Today's birthday belongs to F. Scott Fitzgerald (click for another post on FSF), distinctly American author. The first half of Fitzgerald's career and life was spectacular, following the upward trajectory of the 1920s, yet then post-1920s right along with the economy, Fitzgerald's path became rocky. He died far too young at the age of 44, and he once professed that there were no second acts in American lives. Now we know this isn't true, otherwise we would never have witnessed the return of John Travolta...but nonetheless, in Fitzgerald's case he did have that second act and achieved lasting fame, but unfortunately by that time he had already left the stage.
Click here to read a nice article by Garrison Keillor about Fitzgerald's early days and connection to St. Paul, Minnesota. In the 1990s Fitzgerald became a literary postage icon and received his own stamp, and one of his best known novels The Great Gatsby also inspired another stamp -- part of the Roaring Twenties series and pictured above. I was going to include the Fitzgerald portrait stamp instead, but it's how he looked when he was younger and I kind of prefer the more wise and worldly Fitzgerald's face.
I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective equality of my talent and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1944
