Fitzgerald's Lost City

Abstract

"Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my own novels," Fitzgerald once remarked to a friend.1 We sometimes experience a similar difficulty in distinguishing Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda from his characters, for the autobiographical element in his fiction is pervasive. And there is a corollary to this, natural enough when one stops to think about it, but which has been ignored: the fictional element in his autobiographical writing is significant.2I do not mean that he lied about his life in the usual sense of the word, but that he used devices of fiction such as selection, imagery, symbolism, and myth to shape and give substance to his autobiographical essays. The most notable example is "My Lost City,"3 in which he blends literary art with autobiography, as Thoreau and Whitman had done before him, to express his vision of American life and indeed of human life itself. In a remarkable way, displaying subtle and effective artistic strategy, "My Lost City" encapsulates his essential preoccupations and insights as a literary artist. The essay provides us with a fundamental paradigm for interpreting his fiction and helps us understand why it continues to be read, perhaps more now than ever. Before treating the essay itself, it is necessary to describe in a schematic way Fitzgerald's characteristic themes and attitudes. This will enable us to perceive more clearly how they are encapsulated in "My Lost City." Generalizing from his own experience, Fitzgerald once asserted that authors usually repeat themselves. They have two or three really significant experiences in their lives and retell in various disguises their two or three stories "maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen." He confessed that he worked