What do you think?
Rate this book
The Fitzgerald Reader
pt. 1. Winter dreams. May day --Winter dreams --Absolution --"The sensible thing" --The great Gatsby --The rich boy --Basil and Cleopatra --pt. 2. The crack-up. Outside the cabinet-maker's --Babylon revisited --Echoes of the jazz age --Crazy Sunday --Family in the wind --From Tender is the night [chapters 1-6] --pt. 3. Pasting it together. The crack-up --Pasting it together --Handle with care --pt. 4. Handling it with care. Afternoon of an author --"I didn't get over" --The long way out --Financing Finnegan --The lost decade --From The last tycoon [chapters 1 and 4].
488 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
About the author
Arthur Mizener
28 books2 followersArthur Moore Mizener was an American professor of English, literary critic, and biographer. After graduating from Princeton, Mizener obtained his master's degree from Harvard. From 1951 until his retirement in 1975, he was Mellon Foundation Professor of English at Cornell University. In 1951, Mizener published the first biography of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald titled The Far Side of Paradise.
In addition to authoring the first biography of Fitzgerald, Mizener proposed the now popular interpretations of Fitzgerald's magnum opus The Great Gatsby as a criticism of the American Dream and the character of Jay Gatsby as the dream's false prophet. He popularized these interpretations in a series of talks titled "The Great Gatsby and the American Dream."
Although Mizener's biography became a commercial success, Fitzgerald's friends such as critic Edmund Wilson believed the work distorted Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's relationship and personalities for the worse. Consequently, scholars deemed Andrew Turnbull's 1962 biography Scott Fitzgerald to be a significant correction of the biographical record.
In 1971, Mizener released a biography about writer Ford Madox Ford titled The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford that received critical acclaim but did not achieve the same commercial success. He later wrote a supplemental Fitzgerald biography titled Scott Fitzgerald And His World.
In addition to authoring the first biography of Fitzgerald, Mizener proposed the now popular interpretations of Fitzgerald's magnum opus The Great Gatsby as a criticism of the American Dream and the character of Jay Gatsby as the dream's false prophet. He popularized these interpretations in a series of talks titled "The Great Gatsby and the American Dream."
Although Mizener's biography became a commercial success, Fitzgerald's friends such as critic Edmund Wilson believed the work distorted Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's relationship and personalities for the worse. Consequently, scholars deemed Andrew Turnbull's 1962 biography Scott Fitzgerald to be a significant correction of the biographical record.
In 1971, Mizener released a biography about writer Ford Madox Ford titled The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford that received critical acclaim but did not achieve the same commercial success. He later wrote a supplemental Fitzgerald biography titled Scott Fitzgerald And His World.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 22, 2022
The Fitzgerald Reader, a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings, was first published in 1963. By the early 1960’s, the Fitzgerald boom that had begun a decade earlier was in full swing. When F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, he feared that he was forgotten writer, and to some degree he was correct. The New York Times obituary of Fitzgerald pigeonholed him as a dusty relic of the bygone Jazz Age. But a generation after his death, Fitzgerald was firmly in the canon of Great American Writers, and he’s maintained that position even today, more than 100 years after he first came to prominence. Fitzgerald is one of the few authors whose importance has increased, rather than decreased, since his death.
The inside cover of The Fitzgerald Reader tells the tale: in the Scribner Library, The Great Gatsby was given the catalogue number SL 1, indicating it’s pride of place among Scribner’s authors. Tender Is the Night was SL 2. Fitzgerald no doubt would have been tickled to know that he was ahead of his friend and sometimes rival Ernest Hemingway, who had SL 4 (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and SL 5 (The Sun Also Rises). (For the record, John Galsworthy had SL 3, The Man of Property.)
The Fitzgerald Reader gathers together the entire text of The Great Gatsby, excerpts from Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon, along with many of Fitzgerald’s best short stories and essays. Altogether, it’s an excellent one volume introduction to the genius and beauty of Fitzgerald’s best work.
The book starts strong, with four of Fitzgerald’s very best short stories: “May Day,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” and “The Sensible Thing.” Mizener isn’t pulling any punches here; he’s showing you the best of the best of Fitzgerald. After those four stories, you get the full text of The Great Gatsby. If those four stories and Gatsby haven’t convinced you of Fitzgerald’s brilliance, there’s probably nothing that will.
Mizener skips over Fitzgerald’s first two novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. That’s telling of their place in Fitzgerald’s canon, as so much attention is paid to The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, while This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned are left to languish.
“Echoes of the Jazz Age,” one of Fitzgerald’s finest essays is included, along with the three “Crack-Up” essays that were originally published in Esquire magazine in 1936. At the time, authors like John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway were shocked and outraged by the “Crack-Up” essays, and the very idea that Fitzgerald would admit that his personal life was in turmoil. Because we know so much more now about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal life, what’s remarkable about the “Crack-Up” essays isn’t how much Fitzgerald reveals to the reader, but how little. The true crises in his life at the time the essays were written were his alcoholism and his wife Zelda’s mental illness—these go unmentioned in the “Crack-Up” essays. Fitzgerald still had enough old-world reticence that there was no way he was going to write about those two intensely personal topics for public consumption.
