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The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
A selection of twenty-eight of Fitzgerald's finest stories, representing all periods of his career.
I. Early Success
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
The Ice Palace
May Day
Winter Dreams
"The Sensible Thing"
Absolution
II. Glamour and Disillusionment
The Rich Boy
The Baby Party
Magnetism
The Last of the Belles
The Rough Crossing
The Bridal Party
Two Wrongs
III. Retrospective: Basil and Josephine
The Scandal Detectives
The Freshest Boy
The Captured Shadow
A Woman with a Past
IV. Last Act and Epilogue
Babylon Revisited
Crazy Sunday
Family in the Wind
An Alcoholic Case
The Long Way Out
Financing Finnegan
Pat Hobby Himself
A Patriotic Short
Two Old Timers
Three Hours Between Planes
The Lost Decade
I. Early Success
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
The Ice Palace
May Day
Winter Dreams
"The Sensible Thing"
Absolution
II. Glamour and Disillusionment
The Rich Boy
The Baby Party
Magnetism
The Last of the Belles
The Rough Crossing
The Bridal Party
Two Wrongs
III. Retrospective: Basil and Josephine
The Scandal Detectives
The Freshest Boy
The Captured Shadow
A Woman with a Past
IV. Last Act and Epilogue
Babylon Revisited
Crazy Sunday
Family in the Wind
An Alcoholic Case
The Long Way Out
Financing Finnegan
Pat Hobby Himself
A Patriotic Short
Two Old Timers
Three Hours Between Planes
The Lost Decade
473 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
26 people are currently reading
547 people want to read
About the author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1,956 books25.3k followersFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.
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May 20, 2022
LA MUSICA DEL CUORE
Se fosse un album musicale, il titolo sarebbe “Best of” (più che Greatest Hits): perché dei circa 160 racconti scritti da Fitzgerald, il curatore Malcolm Cowley ha raccolto qui i 28 che giudica migliori di tutta la sua produzione e carriera, non necessariamente i più famosi o di maggior successo - dando più spazio a quelli del periodo intermedio, dopo Gatsby e prima di Tenera è la notte.
In particolare gli anni dal 1926 al 1931, periodo che Fitzgerald dedicò quasi integralmente alla scrittura di racconti (che rappresentarono di gran lunga i suoi maggiori guadagni economici).
Per esempio, per ammissione dello stesso Fitzgerald, Sogni invernali potrebbe essere considerato una prima versione del Gatsby, e quello intitolato Assoluzione è stato concepito come prologo del Gatsby: se non che poi Fitzgerald optò per lasciare avviluppate nella bruma le origini del suo grande Gatsby.
Ci sono molti racconti su americani a Parigi, sulla Riviera francese, in Svizzera, nelle ambientazioni che preparano Tenera è la notte: per citarne uno, neppure il migliore del lotto, Viaggi all’estero - solo che per Fitzgerald doveva essere una sorta di ‘anteprima’ del capolavoro del 1934.
La raccolta è divisa in quattro sezioni, più per ragioni tematiche che cronologiche.
Si comincia con racconti che propongono innamoramenti, matrimoni, vita tra ricchi. Fitzgerald li scrisse tra l’età di 23 e 28 anni.
È il periodo dell’inizio della sua storia con Zelda - alla quale inizialmente dovette rinunciare perché giudicato troppo povero, non solo dal suocero, ma anche dalla futura sposa, e tutto questo si può in qualche modo leggere in La cosa sensata.Su questi (e per me su tutti e ventotto) spicca proprio quello che inizia la raccolta, Il diamante grosso come l’Hotel Ritz, che forse fu per me il mio primo innamoramento letterario: un giovane della media borghesia si innamora di una ereditiera, che ricambia, ma la famiglia di lei non apprezza l’unione e fa di tutto per contrastarla.
[Viva la collana Medusa della Mondadori, mi ha regalato perle e sorprese.]
