in life, I suppose 😆
I wrote about the weird spike in Gatsby popularity in another Fitzgerald piece a while back - it happened because in 1945 - basically right after he died. The Library of Congress or some other organization shipped hundreds of thousands of copies of a few different books to WW2 soldiers who were still overseas after World War II ended. Gatsby was one of them and became a "war novel" in its own right, because soldiers wanted to fantasize about being Gatsby while still in Europe. Interesting stuff!
Of all the books my junior high school English class went through The Great Gatsby was by far the most heavily engaged with and debated and was assigned immediately after Siddartha, which was considered so boring that the teacher stopped teaching it halfway through. It turns out "rich kids navigating problems with popularity, romance, friendship, and drug/alcohol abuse" was a lot more compelling to a bunch of upper-middle class kids in Seattle than "I've got to find enlightenment so I guess I'll go live in the woods".
Litverse always coming through with the context! 🤌 I can definitely imagine being stuck on a beach on Midway or Normandie and pining for a soft life of cocktail parties and opulence - moral turpitude be damned
Wow. So incredibly sad!