22 Books F. Scott Fitzgerald Thought Everyone Should Read

I have read none of these books........

Sharon wrote: "(sigh) Some people really know how to take the fun out of everything. Ahhh, to have lived in a pre-PC world...."


Agreed. :)

One wrote: "It's funny that even 'to read' lists need to be culturally sensitive. Oh no, there isn't enough women or non europeans on the list, whatever will we do?"


LOL, I know. :)

Maria wrote: "meh thanks for the advice Scott, but there's enough white dude recommending what we should read. Now if zelda had a list that may be slightly more interesting"

Curious; How do you feel that race plays into this at all? I just see a great writer with an opinion. How would you respond to someone saying the opposite about a great black author? Just food for thought.

My personal feeling are that writing transcends gender race and religion. Happy reading.

PJ; personally I don't rate Fitzgerald or Gatsby; I much prefer Pynchon, Gass or Vollmann. Life would be boring if we all liked the same things

I believe Proust had the strongest influence on SF's eloquent writing style.

And one of the most neglected American literary giants of the 20th c., Upton Sinclair. But then again, his politics are so passe to the times.

Wow, I haven't read any of these books. Such a shame.

I think a lot of this has gotten out of perspective. Someone asked Fitzgerald, in 1936, when he was forty years old, what books her would recommend. These are the books he choose. Period. It's taking something out of context (history) and putting our current moral values on it to start criticizing whether or not there are women authors on it, and who he _should_ have put on it. That makes it _your_ list, not _his_ list. Make your own list, with the books you'd want on it. This is F. Scott Fitzgerald's list, from 1936. When a female author still has to put a male name on her book in _1996_ to get a book published in a particular genre, that puts things a little more in perspective. It's one person's list. That's all. Food for thought, maybe some books people have or haven't heard of. Not trying to start an argument, just noting that there are a lot of differences between 1936 and 2015. I'm glad there are some comments noting how political correctness has nothing to do with it. :-)

Inkweaver wrote: "Maria, could I ask you, what is the nature of this comment? I mean sure, there has been oppression..."

I think that if you're interested in F. Scott Fitzgerald and his work, his list is of historical interest. If you're not particularly, his idea of required reading for people in general fails on numerous counts, most of which are likely associated with his status as a white male (of the early 20th century and from a particular culture). And, as I suspect Maria noticed, it fails quite flagrantly.

cani find it in arabic or french?!!

Logically, then, Fitzgerald was limited in his choices by his milieu, or the limitations of his access to books from different cultures and the fact that not having a time machine, he could not list books written after his list was made. I accept this as being an objectively true statement which has nothing to do with political correctness.
However, Zelda Fitzgerald, his wife, would have been limited by the same literary restrictions as her husband. If she happened to like the same books as F. Scott Fitzgerald, her list would have been just as valid or invalid as her husband's, but not more or less so.
To say otherwise has everything to do with political correctness. Now do you see why this is tedious? I might be done here.

P.J. wrote: "Now do you see why this is tedious? I might be done here..."

Personally, it's the constant reproducing of an antiquated and largely irrelevant canon which I find a bit tedious.

If she happened to like the same books as F. Scott Fitzgerald, her list would have been just as valid or invalid as her husband's, but not more or less so.

It would indeed have been just as valid or invalid, even if she didn't happen to like the same books as her husband (which seems likely enough - there's a fair bit of evidence to suggest reading choice is gendered).

The thing is we don't have access to her list. And in general, we don't have access to lists by women and POC telling us what we all ought to read - along with articles supporting their authority by defusing that information. That's the point - our data sample is rigged (not deliberately). We're not regularly presented with, say, Maya Angelou's list of books she thought 'everyone should read'. And if we were and 20 out of 22 of them were by black women, would we consider the fact beneath notice? And complain about the very existence of people commenting on the fact?

Let's try it one day and see what happens, shall we? Just for a change - it will be new and un-tedious.

Hi Anfenwick

Criticizing Fitzgerald is acceptable, but criticizing Maya Angelou for not being diverse enough would not be. This is precisely my point. The Internet is a great place to diffuse information. I'm not sure if either Zelda Fitzgerald or Maya Angelou ever made a list, and didn't know about F. Scott Fitzgerald's list until I saw this. My opinion is Toni Morrison will probably withstand the test of time, but Maya Angelou is a fraud. I can't suggest a book that would help her, diverse or not, so why bother? Doubly so with either Fitzgerald because I would need a Ouija board to contact them and I have seen too many horror movies to attempt this.
However, if you want to critique Angelou on the Internet, have at it. I believe you will find more strident defenders of her than of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Great list. About the Old White Dudes literary problem: My research indicates that Shakespeare was actually two lesbians named Gertrude and Constance.