Magnetismo racconta la colonia cinematografica riunita intorno a Hollywood. Il rapporto di Fitzgerald col cinema non fu dei più felici, le storie che scrisse e considerava migliori non vennero mai realizzate: rimase soprattutto occasione di buoni guadagni. E del denaro Fitzgerald aveva sempre bisogno, sembrava non bastargli mai. D’altra parte non ha mai nascosto la sua fascinazione per il mondo dei ricchi, per l’aura che circonda il successo economico, il potere che ne consegue, il fascino che ne deriva.
In Traversata tempestosa c’è una coppia in viaggio che litiga e forse per questo si concede flirt con sconosciuti imbarcati sulla stessa nave.
Ci sono poi gruppi di racconti nei quali ricorre lo stesso personaggio: Josephine cinque volte, Basil nove, anche se la raccolta compie una scrematura e ne propone solo alcuni.
Duke Ellington e la sua orchestra.
L’ultima sezione, la quarta, è quella più consistente, undici racconti, e corrisponde alla cosiddetta maturità artistica, e anche al periodo in cui Zelda cominciò i suoi ricoveri in clinica e l’alcolismo per Fitzgerald diventava un problema serio. Meritano una rilettura.
Riusciti o meno, sembra quasi che Fitzgerald non possa scrivere qualcosa che sia completamente brutto.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald: Saint Paul, Minnesota, 24 settembre 1896 – Los Angeles, 21 dicembre 1940.
Se fosse un album musicale, il titolo sarebbe “Best of” (più che Greatest Hits): perché dei circa 160 racconti scritti da Fitzgerald, il curatore Malcolm Cowley ha raccolto qui i 28 che giudica migliori di tutta la sua produzione e carriera, non necessariamente i più famosi o di maggior successo - dando più spazio a quelli del periodo intermedio, dopo Gatsby e prima di Tenera è la notte.
In particolare gli anni dal 1926 al 1931, periodo che Fitzgerald dedicò quasi integralmente alla scrittura di racconti (che rappresentarono di gran lunga i suoi maggiori guadagni economici).
Per esempio, per ammissione dello stesso Fitzgerald, Sogni invernali potrebbe essere considerato una prima versione del Gatsby, e quello intitolato Assoluzione è stato concepito come prologo del Gatsby: se non che poi Fitzgerald optò per lasciare avviluppate nella bruma le origini del suo grande Gatsby.
Ci sono molti racconti su americani a Parigi, sulla Riviera francese, in Svizzera, nelle ambientazioni che preparano Tenera è la notte: per citarne uno, neppure il migliore del lotto, Viaggi all’estero - solo che per Fitzgerald doveva essere una sorta di ‘anteprima’ del capolavoro del 1934.
La raccolta è divisa in quattro sezioni, più per ragioni tematiche che cronologiche.
Si comincia con racconti che propongono innamoramenti, matrimoni, vita tra ricchi. Fitzgerald li scrisse tra l’età di 23 e 28 anni.
È il periodo dell’inizio della sua storia con Zelda - alla quale inizialmente dovette rinunciare perché giudicato troppo povero, non solo dal suocero, ma anche dalla futura sposa, e tutto questo si può in qualche modo leggere in La cosa sensata.Su questi (e per me su tutti e ventotto) spicca proprio quello che inizia la raccolta, Il diamante grosso come l’Hotel Ritz, che forse fu per me il mio primo innamoramento letterario: un giovane della media borghesia si innamora di una ereditiera, che ricambia, ma la famiglia di lei non apprezza l’unione e fa di tutto per contrastarla.
[Viva la collana Medusa della Mondadori, mi ha regalato perle e sorprese.]
Magnetismo racconta la colonia cinematografica riunita intorno a Hollywood. Il rapporto di Fitzgerald col cinema non fu dei più felici, le storie che scrisse e considerava migliori non vennero mai realizzate: rimase soprattutto occasione di buoni guadagni. E del denaro Fitzgerald aveva sempre bisogno, sembrava non bastargli mai. D’altra parte non ha mai nascosto la sua fascinazione per il mondo dei ricchi, per l’aura che circonda il successo economico, il potere che ne consegue, il fascino che ne deriva.
In Traversata tempestosa c’è una coppia in viaggio che litiga e forse per questo si concede flirt con sconosciuti imbarcati sulla stessa nave.
