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2nd out of 74 books
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9 voters
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories
Written between 1920 and 1937, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was at the height of his creative powers, these ten lyric tales represent some of the author's finest fiction. In them, Fitzgerald creates vivid, timeless characters -- a dissatisfied southern belle seeking adventure in the north; the tragic hero of the title story who lost more than money in the stock market; giddy a...more
Paperback, 272 pages
Published
May 24th 1996
by Scribner
(first published 1937)
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i can't find my exact copy of what i purchased from half priced books, so i'll just claim i'm reading the same one that jamie read. this book is so old. it smells like 1955, and the pages are a sickly yellow-brown. i cannot wait. for the stories of course.
of course.
despite smelling great the whole time, the book wore me down halfway through. if nothing else, this is a timeline for fitzgerald's own life, and the amout of autobiography one can extract from each story is immense. going in chronolog...more
of course.
despite smelling great the whole time, the book wore me down halfway through. if nothing else, this is a timeline for fitzgerald's own life, and the amout of autobiography one can extract from each story is immense. going in chronolog...more
Ten stories that are masterfully created, but I will focus solely on one: Babylon Revisited.
No word is wasted or unnecessary in this greatest of F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories. Perhaps only Gatsby gets us to the finish line in such an eloquent and timely manner.
In this story, the main character, expatriate Charlie, returns to Paris (His home during the 20's boom) after the depression (story is written in 1931). The city has changed, and so has he; broker, soberer, depressed, a widow (which some...more
No word is wasted or unnecessary in this greatest of F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories. Perhaps only Gatsby gets us to the finish line in such an eloquent and timely manner.
In this story, the main character, expatriate Charlie, returns to Paris (His home during the 20's boom) after the depression (story is written in 1931). The city has changed, and so has he; broker, soberer, depressed, a widow (which some...more
“The Ice Palace” was an interesting play on the cultural differences that once existed between the north and the south. Being in the DR in the Peace Corps while reading this, it made me think of how easily the story could be told between someone from the DR and an American.
“May Day” was interesting to me because I have interest in understanding more about Socialism and how people felt about it in the US during that time, plus it gave Fitzgerald’s constant interest in writing about the rich a po...more
“May Day” was interesting to me because I have interest in understanding more about Socialism and how people felt about it in the US during that time, plus it gave Fitzgerald’s constant interest in writing about the rich a po...more
The Inescapability of the Past
Even though Charlie’s wilder days have long since passed, he’ll never be able to truly escape them. Although he actively tries to avoid reminders of the Paris he used to know, they nevertheless follow him everywhere. When he goes to lunch with Honoria, for example, he can find only one restaurant that doesn’t remind him of drunken meals that lasted for hours. When he walks through Montmartre, old haunts surround him. Even the things that have changed remind him of h...more
Even though Charlie’s wilder days have long since passed, he’ll never be able to truly escape them. Although he actively tries to avoid reminders of the Paris he used to know, they nevertheless follow him everywhere. When he goes to lunch with Honoria, for example, he can find only one restaurant that doesn’t remind him of drunken meals that lasted for hours. When he walks through Montmartre, old haunts surround him. Even the things that have changed remind him of h...more
I have to say, I was a tad disappointed in this. After rekindling my love for Fitzgerald last week, I was really looking forward to reading short stories. It seemed like the perfect thing! I loved The Great Gatsby and I love short stories- what could go wrong?
Unfortunately none of these had the impact that Gatsby had. I think the characters in Fitzgerald's stories are too subtle for a short story. In short fiction, you have to get in, establish a character, and get their story told in only abou...more
Unfortunately none of these had the impact that Gatsby had. I think the characters in Fitzgerald's stories are too subtle for a short story. In short fiction, you have to get in, establish a character, and get their story told in only abou...more
The stories collected here move chronologically from his early years to his later. As he gets closer to his death, the stories get shorter, more depressing, and less interesting. The first half of the book is full of writing that actually puts Great Gatsby to shame. Stories like May Day and A Diamond As Big as the Ritz are among some of the best works i've ever read. If only all the stories had been this good.
The same themes as The Great Gatsby were repeated throughout the short stories in this collection, but it didn't feel formulaic to me, so I don't fault Fitzgerald for it. Although, it was too depressing to read quickly. I could only handle one story every few days. Anyway, it seems weird to review a whole collection of stories as one book, so here ya go:
The Ice Palace: Ooh, loved the feeling evoked by this one. Instantly threw you into the hot, languid world of the South in the early '20s. Loved...more
The Ice Palace: Ooh, loved the feeling evoked by this one. Instantly threw you into the hot, languid world of the South in the early '20s. Loved...more
Every sentence is pure quality. Definitely worth reading, even if it's over a few years, one story at a time.
Nov 20, 2010
Jessica
added it
Half of 'em are good. This is my first go with Fitzgerald shorts. Seeing as it's how he made his living, I'm interested in reading more. As a collection, I was more impressed with Laurie Moore's Birds of America. The Fitzgerald ones may not have been selected with an eye to his best works. I'm a little irked with some of the characters as they tend to be pretty self-absorbed and unable to connect to other beings; if that counts as a love, then there you have it. There's quite a few plot lines re...more
I like F Scott Fitzgerald quite a bit more than my high school self. Who knew?
I don't think I'll ever find another writer whose prose can be so lyrical and beautiful that I often marvel with both awe and jealousy as I read it. Fitzgerald is a brilliant writer (both Gatsby and Tender is the Night rank amongst my very favorites) and it shows even in his lesser works as even in stories that are poorly plotted or feature cardboard characters, there is still something in the writing that makes them worth reading.
There are ten stories in this collection, and of them, I found on...more
There are ten stories in this collection, and of them, I found on...more
THE ICE PALACE - a young woman from the south is engaged to a man named Mr. Bellamy from the north...
