F. Scott Fitzgerald: The American Dream Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, the spokesman for the Jazz Age, ruled America’s decade of prosperity and excess, which began soon after World War 1 and ended around the time of the stock market crash of 1929. The novels and stories for which he is best known examine an entire generation’s search for the elusive American Dream of wealth and happiness. Many of his works are derived from his own life and that of his wife and friends. The early gaiety shows only one side of a writer whose second and final decade of work portrayed a life marred by alcoholism and financial difficulties, troubled by lost love, and frustrated by is lack of in