The fine short stories of the early 1930’s are here: “Babylon Revisited” and “Crazy Sunday,” along with “Family in the Wind,” an excellent story that is a departure from Fitzgerald’s usual milieu. The late 1930’s are also well represented by the autobiographical “Afternoon of an Author,” and the bitterly funny “Financing Finnegan,” which pokes fun at Fitzgerald’s own problems with money.
The Fitzgerald Reader is a collection that ably demonstrates why F. Scott Fitzgerald was such a brilliant talent.
The inside cover of The Fitzgerald Reader tells the tale: in the Scribner Library, The Great Gatsby was given the catalogue number SL 1, indicating it’s pride of place among Scribner’s authors. Tender Is the Night was SL 2. Fitzgerald no doubt would have been tickled to know that he was ahead of his friend and sometimes rival Ernest Hemingway, who had SL 4 (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and SL 5 (The Sun Also Rises). (For the record, John Galsworthy had SL 3, The Man of Property.)
The Fitzgerald Reader gathers together the entire text of The Great Gatsby, excerpts from Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon, along with many of Fitzgerald’s best short stories and essays. Altogether, it’s an excellent one volume introduction to the genius and beauty of Fitzgerald’s best work.
The book starts strong, with four of Fitzgerald’s very best short stories: “May Day,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” and “The Sensible Thing.” Mizener isn’t pulling any punches here; he’s showing you the best of the best of Fitzgerald. After those four stories, you get the full text of The Great Gatsby. If those four stories and Gatsby haven’t convinced you of Fitzgerald’s brilliance, there’s probably nothing that will.
Mizener skips over Fitzgerald’s first two novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. That’s telling of their place in Fitzgerald’s canon, as so much attention is paid to The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, while This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned are left to languish.
“Echoes of the Jazz Age,” one of Fitzgerald’s finest essays is included, along with the three “Crack-Up” essays that were originally published in Esquire magazine in 1936. At the time, authors like John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway were shocked and outraged by the “Crack-Up” essays, and the very idea that Fitzgerald would admit that his personal life was in turmoil. Because we know so much more now about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal life, what’s remarkable about the “Crack-Up” essays isn’t how much Fitzgerald reveals to the reader, but how little. The true crises in his life at the time the essays were written were his alcoholism and his wife Zelda’s mental illness—these go unmentioned in the “Crack-Up” essays. Fitzgerald still had enough old-world reticence that there was no way he was going to write about those two intensely personal topics for public consumption.
The fine short stories of the early 1930’s are here: “Babylon Revisited” and “Crazy Sunday,” along with “Family in the Wind,” an excellent story that is a departure from Fitzgerald’s usual milieu. The late 1930’s are also well represented by the autobiographical “Afternoon of an Author,” and the bitterly funny “Financing Finnegan,” which pokes fun at Fitzgerald’s own problems with money.
The Fitzgerald Reader is a collection that ably demonstrates why F. Scott Fitzgerald was such a brilliant talent.
June 11, 2021
Old Fitzgerald is not my cuppa (this book was intended as a sleep aid) but I loved the first short story, May Day.
December 8, 2014
Excellent selection of Fitzgerald stories, which includes The Great Gatsby and The Last Tycoon. I don't think any writer does a finer job describing alcoholism from the alcoholic's point of view as well as its impact on those near and dear. Fitzgerald writes exquisitely, with perfectly shaped plots, beautiful sentences, and characters that destroy themselves in timeless ways. His underlying vision is so tragic that I stopped reading after getting 2/3 of the way through the book. Will probably pick it up again somewhere--in here or another anthology or collection. Such keen and unsentimental perceptions are worth returning to.
December 8, 2019
This book includes the complete "Gatsby", sections of two other novels, selected short stories and essays. This is a good overview of his work spanning his short career.
Although there is much beauty in his prose, there is a prevailing melancholy in tone. The 1920's and their excesses are thoroughly treated. The social striving, partying, and prohibition style drinking are a little tiresome but an element of a particular group of privileged characters.
Essential reading if you are interested in twentieth century American literature.
Although there is much beauty in his prose, there is a prevailing melancholy in tone. The 1920's and their excesses are thoroughly treated. The social striving, partying, and prohibition style drinking are a little tiresome but an element of a particular group of privileged characters.
Essential reading if you are interested in twentieth century American literature.
Read
July 8, 2021It is a collection of arguably the best works of Scott Fitzgerald including the great Gatsby. As one goes through the stories one cannot help but appreciate the literary wizard that Fitzgerald was and as well see how he had a way with words that makes him one of the best American authors ever.
March 24, 2013
I just read the Great Gatsby out of this (which was really great!)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews