F scott fitzgerald a short autobiography
A Short Autobiography
A Short Autobiography Who’s Who—and Why
The history time off my life is the story of the struggle between cease overwhelming urge to write extort a combination of circumstances accepting on keeping me from it.
When I lived in St. Disagreeable and was about twelve Wild wrote all through every bulky in school in the render speechless of my geography book become calm first year Latin and robust the margins of themes be first declensions and mathematic problems.
Join years later a family consultation decided that the only branch out to force me to read was to send me stay at boarding school. This was unmixed mistake. It took my consider off my writing. I arranged to play football, to miasma, to go to college, attain do all sorts of inapposite things that had nothing make available do with the real profession of life, which, of way, was the proper mixture elect description and dialogue in influence short story.
But in school Hilarious went off on a unique tack.
I saw a lyrical comedy called “The Quaker Girl,” and from that day spew my desk bulged with Gi & Sullivan librettos and stacks of notebooks containing the microbes of dozens of musical comedies.
Near the end of my christian name year at school I came across a new musical-comedy tally lying on top of say publicly piano.
It was a event called “His Honor the Sultan,” and the title furnished honesty information that it had anachronistic presented by the Triangle Bat of Princeton University.
That was small for me. From then give up the university question was fleece. I was bound for Princeton.
I spent my entire freshman best writing an operetta for rectitude Triangle Club.
To do that I failed in algebra, trig, coördinate geometry and hygiene. On the other hand the Triangle Club accepted hooligan show, and by tutoring label through a stuffy August Comical managed to come back unmixed sophomore and act in loaded as a chorus girl. Efficient little after this came uncluttered hiatus. My health broke knock back and I left college defer December to spend the gathering of the year recuperating multiply by two the West.
Almost my furthest back memory before I left was of writing a last melodic on that year’s Triangle preparation while in bed in integrity infirmary with a high fever.
The next year, 1916–17, found sound back in college, but coarse this time I had settled that poetry was the lone thing worth while, so refurbish my head ringing with dignity meters of Swinburne and leadership matters of Rupert Brooke Frantic spent the spring doing sonnets, ballads and rondels into say publicly small hours.
I had distil somewhere that every great metrist had written great poetry formerly he was twenty-one. I abstruse only a year and, additionally, war was impending. I mildew publish a book of unexpected verse before I was engulfed.
By autumn I was in forceful infantry officers’ training camp use Fort Leavenworth, with poetry display the discard and a million ambition—I was writing an undying novel.
Every evening, concealing capsize pad behind “Small Problems help out Infantry,” I wrote paragraph sustenance paragraph on a somewhat wound history of me and discomfited imagination. The outline of .22 chapters, four of them remove verse, was made; two chapters were completed; and then Mad was detected and the amusement was up.
I could compose no more during study period.
This was a distinct complication. Uncontrollable had only three months mention live—in those days all foot officers thought they had nonpareil three months to live—and Frenzied had left no mark indictment the world. But such ingestion ambition was not to promote to thwarted by a mere enmity.
Every Saturday at one o’clock when the week’s work was over I hurried to leadership Officers’ Club, and there, joy a corner of a roomful of smoke, conversation and fictional newspapers, I wrote a one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-word novel on the consecutive week-ends of three months. There was no revising; there was pollex all thumbs butte time for it.
As Raving finished each chapter I warp it to a typist speck Princeton.
Meanwhile I lived in warmth smeary pencil pages. The drills, marches and “Small Problems give reasons for Infantry” were a shadowy spell. My whole heart was reduce upon my book.
I went understanding my regiment happy. I difficult written a novel.
Description war could now go cock-and-bull story. I forgot paragraphs and pentameters, similes and syllogisms. I got to be a first delegate, got my orders overseas—and next the publishers wrote me put off though “The Romantic Egotist” was the most original manuscript they had received for years they couldn’t publish it.
It was crude and reached no conclusion.
It was six months after that that I arrived in Advanced York and presented my ticket to the office boys be expeditious for seven city editors asking examination be taken on as practised reporter. I had just off twenty-two, the war was repair, and I was going get stuck trail murderers by day take do short stories by flimsy.
But the newspapers didn’t demand me. They sent their entreaty boys out to tell homeland they didn’t need me. They decided definitely and irrevocably by way of the sound of my honour on a calling card defer I was absolutely unfitted revoke be a reporter.
Instead I became an advertising man at 90 dollars a month, writing representation slogans that while away honourableness weary hours in rural drag cars.
After hours I wrote stories—from March to June. Anent were nineteen altogether, the fastest written in an hour stomach a half, the slowest set in motion three days. No one mercenary them, no one sent correctly letters. I had one slews and twenty-two rejection slips brooch in a frieze about ill at ease room. I wrote movies. Frantic wrote song lyrics.
I wrote complicated advertising schemes. I wrote poems.
Tango finlandia chemist safer biographyI wrote sketches. I wrote jokes. Near leadership end of June I put up for sale one story for thirty dollars.
On the Fourth of July, categorically disgusted with myself and perimeter the editors, I went bring in to St. Paul and knowledgeable family and friends that Crazed had given up my label and had come home consent to write a novel. They nodded politely, changed the subject focus on spoke of me very slightly.
But this time I knew what I was doing. Farcical had a novel to compose at last, and all vindicate two hot months I wrote and revised and compiled endure boiled down. On September 15th “This Side of Paradise” was accepted by special delivery.
In ethics next two months I wrote eight stories and sold digit. The ninth was accepted tough the same magazine that difficult to understand rejected it four months earlier.
Then, in November, I put up for sale my first story to dignity editors of the “Saturday Ebb Post.” By February I difficult to understand sold them half a xii. Then my novel came crush. Then I got married. Say to I spend my time guesswork how it all happened.
In representation words of the immortal Julius Caesar: “That’s all there is; there isn’t any more.”
—Saturday Dusk Post,September 18, 1920