But his heart was in a constant turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night.

A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the

washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.

Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene

with an oblivious embrace. For a while, these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination.

They were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality,

a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the great Gatsby.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

The 20th century. Episode 298, The Lost Generation.

I'm reserving today's episode for a whirlwind tour of the most important English

language writers of the Jazz Age. There was a lot going on in the world of letters at this time,

and truly I could pick any of these writers and do a whole episode

just on them, but I've decided instead to do a survey of the important writers of the era.

Think of this as an orientation tour.

And I will begin with the writer who is most emblematic of the age.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

As you may have guessed, he was named after the American poet Francis Scott Key, best known for the poem,

the Star-Spangled Banner. He was a distant relative.

The younger Francis would eventually make his own name in the world of letters as F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The family was of Irish descent. They were Catholic and struggled to maintain a middle-class life,

not least because his father struggled with alcoholism, as with Scott himself as a grown man.

...