Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway might have been contemporaries, but our understanding of their work often rests on their distinctions. Hemingway wrestled with war, fraternity, and the violence of nature. Fitzgerald explored money and class and the pursuit of the elusive golden girl. Known for his penetrating studies of both authors, Scott Donaldson traces their creative genius, and through his provocative arguments, their affinities become as clear as their differences....
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F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway might have been contemporaries, but our understanding of their work often rests on their distinctions. Hemingway wrestled with war, fraternity, and the violence of nature. Fitzgerald explored money and class and the pursuit of the elusive golden girl. Known for his penetrating studies of both authors, Scott Donaldson traces their creative genius, and through his provocative arguments, their affinities become as clear as their differences. Fitzgerald and Hemingway both wrote fiction out of their experiences rather than "about" them, leading Donaldson to pursue both biography and criticism in these essays. With a deep commitment to close reading, he traces the influence of celebrity culture on the legacies of both writers, matches an analysis of Hemingway's Spanish Civil War writings to a treatment of Fitzgerald's left-leaning tendencies, and contrasts the averted gaze in Hemingway's fiction with the role of possessions in "The Great Gatsby." Donaldson devotes several essays to four great novels: "Gatsby," "Tender Is the Night," "The Sun Also Rises," and "A Farewell to Arms." He also includes fascinating accounts of Fitzgerald's formative years in St. Paul, his romance with the American South, and his days in Hollywood, as well as Hemingway's apprenticeship as a newspaperman, extraordinary fame, and suicide. Based on years of research and brimming with Donaldson's trademark wit and insight, this irresistible book reorients our reading of twentieth-century American literature.