by Joe Schrank, 28 years sober, not dead and still showing up
F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t just give us The Great Gatsby. He gave us the language of longing—the blueprint for beautiful despair wrapped in Art Deco trim. And sure, Gatsby gets all the glory, but Fitzgerald also cleared the path for the likes of Salinger. Without Fitzgerald, there’s no Franny and Zooey—that brooding, exquisite little book doesn’t hit the same without the trail he blazed through American prose. His writing, like Salinger’s after him, manages to be intimate and epic, sacred and sad, without being fussy—like the perfect fastball, simplicity that rushes by you without quite knowing what happened.
As for Zelda? She wasn’t just “the wife.” She was chaos and charisma, talent and tragedy. They were the Sid and Nancy of the Jazz Age, minus the punk and plus the gin. Maybe even the OG Kurt and Courtney before Courtney became a junkie Auntie Mame. Zelda didn’t just dance on tables—she broke the tables, and the floor beneath them, and everything around her, including Scott’s big, sensitive, brilliant alcoholic heart. Their love was a Category 5 hurricane that blew through salons, sanatoriums, and sad little hotel rooms.
Hemingway treated Fitzgerald like a twerpy little brother, a junior varsity drinker with a writing problem. But Fitzgerald’s work endures. It’s foundational. Any brooding undergrad at a New England liberal arts college better be able to tell her bestie, “You’re the Jordan to my Daisy,” and sound like she’s actually read it.
So yeah, the Fitzgeralds were messy. They drank too much, loved too hard, and burned out like busted chandeliers. But they mattered. Their damage didn’t cancel their brilliance—it was stitched into it.
Alcoholics have shaped American life. If you’re an alcoholic, be proud. Raise a glass of Diet Coke, lads—you’re in brilliant company