F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896, famous by 1920, forgotten by 1936, and dead by the end of 1940. In the ’20s, he introduced himself to party guests as “one of the most notorious drinkers of the younger generation,” or as “F. Scott Fitzgerald, the well-known alcoholic.” His friend Ernest Hemingway experienced such stagecraft firsthand when, during a trip with “Poor Scott,” Fitzgerald was convincing himself that he was dying of “consumption of the lungs” and demanded that Hemingway find a thermometer to ascertain whether a fever boiled in his blood. “He did have a point, though, and I knew it very well,” Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast. “Most drunkards in those days died of pneumonia, a disease which has now been almost eliminated. But it was hard to accept him as a drunkard, since he was affected by such small quantities of alcohol.”
America’s Drunkest Writer
by Jimmy So
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/16/f-scott-fitzgerald-s-on-booze-america-s-drunkest-writer.html
F. Scott Fitzgerald was kept in champagne in the ’20s, already a crumbling alcoholic in the ’30s, and dead by the end of ’40. The great American novelist’s boozy writings are compiled in a new collection reviewed by Jimmy So. Plus, other famous writings on drink.
A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway
It was hard to accept him as a drunkard, since he was affected by such minute quantities of alcohol. In Europe then we thought of wine as something healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well-being and delight. . . . I would not have thought of eating a meal without drinking wine or cider or beer, . . . and it had never occurred to me that sharing a few bottles of fairly light, dry, white Macon could cause chemical changes in Scott that would turn him into a fool.