F.P. wrote: "Goodreads asked: "Do you agree with Fitzgerald's "required" reading list?"

--And I responded, mostly by showing instead of telling. Did goodreads post a word limit on people's replies somewhere? I..."

Connie Willis, Margaret Atwood, Octavia E. Butler, Madeline L’Engle, Lois McMaster Bujold, Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, Hiromu Arakawa, Andre Norton, C.J. Cherryh, Doris Lessing....

Just some of the heavy hitting women in the world of Science Fiction / Fantasy - Some are even grandmasters alongside the likes of Fritz Leiber. Please know what you are talking about before being rude. Thanks.

I think it's just odd that anyone produces a list of books that 'everyone should read'. It leaves far too many questions hanging - not least, who fits into the category of 'everyone'. I've not read one of them, although I have read some Keats and Shelley poems and have seen the operatic adaptation of a Wilde play.

If one were to take one person's word as the absolute truth and read these books, would one then be an educated person? But what if you've read all these books, but not, say, Origin of Species, are you truly educated? Or if you've read all these books but nothing from, say, post WW2? If you've read these books but don't know how to analyse data or understand a foreign language, or make choux pastry, or...whatever... you're not properly educated.

So we're left with, one person from one culture, who was born more than a hundred years ago, one day suggested some good books. It was probably not an exhaustive list: perhaps the next day, he suddenly realised he had omitted something obvious. Did he consider and reject Rabindranath Tagore or Mary Wollstonecraft, or was his education insufficient for him to have appreciated them? We don't know.

So, really we're back to the initial premise and the conclusion must be: either he was arrogant in presuming that he could objectively assess every work of literature written in or translated into English. Or else, encouraged by his nurse, in order to amuse himself when down, he compiled an ephemeral list of no consequence and would be quite surprised that people take it seriously 80 years later.

PJ, you make some interesting, perhaps deliberately provocative assumptions about Maya Angelou. I agree that Toni Morrison is a better writer than Angelou, maybe because Morrison earned an advanced degree from Cornell (her M.A. thesis was on Faulkner, who was a heavy influence) while Angelou, who liked being called Dr. Angelou, even though her Ph.D. was honorary, dropped out of high school. But both black female writers were well read as was Richard Wright, who finished only ninth grade in segregated schools, so I'm not sure why you would call Angelou a "fraud." She's, in my not so humble opinion, a good writer; she's just not a great writer like Morrison, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Wright. I don't know why you assume that Angelou fans would be more "strident" in their defense of her than Fitzgerald fans are of him or why you seem to assume that Fitzgerald fans wouldn't be Angelou fans. I'm a fan of both writers, although I prefer Fitzgerald. It seems to me that the defenders of Fitzgerald against the charge of lack of diversity have been more "strident" in their comments (and more unnecessarily personal in their attacks) on this site than have been those who criticized Fitzgerald's list for its lack of diversity. Here are the facts about black writers: they generally have read and been influenced by white writers; Ralph Ellison pointed out that his literary ancestors were white writers like Twain, Faulkner, and Eliot. He called Wright a relative and said we pick our ancestors, not our relatives. And here's another fact: some of the white writers, like Faulkner and Fitzgerald, have read and been influenced by black writers.

Mary's use of the past tense got me on Google, and yes, Maya Angelou died last year, which had slipped my mind.

I therefore retract all criticism of Angelou, as it is my policy never to speak ill of the dead, especially the relatively recently dead. They have strange powers.

To all those who are complaining that there aren't a lot of female authors on this list, I would like to point out that this is a list composed BY F. Scott Fitzgerald himself before he died, NOT a list that the people at Good Reads have come up with. That's all.

Man, it's like this Fitzgerald cat lived back in the old days, before the modern feminist movement took hold.

I would also like to point out that Shakespeare was a middle-aged white man with unexamined privilege and therefore should be not be read by anyone until he apologizes.

Ellen wrote: "Man, it's like this Fitzgerald cat lived back in the old days, before the modern feminist movement took hold.

I would also like to point out that Shakespeare was a middle-aged white man with unexa..."

that Shakespeare guy is a pest. He seems to appear everywhere you read around!

