American Masters F. Scott Fitzgerald Winter Dreams Part 2

This American Masters documentary takes a solemn look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and literary legacy. While acknowledging his demons (alcoholism, his wife Zelda's mental illness), it only glancingly refers to his and Zelda's infamous antics and notorious partying. Instead, this 85-minute biography looks at the influence of his St. Paul, Minnesota, childhood, where he was the poorest in a well-to-do neighborhood, and the driving ambition that sent him to Princeton, where he never felt he measured up to his wealthier classmates. This obsession with class and money drove his writing and his marriage to Zelda, a socially prominent Southern belle. Weighing in are such literary luminaries as biographer A. Scott Berg and novelists E.L. Doctorow and Ward Just, as well as the usual host of scholars. These experts are balanced nicely with the reminiscences of those who knew the Fitzgeralds more intimately, including former neighbors and Zelda's childhood friends.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• American
• Masters
• F.
• Scott
• Fitzgerald
• Winter
• Dreams

[JiffySpook]

I think we all believe ourselves to be our own best material, in all forms. It's only the ones that truly are that will be remembered, which is why I'm watching this in 2012.

[kilgatron1]

berad, we'll never know who you are, but if Ernest Hemingway lauds it as a great book, then who are you? No one in particular.

Truly, Fitzgerald captures his era, maybe never so well as in Winter Dreams.

[snowtoology]

@beradification We're still waiting on an answer...

[iIari]

@TheNoGoodAngel who is then if not Fitzgerald?

[jeddak5]

I heard Bernard Malamud once say that The Great Gatsby was something very close to a perfect novel.

[TheNoGoodAngel]

@iIari She isa good child's book novelist, but she is not, by world standards, a great writer AT ALL. lol

[frenchkids]

@beradification The Great Gatsby is one of the finest novels of the 20th Century. You'll not find too many great writers who disagree with that statement. A certain Ernest Hemingway lauded it as a great work. It's not perfect, but then nothing ever is, is it?

[conartist72893]

fitzgerald was the best

[iIari]

whats a great novelist by your 'world standards' then? Stephenie Meyer?

[beradification]

f scott was not a great novelist, his only decent book was great gatsby and even that wasn't good by world standards.