It’s the birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), known for his novels and stories about the Jazz Age, and particularly known for writing the novel zillions of American high school students are forced to read every year, The Great Gatsby (1925). I don’t think you’re allowed to call yourself an American if you haven’t read The Great Gatsby and eked out at least one essay on it.

Fitzgerald was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and lived in various gorgeous Victorian row houses and apartments that were nonetheless slummy compared to the more gorgeous, larger Victorian houses of the neighbors, and there you have the motivation behind The Great Gatsby in a nutshell. The Fitzgeralds moved a lot, so if you go to St. Paul today and wander around the Ramsey Hill neighborhood or up and down swanky Summit Avenue, you will find a number of homes with plaques stating that Fitzgerald once lived there. (They also spent a few years in Buffalo, NY, but returned when Fitzgerald was eight after his father lost his job there.)

Fitzgerald studied at Princeton University and began to advance in social and literary circles but flunked out. He returned but nothing was the same, and in 1917 he joined the army. It was during this time that he met Zelda Sayre, who was hesitant to marry someone poor; she finally married him after he published his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), which was wildly successful. Both the Fitzgeralds, interestingly, liked being wildly successful. They had a daughter in 1921, moved to the French Riviera in 1924 (two years after Fitzgerald published The Beautiful and the Damned), and famously took part in American ex-pat life there.

Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, considered his masterpiece, while in France, but the book did not sell well until after his death. Things fell apart for the Fitzgeralds. They were beleaguered by money problems; Fitzgerald drank way too much; Zelda had mental breakdowns and never succeeded as an artist herself. (The two even fought over who could use their lives as material for their novels; she wrote Save Me the Waltz based somewhat on their lives, and he wrote Tender Is the Night, 1934.) Eventually, back in the U.S., Zelda ended up hospitalized for life, and Fitzgerald—himself hospitalized for alcoholism eight times—ended up writing screen plays in Hollywood. His drinking worsened; sometimes he had 37 beers a day. He rejected the suggestion that he join a little group that had started up called Alcoholics Anonymous because, as he told friends, “AA can only help weak people because their ego is strengthened by the group.” In 1939, he began writing The Last Tycoon; before it was finished, he died of a heart attack at the age of 44. (Zelda died in a fire at her hospital eight years later; she too left a novel unfinished, her second one.)

The Great Gatsby has gone on to sell more than 25 million copies and each year sells half a million more. It is Scribner’s bestselling title. (NB: Fitzgerald wrote one of my all-time favorite short stories, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” which you can find in his collection here.)

Have a great Monday, drink lots of water because it’s good for you, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.