Ci sono poi gruppi di racconti nei quali ricorre lo stesso personaggio: Josephine cinque volte, Basil nove, anche se la raccolta compie una scrematura e ne propone solo alcuni.
Duke Ellington e la sua orchestra.
L’ultima sezione, la quarta, è quella più consistente, undici racconti, e corrisponde alla cosiddetta maturità artistica, e anche al periodo in cui Zelda cominciò i suoi ricoveri in clinica e l’alcolismo per Fitzgerald diventava un problema serio. Meritano una rilettura.
Riusciti o meno, sembra quasi che Fitzgerald non possa scrivere qualcosa che sia completamente brutto.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald: Saint Paul, Minnesota, 24 settembre 1896 – Los Angeles, 21 dicembre 1940.
June 12, 2020
The brilliance of these stories is that they evoke our own endless stream of life's triumphs and tragedies. Some are innocent, exuberant and hopeful (the Basil and Josephine stories), some sad and tragic, and many poignant and nostalgic; they are all a mirror of Fitzgerald's life, and perhaps our own.
Fitzgerald turned out many stories for magazines, especially when he was in need of "quick money" for his ever mounting debts and expenses. The writing, though much of it done quickly, was often flawlessly beautiful. His muse seemed ever at hand.
A few of my favorite lines from these stories:
"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." (from The Freshest Boy, pp. 344-345)
"It was five o'clock and there was a small crowd gathered there for that soft and romantic time before supper - a time surpassed only by the interim of summer dusk thereafter." (from The Scandal Detectives, p. 312)
". . . shading their eyes from the glow of the late sun, that, like youth itself, is too strong to face directly, but must be kept down to an undertone until it dies away." (from The Scandal Detectives, p. 312)
From a conversation between Charlie and his nine year old daughter, Honoria, in Babylon Revisited, p. 392:
"'When you are safe inside, just show yourself in that window.'
'All right. Good-by, dads, dads, dads, dads.'
He waited in the dark street until she appeared, all warm and glowing, in the window above and kissed her fingers out into the night."
But my favorite Fitzgerald quote is not in these stories. It is, of course, the last line of The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." However, it haunts these stories - as it haunts me.
Fitzgerald turned out many stories for magazines, especially when he was in need of "quick money" for his ever mounting debts and expenses. The writing, though much of it done quickly, was often flawlessly beautiful. His muse seemed ever at hand.
A few of my favorite lines from these stories:
"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." (from The Freshest Boy, pp. 344-345)
"It was five o'clock and there was a small crowd gathered there for that soft and romantic time before supper - a time surpassed only by the interim of summer dusk thereafter." (from The Scandal Detectives, p. 312)
". . . shading their eyes from the glow of the late sun, that, like youth itself, is too strong to face directly, but must be kept down to an undertone until it dies away." (from The Scandal Detectives, p. 312)
From a conversation between Charlie and his nine year old daughter, Honoria, in Babylon Revisited, p. 392:
"'When you are safe inside, just show yourself in that window.'
'All right. Good-by, dads, dads, dads, dads.'
He waited in the dark street until she appeared, all warm and glowing, in the window above and kissed her fingers out into the night."
But my favorite Fitzgerald quote is not in these stories. It is, of course, the last line of The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." However, it haunts these stories - as it haunts me.
December 18, 2017
I could not locate the Scholar Select version of this collection, so selected this book as it contains the same content. Although I found the book interesting, particularly as it evidences the author's growth, I would instead recommend either The Great Gatsby or Tender Is the Night (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).
May 7, 2017
1. Diamond as big as the Ritz: I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel here. Is this supposed to be commentary on the fact that rich people live in their own universe that does not often represent reality? Or a commentary on how American economics are going to crash and burn? OK, but I would have preferred a protagonist I can...not hate.
2. Bernice bobs her hair: I watched an adaptation of this in high school. It was very mean spirited, and so true to the source material.
3. Ice palace: STAY HOME! AVOID SNOW!
4. May day: I had to go back because I couldn't remember anything. I still don't, except for a general sense of depression.
