James F. Fitzgerald in March 1975. James F. Fitzgerald James Francis Fitzgerald (October 12, 1895 – March 1975) was an American politician from New York. He was born on October 12, 1895, in Long Island City, which was then a city in Queens County, and is now a neighborhood in the Borough of Queens in New York City. He attended St. Mary's Parochial School. Fitzgerald was a member of the New York State Senate (5th D.) from 1949 to 1952, sitting in the 167th and 168th New York State Legislatures. In November 1952, he ran for re-election, but was defeated by Republican Milton
F. Scott Fitzgerald T. S. Eliot to write, in a letter to Fitzgerald, "It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James ..." Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson's "The Lost Weekend", says to himself, referring to "The Great Gatsby", "There's no such thing ... as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it." In letters written in the 1940s, J. D. Salinger expressed admiration of Fitzgerald's work, and his biographer Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor". Richard Yates, a writer often compared to