MAY DAY - 1919 A young man's tale of woe as told to a friend he has tracked down at the Biltmore Hotel culminates in a request for money. What follows could well be expected.
DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ - a young man is exagerating his family wealth, only to find out the diamond is really as "big as a mountain" ...
* WINTER DREAMS - The young golf caddy learns that in reaching the heights of societ...more
Found a 1960 school-bound edition (stamped by Framingham High School, sorry Massachusetts) at Babbo's Books today. Actually, I cannot claim to have found it; the owner's mom Louise dug it up for me when I was looking for Gatsby. Well if you insist! We talked about how much we love the title story, and she said her most favorite was "The Rich Boy." Well, I will read it.
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Scott Fitzgerald was my favorite among the Modernists, but I enjoyed this book and its short stories. Like a lot of writers, he seems to have had one theme that he struggled with throughout his life: a young man who is an outsider struggling with success and its consequences, with troubles with alcohol and an inability to connect with the woman he loved. His obsession with class I understand better now that I've lived in the northeast for a while, but it remains distasteful to me.
A good set of Fitzgerald's short stories. I enjoyed a lot of them, my favorites probably being The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Babylon Revisited. The stories are in chronological order from when he wrote them and you can see more and more of his life and troubles being put in them. Babylon Revisited is almost word-for-word about what was happening in his life with his daughter Scottie (but Zelda wasn't dead). The newer stories are definitely better but the latter stories are still great to re...more
My copy of Babylon Revisited contained three short stories: Babylon Revisited, The Cut-Glass Bowl, and The Lost Decade.
I loved all three stories, from the shattered hopes of the protagonist in Babylon Revisited and the sad history that it unfolds to the tale of decay that epitomises the times to the nice little twist at the end of the Lost Decade.
All three were enjoyable and would recommend them whole heartily.
I loved all three stories, from the shattered hopes of the protagonist in Babylon Revisited and the sad history that it unfolds to the tale of decay that epitomises the times to the nice little twist at the end of the Lost Decade.
All three were enjoyable and would recommend them whole heartily.
This review is focused just on Babylon Revisited. It is simply outstanding, a hammer strike against a life of self-indulgent dissipation. Where Gatsby is a book that speaks to the broad issue of the meaning of the American dream, Babylon Revisited is an intensely personal look at the hollowness of a life of excess. It's strongly auto-biographical element makes the story all the more poignant and will, I think, show Fitzgerald in a different light than many might expect.
Some of the stories in Babylon Revisited and Other Stories were great and others were a bit boring. I love Fitzgerald's basic writing style though. He paints a very clear, vivid picture of what life was like during the 1920's, but he doesn't really make it seem like it happened ages ago. When you read his stories you become a part of them as if everything is happening around you.
I loved this book, it was wonderfully funny, gorgeous use of language, absolutely drenched in the period, so insightful of the human condition. I read it after I had seen the Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris. It is a book of short stories and to my shame I have never read any of Scott Fitzgerald's full length novels, but this experience has made me determine to.
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Almost everything here is pretty remarkable, but "Babylon Revisited" might be my favourite short story. It's still relevant and interesting today, not from a historical point of view solely, but in a truer sense. Fitzgerald got at a certain sort of quiet, subtle human despair that few writers ever have, and I think only David Foster Wallace really did recently.
Wonderful stories that are filled with a sensitivity and tenderness that only a few writers can achieve. Overlaid throughout the entire anthology is the vivid reality of the human experience. These attributes combine within each story to form miniature portraits of life that are unmistakably and uniquely Fitzgerald (as I unassumingly understand him to be).
I listened to these short stories while driving. These stories definitely have the feeling of the 20's and 30's, but 2 things make them "5 stars" for me: 1)the writing is perfect, and 2)the characters are full and deep. I still feel amazed at how fully I felt the story and the character's depth of motivation and desires in so few written words.
The title story is the best known in the this collection
of FSFs short stories, however I also liked 'The Ice Palace'.
Not that any are bad, from this collection from the heyday
of the short story.
In all you'll notice Fitzgerald themes, alcohol, women
controlled by moral categories, money, men in search
of a future.
Babylon Revisited is another great story about addiction, frivolousness and finding your way back. It takes a strong person to come back from any kind of addiction. I appreciate F. Scott Fitzgerald's bravery as he used real life situations and made them into amazing stories. It inspires me to do the same.
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
An intensely personal portrait of a man who has squandered his life (his fortune dissipated, his marriage broken, his young daughter lost to him) it was written in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash and still resonates deeply.
An intensely personal portrait of a man who has squandered his life (his fortune dissipated, his marriage broken, his young daughter lost to him) it was written in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash and still resonates deeply.
Whenever I read F. Scott Fitzgerald, I feel like I'm not getting the entire story. More as if I'm reading his work through a fog. The more stories I read, the more I liked them, but I wouldn't call it one of my favorite books.
Some of the short stories were better than others, but the collection has the most famous stories and a nice range of Fitzgerald's work. The Afterword was also quite good.
All of the stories seemed imbued with the same sense of romanticism as in The Sun Also Rises. Pleasant reading--the first book I finished on our new hammock.
Much as I love 'Gatsby', Fitzgerald's short stories (even the ones he wrote in a desperate cash grab) are his best works. He is an underrated master of short fiction.
I have a feeling I didn't finish all of the stories in this. It was a hazy time in my life (y'know how it goes). I'm going to have to revisit this.... hey oh.
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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works have been seen as evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he himself allegedly coined. He is regarded as one of the greatest twentieth century writers. Fitzgerald was of the self-styled "Lost Generation," Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He finished four novels, left a fifth unfini...more
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“It isn't given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.”
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“He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.”
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28 août 22:23