Yeah, he's like the Godfather of White Male Privilege. He never had any female characters or people of color. Ok, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Othello, Shylock...but he can only be a great writer if he was secretly two lesbian sisters.

Great list. There's a new Esquire Classic podcast out--on Monday we release an episode on Fitzgerald's 'The Crack Up.' It'll be up on iTunes if you're interested...

After reading F.P.'s concern about the under representation of female authors I was in some of the various "must read" or top some number lists of books on the internet, I did a quick search on Google to see if this was so. I specifically chose to look at Science Fiction list only rather than other lists.

Some of the lists did seem to ignore female authors; books that I had read and enjoyed were missing from these lists, especially on the lists that were created as advertisements complete with links on where to buy them, but I tend to ignore these sorts of lists. I also ignored lists that made me look at multiple pages to see the whole list.

Here is a list that I found on NPR, followed by an unhappy commentary for completeness, or just because I can, from a commentator that thinks their list is misogynous.

13 of the 100 books on this list were written by female authors.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/1390858...

20 Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
22 The Handmaidens Tale, by Margaret Atwood
33 Dragonflight, by Anne McCafrey
42 The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmerman Bradley
45 The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursala Le Guin
64 Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
69 The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70 The Time Travelers Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
77 The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78 An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
84 The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
89 The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon
92 Sunshine, by robin McKinley

Here is a link to that critique of NPR's list.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2...

I found this list that put one book to a page, so I am not going to copy and past all of the books, but since there was a list of author names as tags, I copped and numbered them here (since it was less work to do so).

This list show 14 out of 48 names on the list were female writers. I left the male authors on the list to show what sort of company these female authors are keeping. This list is in alphabetical order, not in order of preference.

http://flavorwire.com/408275/50-sci-f...

01 Aldous Huxley,
02 Alfred Bester,
03 Andre Norton,
04 Anne McCaffrey,
05 C.S. Lewis,
06 Charles Yu,
07 China Mieville,
08 Diana Wynne Jones,
09 Douglas Adams,
10 Frank Herbert,
11 Frederik Pohl
12 George Orwell
13 George R.R. Martin
14 H.G. Wells
15 Isaac Asimov
16 J. K. Rowling
17 J.G. Ballard
18 J.R.R. Tolkien
19 Joanna Russ
20 John Crowley
21 Jules Verne
22 Kurt Vonnegut
23 Lewis Carroll
24 Lois Lowry
25 Madeleine L'Engle
26 Margaret Atwood
27 Marion Zimmer Bradley
28 Mary Shelley
29 Mervyn Peake
30 Nalo Hopkinson
31 Neal Stephenson
32 Neil Gaiman
33 Octavia Butler
34 Orson Scott Card
35 Patricia C. Wrede
36 Peter S. Beagle
37 Philip K. Dick
38 Philip Pullman
39 Ray Bradbury
40 Robert A. Heinlein
41 Roger Zelazny
42 Samuel R. Delany
43 Stanislaw Lem
44 Susanna Clarke
45 T.H. White
46 Terry Pratchett
47 Ursula K. Le Guin
48 William Gibson

SO this list has 14 female authors out of 48.

These were just the two lists that I was willing to post, ignoring the rest mostly from laziness on my part. There are plenty of other lists out there to look for. Take from them what you will.

Ellen wrote: "Yeah, he's like the Godfather of White Male Privilege. He never had any female characters or people of color. Ok, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Othello, Shylock...but he can only be a great writer if he wa..."

I stopped reading this b.s.discussion loong ago-- cause Im an old lady with menopause and dont have time for idiocy. But dude, YOU made my whole day, week, and month. You, dear girl, are my new best friend.

Ellen wrote: "Great list. About the Old White Dudes literary problem: My research indicates that Shakespeare was actually two lesbians named Gertrude and Constance."

I officially think you are Amazeballs. Youre my new best friend.

Ellen wrote: "Man, it's like this Fitzgerald cat lived back in the old days, before the modern feminist movement took hold.

I would also like to point out that Shakespeare was a middle-aged white man with unexa..."

Im having the BEST fun reading your thread!

Yeah, she's funny. I especially like the idea of Shakespeare as two lesbian sisters.

I just finished a close reading of "The Garden Party" and the influences on Fitzgerald are pretty clear. I thought this was something I had "discovered" but alas, many have been mining this ground already.