In this episode, we dive into the turbulent life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author who not only defined the "Jazz Age" but popularized the term itself. We trace his journey from a middle-class outsider at Princeton to an overnight sensation following the 1920 publication of This Side of Paradise, which turned him and his wife Zelda into national celebrities known for their youthful excess.

Listeners will discover how Fitzgerald’s romantic rejections—first by socialite Ginevra King and initially by Zelda—fueled his lifelong literary obsession with wealth inequality and the "otherness" of the outsider. We examine his artistic peak in Europe where he wrote The Great Gatsby, a novel that received critical praise but failed commercially during his lifetime, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year.

The episode  ...