Tag Archives: f. scott fitzgerald

Books

Ten Amazing Literary Facts You Should Know

1. Most expensive book ever purchased:

Everyone’s favorite billionaire Bill Gates bought ‘Codex Leicester’, one of Leonardo Di Vinci’s scientific journals for $30.8 million.

2. Longest book in the world:

‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ by Marcel Proust is the longest book in the world at 9,609,000 characters. Translated into Remembers of Things Past, the book tells the story of the narrator’s experiences growing up.

Via tumblr

3. Roald Dahl’s interesting life experiences:

Dahl served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and also tested chocolates for Cadbury’s while he was at school. (I guess we know where his inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came from).

Via Telegraph

5. Victor Hugo’s 823 word long sentence:

In Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables, you can find a sentence that is 823 words long. However, there may be other sentences that surpasses this length. But this one is worth knowing.

Via yankeeskeptic.com

6. J.K. Rowling is not actually her name:

Our favorite author who goes by initials, actually doesn’t have a middle name. After a suggestion from her publisher, she chose her grandmother’s name, Kathleen.

Via The Times

7. Charles Dickens’ superstitious behaviour:

Dickens believed that sleeping facing North, would improve his writing. He also carried a compass when travelling to make sure he was facing the right direction and he always touched things 3 times for luck.

VIa Telegraph

8. Tolstoy owes War and Peace to his wife’s efforts:

The 1400 page novel was copied around 7 times by Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia, by hand – that’s love.

Via phlmetropolis.com

9. The words F. Scott Fitzgerald created that you use everyday:

Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest use of the word ‘wicked’ to mean good/cool to be from Fitzgerald’s novel ‘This Side of Paradise’. He is also thought to have used the word T-shirt for the first time.

Via Penguin

10. The children’s story that China banned:

The Governor of Hunan Province in China banned Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland because he believed that animals should not be given the power to use the language of humans and to put animals and humans on the same level would be ‘disastrous’.

 

 

Books

Which Book Would You Read?

Babylon Revisited

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

ISBN: 9780141195964

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories defined the 1920s ‘Jazz Age’ generation, with their glittering dreams and tarnished hopes. This book features three tales of a fragile recovery, a cut-glass bowl and a life lost. It portrays the idealism of youth and the ravages of success.

The stories within are:

Babylon Revisited
The Cut-Glass Bowl
The Lost Decade

14,9 GEL

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The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

ISBN: 9780141389936

Gatsby’s mansion on Long Island blazes with light, and the beautiful, the wealthy, and the famous drive out from New York to drink Gatsby’s champagne and to party all night long. But Jay Gatsby, the owner of all this wealth, wants only one thing – to find again the woman of his dreams, the woman he has held in his heart and his memory for five long years.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, is one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It captures perfectly the Jazz Age of the 1920s, and goes deep into the hollow heart of the American Dream.

18,5 GEL

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

ISBN: 9780141190198

Full grown with a long, smoke-colored beard, requiring the services of a cane and fonder of cigars than warm milk, Benjamin Button is a very curious baby indeed. And, as Benjamin becomes increasingly youthful with the passing years, his family wonders why he persists in the embarrassing folly of living in reverse. In this imaginative fable of ageing and the other stories collected here – including The Cut-Glass Bowl in which an ill-meant gift haunts a family’s misfortunes, The Four Fists where a man’s life is shaped by a series of punches to his face, and the revelry, mobs and anguish of May Day – F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unmatched gift as a writer of short stories.

 

Also included:

Head and Shoulders
“O Russet Witch!”
Crazy Sunday

24,9 GEL

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Books

Theme of the Week: Celebrating Authors of September

September authors(Top, L-R: Roald Dahl, Truman Capote, Agatha Christie. Bottom, L-R: F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.G. Wells, Ken Kesey)

This week we celebrate authors of the past who had birthdays in the month of September. Check them out below.

