California Authors Night
March 24, 2006 7 P.M.
 photo by Bill Frankeberger |
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| Kurt Gravenhorst | became click ^ for After Show photo |
F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Last year
Kurt Gravenhorst won a standing ovation for his remarkable
portrayal of Eugene O'Neill. This year Gravenhorst will appear in
another original one-man show - this time on the life of F. Scott
Fitzgerald. When F. Scott Fitzgerald's alcohol-ravaged heart finally gave out at the age of 44, he was an unemployed Hollywood screenwriter living in obscurity, desperately trying to complete The Last Tycoon, the novel he hoped would restore his forgotten place in American literature. The New York Times obituary, alluding to the title of a collection of his short stories, wrote that Fitzgerald's life epitomized "all the sad young men" of his generation. When Fitzgerald died in Hollywood in 1940, he was dismissed as a failed writer who never fulfilled the literary promise of his youth. No one then could anticipate that he would later be recognized and revered as one of America's greatest writers. Kurt Gravenhorst writes, "The mysterious process that somehow renders genius from a life of anguish and torment has always fascinated me. I have been drawn to writers who struggle with their own maladjustment to life, and how this struggle becomes the engine that drives their own fiction. Perhaps more than any other American author, Fitzgerald's life is inseparable from his work - he seems to have stepped right out of one of his own stories: an emblem of the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, the Lost Generation, wandering through the dark side of the American Dream. But Fitzgerald was far more than just a chronicler of his age. "He once wrote, 'Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.' He was not afraid to dig into the darkness of his own character. And this, I believe, is why his work transcends the limits of time. With incomparable tenderness, his work has touched some dark place of loss and anguish that is in us all. As a writer, I want to explore connection between anguish and art in his life, but my own words always fail me. As an actor, however, I feel I have a much better chance of conveying the mystery of his genius. If I can embody it and let Fitzgerald tell his own story in his own words, then it will ring true. I think then I will have a chance of communicating the heart and soul of this American literary icon." When not walking the boards, Kurt is a professor of English and Humanities at Foothill College. Following the performance, Mr. Gravenhorst will entertain questions from the audience. |
Francis
Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota in 1896. He is best known
for his novels and short stories that chronicle the excesses of
America's 'Jazz Age' during the 1920s. Fitzgerald enrolled at Princeton in 1913. Here he mingled with the monied classes from the Eastern Seaboard who so obsessed him for the rest of his life. He neglected his studies to write scripts and lyrics for Princeton Triangle Club musicals and to contribute to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. He dropped out and joined the army in 1917. While at Camp Sheridan in Alabama he met his future wife, Zelda Sayre, who became the model for many of his heroines-beautiful, intricate and alluring. World War I ended just as he was due to be sent overseas. He spent much of his Army time writing and re-writing his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which he finished after his return to civilian life. The novel was published in 1920 and it became an instant success. Fitzgerald married Zelda a week later. With abundant money and the gin flowing, they lived a mad cap life. The Beautiful and the Damned followed in 1922 after the birth of a daughter “Scotty” in 1921. They became part of the ex-patriot group some call the “Lost Generation” in Paris and the French Riviera. During this time his drinking increased. He was an alcoholic, but he wrote sober. His reputation as a drinker inspired the myth that he was an irresponsible writer; yet he was a painstaking reviser whose fiction went through layers of drafts. The Great Gatsby (1925), which Fitzgerald considered his masterpiece, is a tale of failed love and careless luxury. It was during this period that Fitzgerald wrote many of his short stories, which were in high demand, to help pay for his extravagant lifestyle. These stories appeared in 4 books: Flappers and Philosophers(1920), Tales of the Jazz Age(1922), and All the Sad Young Men(1926) and Taps at Reveille(1935). As Fitzgerald succumbed to alcoholism and his wife to insanity, their marriage disintegrated. Fitzgerald's last complete novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), is largely an examination of what had gone wrong in their lives. After short stints in Hollywood in the late 20s and early 30s, he moved there in 1937 and was under contract to MGM for nearly two years. After they dropped his option at the end of 1938, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short-short stories for Esquire. It was at this time he wrote the autobiographical essays collected posthumously in The Crack-Up and began his unfinished Hollywood novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. He had written more than half of a working draft when he died of a heart attack in December 1940. Four novels, four short-story collections, and a play make up the nine F. Scott Fitzgerald books published in his lifetime. In his twenty-year career as a writer he published 164 magazine stories; an additional ten stories have never been published. |
7pm March 24, 2006 at the
Pleasant Hill Community Center
320 Civic Drive Pleasant Hill, CA 94523
click here to see a map
Tickets are $10 (tax deductible contribution)
Net proceeds fund California Writers Club
Mt. Diablo Branch Young Writers Contest
for Contra Costa Middle School students
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A Co-Production of California Writers Club Mt. Diablo Branch and Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District |
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We would like to thank
the
following organizations for their generous donation of the
refreshments served during intermission:
 Nob Hill Foods 130 Market Place San Ramon, CA 94583 (925) 866-1022 |
 Safeway Food & Drug 600 Patterson Blvd Pleasant Hill, CA 94523 (925) 933-8243 |
 Cheryl Kimmel, Manager 1526 Palos Verdes Mall Geary Road at Pleasant Hill Road Walnut Creek, CA 94597 (925) 939-8378 |
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