When the name of F Scott Fitzgerald is said today in any class, pictures of parties and flappers fill students heads. It was not so in the 1920s. When orriginally composed, The Great Gatsby had very little effect on people, and it was not well recieved. Yet, upon his death and the close of World War II, critics took another look at his writings and came to name him as one of the greatest writers of the twentith century.

Fitzgerald had a great signifigance upon the recipenets of his writings in later years. He formed the term the Jazz Age, and gave us the opinion we now have as general 1920 behavior. He made the people belive that the 1920s were all parties and speakeasies, and while that was a part of it, he made us belive that was all of it.

In his own life time, his writings effected one man by the name of Tony Butta. A starting out writer, he took Fitzgerald in during a time when he was as low as he could go. In return Scott gave him friendship and helped him to improve his writing talents. Tony later wrote such novels as Bull Durham. This friendship helped Fitzgerald to get off his feet and to enter as a screenwriter in Hollywood where he would remain for the rest of his life.

Butta would later write a book about the summer he spent with Fitzgerald. In this biography of Fitzgerald with the auto-biographical material from Butta, a new opinion of Fitzgerald arises. One of a person who really was not cut out for the high flying lifestyle he is known for. One of a person who loved his wife and daughter so much, he would do anything, include sell stories he did not like to put food on the table. It talks about Fitzgerald's affair with a woman of the night, and his recovery from alcoholisim as not as hard as it would seem for most. Later Butta would find out that was because Fitzgerald never gave up the bottle, but learned how to hide it very well.

Other conteporaries of the time were those who were in a group known as the lost Generation. A group of non-cohesive American writers in Paris. They included: Williams, Hemmingway, Wilder, Crane and Gertrude Stein, amoung others. This group was embittered about World War I and were self proclaimed to be dissolutioned with American Society. In this group, all were equal and Fitzgerald was considered as good a writer as the rest. While it did help to give him strength, it also was a major part of his alcoholisim, to be not above but equal.