Truman Capote

(September 30, 1924- August 25, 1984)

Capote wrote favorites such as:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Children on Their Birthdays

breakfast at tiffanyschildren on their birthdays

 

 

 

 

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Agatha Christie

(September 15, 1890- January 12, 1976)

Appointed the title of “Dame” by the Queen of England, she is also the best-selling author of all time with books like:

The Labours of Hercules and Poirot: The Perfect Murders: Omnibus

Labours of herculesPerfect Murders

 

 

 

 

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Roald Dahl

(September 13, 1916- November 23,1990)

Few children’s authors have been as influential and prolific as Roald Dahl. Some of his works include:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as Matilda

Charlie and the chocolateMatilda

 

 

 

 

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

(September 24, 1896- December 21, 1940)

Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age in many novels such as:

The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories

great gatsbybabylon revistedcurious

 

 

 

 

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Ken Kesey

(September 17, 1935- November 10, 2001)

Kesey gained fame for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-a-novel

 

 

 

 

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H.G. Wells

(September 21, 1866- August 13, 1946)

Regarded as “the father of science fiction”, Wells wrote many novels, including:

The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds

time machineWar of the worlds

 

 

 

 

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Students

Facts about The Great Gatsby

Gatsby_1925_jacket1.Would a Great American Novel by any other name be as sweet? Based on the other titles F. Scott Fitzgerald considered for Gatsby, I’d have to say no. At one time or another, all of these were in consideration: Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg; On the Road to West Egg; Under the Red, White, and Blue; Gold-Hatted Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover.

2. Fitzgerald was quite close to choosing one of the Trimalchio titles until someone persuaded him that the reference was too  obscure. The original Trimalchio was a character in a first century work of fiction called Satyricon. The story had other famous fans, too; you can find mentions of Trimalchio in Les Miserables, Pompeii, and works by H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Miller and Octavio Paz, among others.

3. The Great Gatsby was partly inspired by a French novel called Le Grand Meaulnes, written in 1913. It has since been translated into English with the titles The Wanderer and The Lost Estate.

4. The famous cover of the book was designed by Francis Cugat, who later went on to become a designer for  actor/director/producer Douglas Fairbanks. Fitzgerald so loved Cugat’s art that he rewrote parts of the book to better  incorporate it.

5. The poet who “wrote” the novel’s epigraph never actually existed. He was a character in Fitzgerald’s previous book, This  Side of Paradise. Fitzgerald also occasionally used it as his pen name. Here’s the epigraph:

“Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry, “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

6. At the time of its publication in 1925, the novel cost just $2.

7. Unlike Fitzgerald’s previous two novels, Gatsby was not a commercial success. It sold just 20,000 copies in its entire first  year of publication.

8.Fitzgerald was convinced that the reason the book wasn’t a rousing success was because Gatsby didn’t have a single admirable female character—and, at the time, the majority of people reading novels were women. He also thought that the title, which was only “fair,” resulted in poor sales.

9.Gatsby wasn’t a critical success with everyone, either. Here’s a few of the not-so-rave reviews:

“Why [Fitzgerald] should be called an author, or why any of us should behave as if he were, has never been satisfactorily  explained to me.” —The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

 

“We are quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great writers of to-day.” —The New York Evening World

“Scott Fitzgerald’s new novel, The Great Gatsby, is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that.” —The Baltimore Evening Sun

 

Books, Students, Teachers, Training & Conferences

5 Things You Didn’t Know About F. Scott Fitzgerald

Best known for his novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896. His literary works chronicled the era of ambition, extravagance, and wealth known as the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda embodied the time, living a life of luxury, excess, glory and prestige that was also riddled with years of toil. F. Scott suffered from alcoholism and Zelda had mental health issues. Fitzgerald passed away in 1940 at the age of 44, without achieving much recognition from the literary community. However, by the 1960s, he had become one of the most distinguished authors in the United States and still holds this illustrious reputation, often assigned as required reading for high school students across the country.

1. He is named after Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Key was a distant relative of Fitzgerald’s.

2. While in the U.S. Army, Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama and that is where he fell in love with Zelda Sayre. A southern belle and daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Justice, it took two marriage proposals, and his first book deal, before she agreed to marry the author.

3. Ernest Hemingway became close friends with Scott, although he frequently criticized Zelda. Hemingway thought she was absolutely “insane” and claimed that she “encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract him from his writing.”

4. Fitzgerald was hired by MGM in the late 1930s and relocated to Hollywood. Despite befriending the crème of the crop in the Hollywood circuit like Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, and Errol Flynn, he hated the place. He is quoted as saying, “Hollywood is a dump – in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulating gardens of its rich; full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.”

5. Between tears at Fitzgerald’s funeral, Dorothy Parker quoted the famous line from The Great Gatsby, “the poor son of a bitch,” in mournful sorrow over the early passing of her dear friend.

F_Scott_Fitzgerald_1921