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Informationen zum Autor Born on September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after his distant relative, the lyricist of "The Star-Spangled Banner." He attended Princeton University but left in 1917 to join the U.S. Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, whom he married in 1920 following the success of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise.Fitzgerald's literary career flourished in the 1920s, a period he famously dubbed the "Jazz Age." His works, including The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby, explored themes of wealth, ambition, and the American Dream. Despite his early success, he faced personal challenges, including struggles with alcoholism and Zelda's mental health issues.In the 1930s, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter, seeking financial stability. During this time, he began an unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, which was published posthumously. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, leaving behind a legacy as one of America's most celebrated writers. Klappentext Edited and with an Introduction by Bryant Mangum Foreword by Roxana Robinson Benediction • Head and Shoulders • Bernice Bobs Her Hair • The Ice Palace • The Offshore Pirate • May Day • The Jelly Bean • The Diamond as Big as the Ritz • Winter Dreams • Absolution In the euphoric months before and after the publication of This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the flapper's historian and poet laureate of the Jazz Age, wrote the ten stories that appear in this unique collection. Exploring characters and themes that would appear in his later works, such as The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby, these early selections are among the very best of Fitzgerald's many short stories. This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes notes, an appendix of nonfiction essays by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and their contemporaries, and vintage magazine illustrations.Chapter 1 Benediction The Baltimore Station was hot and crowded, so Lois was forced to stand by the telegraph desk for interminable, sticky seconds while a clerk with big front teeth counted and recounted a large lady’s day message, to determine whether it contained the innocuous forty-nine words or the fatal fifty-one. Lois, waiting, decided she wasn’t quite sure of the address, so she took the letter out of her bag and ran over it again. “Darling”: it began—“I understand and I’m happier than life ever meant me to be. If I could give you the things you’ve always been in tune with—but I can’t, Lois; we can’t marry and we can’t lose each other and let all this glorious love end in nothing. “Until your letter came, dear, I’d been sitting here in the half dark thinking and thinking where I could go and ever forget you; abroad, perhaps, to drift through Italy or Spain and dream away the pain of having lost you where the crumbling ruins of older, mellower civilizations would mirror only the desolation of my heart—and then your letter came. “Sweetest, bravest girl, if you’ll wire me I’ll meet you in Wilmington—till then I’ll be here just waiting and hoping for every long dream of you to come true. “Howard.” She had read the letter so many times that she knew it word by word, yet it still startled her. In it she found many faint reflections of the man who wrote it—the mingled sweetness and sadness in his dark eyes, the furtive, restless excitement she felt sometimes when he talked to her, his dreamy sensuousness that lulled her mind to sleep. Lois was nineteen and very romantic and curious and courageous. The large lady and the clerk having compromised on fifty words, Lois took a blank and wrote her telegram. And there were no overtones to the finality of her decision. It’s just ...
