F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were two of the finest writers of this century and two of the most distinctively American voices of 20th century literature as well. Although their styles were radically different, they both used their fiction to depict their own experiences in often barely fictionalized form. They also used their fiction, and especially their short stories, to advance their philosophies. Ironically, although each attempted to create a voice and a fictional persona that was highly individual and unique, each came to be seen as the voice of a generation and so at least in some ways lost their individuality. This paper examines how the two writers blended life and fiction in their works.
Before beginning this discussion though, it should be noted that the pairing of these two authors, while legitimate on artistic grounds, would certainly not have pleased these two man, or at least not Hemingway. As Hart notes, Hemingway considered himself to be the better writer and objected on almost moral grounds to FitzgeraldÆs successes.
Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises (1926) as a direct rejoinder to The Great Gatsby (1925): he created it as an aggressive defense of his own style against Fitzgerald's û and, derivatively, of his own view of reality. With The Sun Also Rises he declared almost open war against a rival whom he suddenly saw as formidable far beyond his expectations. Until Gatsby appeared, Hemingway had considered Fitzgerald merely a popular writer and, as a rival, a pushover (Hart, 1997, p. 369).
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born with four years left to run in the last century, dying only 44 years later as World War II was engulfing the planet. His works epitomize the mood and manners of the 1920s, and his term for that era û the Jazz Age û became the term that the rest of us use as well. Born September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and sent to local Roman Catholic boarding schools, he com...