The Disenchanted Research Paper
Research paper: The Disenchanted
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and work were in a knot from the start; his profession spanned one of the most tumultuous eras of the century, and from the very start he was the creator and the victim of the new culture of celebrity which accompanied the rise of modern technology. Budd Schulberg masterfully created a character that closely and in many ways represents Fitzgerald in his later years; Manley Halliday is that character. “His mind’s eye, incurably bifocal, could never stop searching for the fairy-tale maiden who made his young manhood a time of bewitchment, when springtime was the only season and the days revolved on a lovers’ spectrum of sunlight, twilight, candlelight and dawn.”[Ch.10]. Fitzgerald had an interesting relationship with his beautiful wife Zelda Fitzgerald, in the novel Halliday’s was a flapper named Jere. Much of the novel’s center core is an up and close view covering the couple’s interactions, behavior, parties, and a lot of screw ups that do not shy away from Fitzgerads’ very own. Not only is there a connection between Halliday’s Jere but The Disenchanted introduced the subject of glamorized failure, in the scene when Manley Halliday is dying and thinks, “Take it from me, baby, in America nothing fails like success” [Ch. Slow Dissolve] he indeed, is the American failure.
Manley Halliday is the perfect thinly disguised Fitzgerald, Schulberg cleverly hides this although in chapter 2 he writes “"Twenty years from now, if we can keep improving our prod¬uct as much as we have since the War, the Hemingways, Fitz¬geralds, the Wolfes and the Hallidays will start out as screen¬play writers instead of novelists. Wait and see if I’m not right, Shep. The great American writing of the future will be done directly for the screen." [Ch. 2]. The parallel between Fitzgerald and Halliday continues, Halliday sees himself as a professional just as Fitzgerald has his whole life. In the book Shep’s impressed, but unsure, for
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and work were in a knot from the start; his profession spanned one of the most tumultuous eras of the century, and from the very start he was the creator and the victim of the new culture of celebrity which accompanied the rise of modern technology. Budd Schulberg masterfully created a character that closely and in many ways represents Fitzgerald in his later years; Manley Halliday is that character. “His mind’s eye, incurably bifocal, could never stop searching for the fairy-tale maiden who made his young manhood a time of bewitchment, when springtime was the only season and the days revolved on a lovers’ spectrum of sunlight, twilight, candlelight and dawn.”[Ch.10]. Fitzgerald had an interesting relationship with his beautiful wife Zelda Fitzgerald, in the novel Halliday’s was a flapper named Jere. Much of the novel’s center core is an up and close view covering the couple’s interactions, behavior, parties, and a lot of screw ups that do not shy away from Fitzgerads’ very own. Not only is there a connection between Halliday’s Jere but The Disenchanted introduced the subject of glamorized failure, in the scene when Manley Halliday is dying and thinks, “Take it from me, baby, in America nothing fails like success” [Ch. Slow Dissolve] he indeed, is the American failure.
Manley Halliday is the perfect thinly disguised Fitzgerald, Schulberg cleverly hides this although in chapter 2 he writes “"Twenty years from now, if we can keep improving our prod¬uct as much as we have since the War, the Hemingways, Fitz¬geralds, the Wolfes and the Hallidays will start out as screen¬play writers instead of novelists. Wait and see if I’m not right, Shep. The great American writing of the future will be done directly for the screen." [Ch. 2]. The parallel between Fitzgerald and Halliday continues, Halliday sees himself as a professional just as Fitzgerald has his whole life. In the book Shep’s impressed, but unsure, for