The Culture Show: 17x32

Episode 32: Sincerely, F Scott Fitzgerald

Novelist Jay McInerney explores the life and writing of F Scott Fitzgerald, whose masterwork The Great Gatsby has just been filmed for the fifth time. Fitzgerald captured the reckless spirit of New York life in the roaring twenties – the flappers, the parties, the bootleg liquor, the inevitable reckoning, and the hangover to come. In Gatsby, he created a character who reinvented himself for love – just as Fitzgerald would, not once, but twice. Fitzgerald never wrote an autobiography. He left us something better – letters. Romantic, arrogant, humble letters; letters to editors, publishers, lovers, or friends. These letters reveal the inner thoughts of a man whose real life was never far from the fiction he wrote.