5. Winter dreams: Right. Women fade. Men mature, but women fade. Not sure if the point of the story is to subvert what its statement, because the main guy is one sad sack.
6. "The sensible things:" Look, I don't know. Something about the fleeting sense of true love?
7. Absolution: Childhood + religious guilt = NO. But you gotta get them while they're young.
8. Rich boy: Another story about a financially secure but romantically unfulfilled sad sack.
9. Baby party: In retrospect I liked this story. Complex relationships and power-dynamics. Family obligations. And people getting very protective over their kids. Also, ass kicking. Just something about the immediacy of everyone's anger really touched a nerve: how a situation can escalate from seemingly nothing to an explosion.
10. Magnetism: More marital drama. Maybe you need to be married to truly appreciate the emotions? Or maybe you need to be a celebrity.
11. Last of the belles: The past is GOOOOOOONNNNEEEEEE!!!
12. Rough crossing: Everything comes bubbling up as this couple is on a cruise boat in the middle of a storm. Afterwards, both look back at what happened as something done by other people. Not sure if they just both had a moment of insanity, or if the circumstances brought out their real feelings.
13. Bridal party: Or why we have ceremonies: they can help us let go and move on. Or you can end up like that dude on Love Actually who was obsessed with his best friend's wife. Thankfully that did not happen here.
14. Two wrongs: She finally dumps him. Not without emotional turmoil, but she lets go, and it's better for her.
15. Scandal detectives: Kids falling in love and plotting to beat up some people and being kids, I guess.
16. Freshest boy: School can be tough? I feel you, brother. Though I've never been the least popular kid in school.
17. Captured shadow: I know the excitement of being in a play, so I felt this story. I wish we saw more of the rehearsals, but ultimately the story was pretty satisfying.
18. A woman with a past: it is fucked up that a woman can have a "past" because she went out with a lot of guys. The story is trying to de-contract that idea, but it only manages to do so via the girl being validated by a man. She does play a part by refusing to hide herself and saying to the world: I did nothing wrong! But it's the attention of the popular boy which gives her...I don't know...respectability? At the same time I'd like to think that some female camaraderie was involved, and that the guy's girlfriend, who was always nice to the protagonist, had something to do with his plan to help. And besides, it is about a young woman maturing and realizing what she wants in a romantic partner and what she wants from herself.
19. Babylon revisited: gripping, tense, and very bleak, this story held me from beginning to end. Yes, he deserves all the mistrust and hurdles and guilt, but you as a reader feel sympathetic towards him. You want him to succeed, because you believe in second chances and he seems to have his life back on track. The characters are all relatable. I got attached to them within the short time we spent together.
20. Crazy Sunday: We're back to melodrama involving characters I couldn't relate to if I tried. Joel is "in love" with Stella, even though it seems like he doesn't view her as human.
21. Family in the wind: family quarrels aside, I wish they had established the relationship between Helen and the Dr. better...or like, at all. Because now his desire to randomly adopt her seems a little creepy.
22. An alcoholic case: what it says on the tin.
23. Long way out: I don't know anything about treating trauma, but it seemed like these doctors didn't even try, all in the name of tranquility. On the other hand, we don't know if having to face the truth would have helped, or if it would have broken her completely.
24. Financing Finnegan: seriously though, I want to read that story about his adventures in the arctic, but I get a feeling it'll be terribly pretentious.
25. Pat Hobby himself/A patriotic short/Two old timers: this one built atmosphere and character quickly, and then told the story of someone who has been big once. He isn't a failure, but he has become a "has-been." And he remembers the past fondly, and sometimes it breaks his heart. But at the end he moves forward, though not on. I don't know why this counts as three separate stories. Each story is so short, and they are no separated by blank pages.
26. Three hours between planes: identities are mistaken, and memories of childhood are relived. A sort of romance is sort of, but not really, attempted to rekindle? The past, however, cannot be recaptured.
27. The Lost Decade: The guy was drunk for 10 years -- so was America? Or at least a certain portion of the population. Except he was drunk through the 30s. I don't know.
I AM DONE!!! NEVER AGAIN!!!
Ok, to be fair, I liked a few of the stories, but only "Babylon Revisited" and "Pat Hobby Himself" had a combination of an interesting story and a character I actually didn't want to burn in a fire. "Captured Shadow" captured the insanity of preparing a play: the behind the scenes of amateur theater. A few others were not detestable, but on the whole those characters just don't speak to me. I find their experience pitiful at best.
2. Bernice bobs her hair: I watched an adaptation of this in high school. It was very mean spirited, and so true to the source material.
3. Ice palace: STAY HOME! AVOID SNOW!
4. May day: I had to go back because I couldn't remember anything. I still don't, except for a general sense of depression.
5. Winter dreams: Right. Women fade. Men mature, but women fade. Not sure if the point of the story is to subvert what its statement, because the main guy is one sad sack.
6. "The sensible things:" Look, I don't know. Something about the fleeting sense of true love?
7. Absolution: Childhood + religious guilt = NO. But you gotta get them while they're young.
8. Rich boy: Another story about a financially secure but romantically unfulfilled sad sack.
9. Baby party: In retrospect I liked this story. Complex relationships and power-dynamics. Family obligations. And people getting very protective over their kids. Also, ass kicking. Just something about the immediacy of everyone's anger really touched a nerve: how a situation can escalate from seemingly nothing to an explosion.
10. Magnetism: More marital drama. Maybe you need to be married to truly appreciate the emotions? Or maybe you need to be a celebrity.
11. Last of the belles: The past is GOOOOOOONNNNEEEEEE!!!
12. Rough crossing: Everything comes bubbling up as this couple is on a cruise boat in the middle of a storm. Afterwards, both look back at what happened as something done by other people. Not sure if they just both had a moment of insanity, or if the circumstances brought out their real feelings.
13. Bridal party: Or why we have ceremonies: they can help us let go and move on. Or you can end up like that dude on Love Actually who was obsessed with his best friend's wife. Thankfully that did not happen here.
14. Two wrongs: She finally dumps him. Not without emotional turmoil, but she lets go, and it's better for her.
15. Scandal detectives: Kids falling in love and plotting to beat up some people and being kids, I guess.
16. Freshest boy: School can be tough? I feel you, brother. Though I've never been the least popular kid in school.
17. Captured shadow: I know the excitement of being in a play, so I felt this story. I wish we saw more of the rehearsals, but ultimately the story was pretty satisfying.
18. A woman with a past: it is fucked up that a woman can have a "past" because she went out with a lot of guys. The story is trying to de-contract that idea, but it only manages to do so via the girl being validated by a man. She does play a part by refusing to hide herself and saying to the world: I did nothing wrong! But it's the attention of the popular boy which gives her...I don't know...respectability? At the same time I'd like to think that some female camaraderie was involved, and that the guy's girlfriend, who was always nice to the protagonist, had something to do with his plan to help. And besides, it is about a young woman maturing and realizing what she wants in a romantic partner and what she wants from herself.
19. Babylon revisited: gripping, tense, and very bleak, this story held me from beginning to end. Yes, he deserves all the mistrust and hurdles and guilt, but you as a reader feel sympathetic towards him. You want him to succeed, because you believe in second chances and he seems to have his life back on track. The characters are all relatable. I got attached to them within the short time we spent together.
20. Crazy Sunday: We're back to melodrama involving characters I couldn't relate to if I tried. Joel is "in love" with Stella, even though it seems like he doesn't view her as human.
21. Family in the wind: family quarrels aside, I wish they had established the relationship between Helen and the Dr. better...or like, at all. Because now his desire to randomly adopt her seems a little creepy.
22. An alcoholic case: what it says on the tin.
23. Long way out: I don't know anything about treating trauma, but it seemed like these doctors didn't even try, all in the name of tranquility. On the other hand, we don't know if having to face the truth would have helped, or if it would have broken her completely.
24. Financing Finnegan: seriously though, I want to read that story about his adventures in the arctic, but I get a feeling it'll be terribly pretentious.
