While some hear Fitzgerald’s name and automatically think of some wealthy Long Island village by the water or drinks with Ernest Hemingway and other American expats in France after World War I, his time in his half of the Twin Cities formed him and informed him. Paul, as I did on a recent visit, you can see where some of the writer’s ideas about class and comfort came from, but also his place in the world. The difference in economic backgrounds was noticeable, and walking around his section of St. Like Amory Blaine in “This Side of Paradise,” Nick Carraway in “Gatsby,” and a handful of the writer’s most recognizable characters, Fitzgerald grew up less well-off than his neighbors in a wealthy part of town. Paul, where he grew up, to begin to understand Fitzgerald. Although you catch only glimpses and mentions of it in his stories and novels - usually as the part of the world many of his characters leave for more luxurious destinations - all you have to do is see the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of St. Scott Fitzgerald was a kid in the Midwest. Before the bootlegged gin of the Jazz Age and wasted days in Paris, before “The Great Gatsby,” lavish parties in Manhattan hotels and Long Island houses, failure in Hollywood and his death of a heart attack at 44, F.
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