A tribute to Scott Fitzgerald

On the night of December 20, 1940, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald attended Sheilah Graham at the premiere of The Thing Called Love at a Los Angeles movie. The film was about newlyweds who decide to postpone sex for three months to strengthen their relationship, which alarmed the Catholic Church by going against good morals, just as did  Scott Fitzgerald and his  life of excess. After the show, Fitzgerald began to feel uneasy. He looked at the ground and felt that the world was spinning and an ant bit his heart. Confused as he approached his car, he tripped over the sidewalk and nearly fell as he opened the passenger door. A series of contained giggles, especially of gallant women, were heard, and to the back of the writer, a shrapnel of comments associated with the inocultable alcoholism of the writer. Humiliated, he turned to Sheilah, his lover and asked: “They think I’m drunk, right?” What the spectators thought of the brutality caused by the alcohol of the famous American author was not based on prejudices. Nor on the observation of involuntary slip of the writer, but his long and airy medical history: a kind of shadow infiltrated into the Hollywood elite where Scott, against all odds remained: two heart attacks suffered in the mid-30, severe tuberculosis and Customary fondness for gin. Always on the crest of the wave and always writing. Illustration: Rompopita. The next day, Scott and Sheila spent the afternoon listening to classical music. Scott read the Los Angeles Times while predicting that the United States would enter the Second World War after the alliance between Italy and Germany, but knocks on the wooden door of his house made him leave the newspaper, the glass with Gin Rickey and To attend to the call of the postman who, like every week, carried the Princeton Alumni Weekly magazine to Fitzgerald. Sheilah was in front of the fireplace and his man decided to place himself in the same place, considering that December in Hollywood was not a benevolent climate to the infirmities of an inveterate drinker who did not exceed 50 years of age. But that cold afternoon, with the magazine in the pocket Scott considered give your stomach something alien to the liquid catalyst drank and took a chocolate bar. But as soon as he sat down next to his wife, Fitzgerald seemed to be bouncing off the couch: he rose straight, shot, and without speaking. With eyes on the edge of his head and threatening to impact Sheila’s face, the author of The Great Gatsby collapsed. Red as Christmas Eve and cold as snow, Fitzgerald fell at his wife’s feet. The heart attack of the man of only 44 years, always aspiring to live the American culture of elite was, as the doctors say, fulminant. Fulminante was also what happened before and after his death his books: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald lived in the same way that the characters created for their stories: a genius and an alcoholic, a renegade of the privileged class. Fitzgerald not only lived parallel to his novels; His death meant the end of what his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby: the fall of a successful man . In his last days of life it sold scripts of cinema. Tired and sick, he managed to write one last novel, The Last Tycoon. His funeral was attended by few friends and family. It was a dark, rainy and desolate day. Just a dozen people arrived, including writer Dorothy Parker, with whom she had a brief romance in the twenties. In her mournful dress, Mrs. Parker slipped into the coffin and near Fitzgerald’s face, as if seeking to revenge someone unprotected, spoke: Poor bastard , ‘he said in a whisper as she watched that was the prototype of the Lost Generation. And although Scott could not hear the words that the ironic Mrs. Parker quoted from the funeral of the protagonist Jay Gatsby, in the novel of the great Gatsby, this small tribute was testimony of the way that finished Fitzgerald finished when it ceased to exist. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald himself wrote: “in this way we move forward with industriousness, boats against the current, steadily regressing to the past.” Few novels have the ability to be brought to the big screen more than once and keep calling public attention. Today, almost a hundred years after its publication, The Great Gatsby, a classic of American literature alone, will have a new adaptation that has been cooking for some time. Originally expected to release the film this December but finally changed the release date for May 2013 and 3D format. Francis Scott Fitzgerald only wrote five novels: This side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender is the Night (1934) and The Unfinished The Love of the Last Tycoon (1941). In addition, Fitzgerald wrote more than twenty short stories. But The Great Gatsby is his most recognized work. The story takes place in 1922 and is narrated by Nick Carraway. In the novel tells the story of Jay Gatsby, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a young millionaire who throws overflowed parties in his mansion every couple of days. The character of Gatsby at first is mysterious, because he is not really known where he comes from or what he is looking for. Later it is known that this is a millionaire obsessed to get the love of Daisy Buchanan, played by Carey Mulligan, a woman he had met before when he was a humble soldier. Photo: Internet. The film is directed by Baz Luhrmann, director of Romeo and Juliet (1996), the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) and more recently Australia (2008). The new adaptation of Fitzgerald’s work also features performances by Tobey Maguire portraying narrator Nick Carraway, actor Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan and actresses Isla Fisher and Adelaide Clemens as Myrtle Wilson and Catherin respectively. Will the work of director Luhrmann give a better tribute than that made by Mrs. Parker to call “Poor bastard” Fitzgerald at his funeral?