25. Pat Hobby himself/A patriotic short/Two old timers: this one built atmosphere and character quickly, and then told the story of someone who has been big once. He isn't a failure, but he has become a "has-been." And he remembers the past fondly, and sometimes it breaks his heart. But at the end he moves forward, though not on. I don't know why this counts as three separate stories. Each story is so short, and they are no separated by blank pages.
26. Three hours between planes: identities are mistaken, and memories of childhood are relived. A sort of romance is sort of, but not really, attempted to rekindle? The past, however, cannot be recaptured.
27. The Lost Decade: The guy was drunk for 10 years -- so was America? Or at least a certain portion of the population. Except he was drunk through the 30s. I don't know.
I AM DONE!!! NEVER AGAIN!!!
Ok, to be fair, I liked a few of the stories, but only "Babylon Revisited" and "Pat Hobby Himself" had a combination of an interesting story and a character I actually didn't want to burn in a fire. "Captured Shadow" captured the insanity of preparing a play: the behind the scenes of amateur theater. A few others were not detestable, but on the whole those characters just don't speak to me. I find their experience pitiful at best.
December 6, 2015
Don't rush to discard Fitzgerald's stories because of their pompous language and sentimentality. If he doesn't win you over with the first one, give him another shot, because behind all the epithets and reminiscence, lies the mind of person who knows the human soul with all its intricacies and imperfections. Fitzgeral certainly knows how to tell an ordinary story and endow it with great depth, perfectly rendering the characters' emotional world and the forces that drive them. My personal favourite are: The Ice Castle, The Last of the Belles, The Bridal Party, and Babylon Revisited
Read
January 1, 2012Thus far, the collection is absolutely delightful. Fitzgerald's reputation has been ruined by being declared a "classic" author, which means that I've approached his writing with a mix of obligation and dread. Like my experience with Dumas, I have been absolutely surprised. Full review to follow, but for now Fitzerald is in my rotating list of night-time fiction. Do any of you have your favorite Fitzgerald story?
***
Will come back to this at some point.
***
Will come back to this at some point.
April 29, 2013
Fitzgerald could have done a better job creating distinctive characters. After a while all the eager young men on the cusp of disillusionment, and all the vivacious but remote and unattainable young women, start to blur together. The later stories are better, though. And his descriptive writing is beautiful.
September 19, 2007
A lot of people don't realize that Fitzgerald made the better part of his living from his short story writing. And he was a master! These equal his better novels and are all little gems that should not be overlooked.
August 19, 2016
Wonderful. Ideal collection of short stories with an insightful editorial before each grouping. One of the most important books I've read in ages. A treasure.
March 23, 2022
The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, selected by Malcolm Cowley, gathered 28 of Fitzgerald’s finest short stories into one volume. First published in 1951, 11 years after Fitzgerald’s death, it’s now long out of print, and has since been supplanted in the Fitzgerald bibliography by Matthew J. Bruccoli’s 1989 collection The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, currently the most widely available collection of Fitzgerald’s short stories.
Cowley did a superb job in selecting the stories for this volume, although there will always be quibbles about selection. (Where’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”?) Fitzgerald left behind just shy of 200 short stories, meaning that Cowley was only able to pick 14-15% of Fitzgerald’s total output for this volume. (In contrast, the much longer Bruccoli volume includes 43 short stories.)
The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald starts with one of the author’s finest short stories, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” There’s young romance, plus an ironic critique of capitalism. (And some cringy racism—along with Fitzgerald offering a stinging critique of racism.) The seven stories in the first section of the book, “Early Success,” are all fantastic, and show a young author who was finely in tune with his generation. Some of these stories are now more than 100 years old, and they still feel fresh and brilliant.
