F. Scott Fitzgerald

He named an age, then had to live in it. St. Paul, Princeton, a war that ended before he got there. This Side of Paradise made him famous at twenty-three. After that: a factory of magazine stories to fund the hotels, Paris, the Riviera, Hollywood, a novel of the Divers that took nine years, a last tycoon he did not finish, and essays about coming apart. The Great Gatsby sold poorly. He died at forty-four, sure the work had failed. The revival is not the life. The life was the bill for the legend.