Description: Fitzgerald's sensitivity about wealth and position--later made evident in such classics as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night--was bred of his St. Paul family and associations.
Brief description: Patricia Hampl is Regents' Professor of English at the University of Minnesota and author of several books, including A Romantic Education. She has won NEA, Bush, Guggenheim, Bellagio, McKnight, Fulbright, and MacArthur fellowships. Dave Page is co-author of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Minnesota: Toward the Summit.
Review Quotes: "Fitzgerald is a presence in St. Paul, a ghost who patrols his old neighborhood and keeps talking to us. He sits on Mrs. Porterfield's porch on Summit Avenue, smoking and talking about writing, and it is always that gorgeous summer just before he finished the book, hit it big, went to New York, married the girl. This lovely book sets out our claim on him. We have no Fitzgerald museum in St. Paul, no boyhood home restored--the family lived in apartments--but this book is the only monument he needs, his own stories, with historical notes, and Patricia Hampl's graceful shining essay for absolution, and Zelda's benediction." -- Garrison Keillor