F. Scott Fitzgerald
...New Jersey. There, he was encouraged to strive for ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. While at Princeton he wrote as a part of The Princeton Tiger magazine. After he left Princeton, he joined the Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry (Bruccoli 39). He was convinced that he would die in the war, so he wrote a novel, The Romantic Egoist. Shortly, thereafter, he was reassigned to Camp Sheridan Cox 2 near Montgomery, Alabama. While Station there, he met Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge. The war ended just before he was about to be sent overseas, and he was discharged. He then went to New York to be married but Zelda broke the engagement because she refused to live on his small salary. This experience is what This Side of Paradise is loosely based on. It was published on March 26, 1920; it made him famous almost overnight. And ironically, he married his heartbreaker Zelda Sayre a week later. Shortly after he completed his second book, his wife Zelda became pregnant. They took a trip to Europe and then settled back in St. Paul Minn., where she gave birth to their only child, Francis Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald. He was born in October of 1921. They then moved to Great Neck, Long Island, in order to be near Broadway, because Fitzgerald expected to gain fortune from his play entitled The Vegetable but that fell through. The many distractions of Great Neck and New York prevented him from making progress on his third novel. During this time, his drinking increased. He became an alcoholic but wrote sober (Bruccolli 42). He eventually finished his third novel, which received critical praise but its sales were disappointing, but through stage and movie rights it brought additional income. They moved to France where Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemmingway and they became friends because Fitzgerald admired Hemingway’s personality and his genius. But...