One of my favorite stories in this book is “The Last of the Belles.” Fitzgerald writes so movingly of loss, and the yearning for the past. The last three paragraphs of “The Last of the Belles” are a beautiful example of his evocative style. In the story, the narrator is searching for the Army camp where he was stationed a decade earlier during World War I, but he can find no trace of it:
“I tried to sight on a vaguely familiar clump of trees, but it was growing darker now and I couldn’t be quite sure they were the right trees…No. Upon consideration they didn’t look like the right trees. All I could be sure of was this place that had once been so full of life and effort was gone, as if it had never existed, and that in another month Ailie would be gone, and the South would be empty for me forever.” (p.253)
“The Bridal Party” is a fantastic story that Fitzgerald never collected in a book. He was a harsh critic of his own work, but just because he didn’t judge “The Bridal Party” worthy of collecting doesn’t mean it’s not worth our time. “The Bridal Party” focuses on love and class, two of Fitzgerald’s favorite subjects. It also features this gorgeous description: “On the corner the long dresses of girls, five abreast, fluttered many-colored in the wind. Girls had become gossamer again, perambulatory flora; such lovely fluttering dresses in the bright noon wind.” (p.283)
There are a few stories in this collection that don’t appear in any other Fitzgerald collection. “Magnetism” isn’t a totally successful story, and it belongs to what I’d call the “Lois Moran story cluster.” Lois Moran was an 18-year-old actress when the 31-year-old Fitzgerald met her on his trip to Hollywood in 1927. Fitzgerald quickly became besotted with Moran and based several characters on her, including Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night. “Magnetism” features this sentence as the 30-year-old protagonist thinks about the 18-year-old female: “He had felt that they both tolerated something, that each knew half of some secret about people and life, and that if they rushed toward each other there would be a romantic communion of almost unbelievable intensity.” (p.224) One wonders if this is how Fitzgerald felt about Lois Moran.
Another story unavailable in any other collection is the excellent “The Rough Crossing,” which documents a turbulent Atlantic crossing on an ocean liner. The protagonist is a married playwright who embarks on a shipboard romance with a younger woman. “He could not remember when anything had felt so young and fresh as her lips. The rain lay, like tears shed for him, upon the softly shining porcelain cheeks. She was all new and immaculate, and her eyes were wild.” (p.262) “The Rough Crossing” fits into both the “Lois Moran cluster” and the “marriage problems cluster,” several stories written in 1929 and 1930 that give the reader the distinct impression that all was not well between Scott and his wife Zelda.
One of my favorites of Fitzgerald’s late short stories is “Three Hours Between Planes,” posthumously published in Esquire in 1941. It’s a beautiful little miniature of the kind that Fitzgerald excelled at during his final years. It’s only five pages long, but it’s stuck in my mind since I first read it more than 20 years ago.
The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald did exactly what Malcolm Cowley wanted it to do: demonstrate definitively that Fitzgerald’s finest short stories were indeed works of art, not mere potboilers tossed off to keep the creditors at bay in between parties with Zelda.
Cowley did a superb job in selecting the stories for this volume, although there will always be quibbles about selection. (Where’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”?) Fitzgerald left behind just shy of 200 short stories, meaning that Cowley was only able to pick 14-15% of Fitzgerald’s total output for this volume. (In contrast, the much longer Bruccoli volume includes 43 short stories.)
The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald starts with one of the author’s finest short stories, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” There’s young romance, plus an ironic critique of capitalism. (And some cringy racism—along with Fitzgerald offering a stinging critique of racism.) The seven stories in the first section of the book, “Early Success,” are all fantastic, and show a young author who was finely in tune with his generation. Some of these stories are now more than 100 years old, and they still feel fresh and brilliant.
One of my favorite stories in this book is “The Last of the Belles.” Fitzgerald writes so movingly of loss, and the yearning for the past. The last three paragraphs of “The Last of the Belles” are a beautiful example of his evocative style. In the story, the narrator is searching for the Army camp where he was stationed a decade earlier during World War I, but he can find no trace of it:
“I tried to sight on a vaguely familiar clump of trees, but it was growing darker now and I couldn’t be quite sure they were the right trees…No. Upon consideration they didn’t look like the right trees. All I could be sure of was this place that had once been so full of life and effort was gone, as if it had never existed, and that in another month Ailie would be gone, and the South would be empty for me forever.” (p.253)
“The Bridal Party” is a fantastic story that Fitzgerald never collected in a book. He was a harsh critic of his own work, but just because he didn’t judge “The Bridal Party” worthy of collecting doesn’t mean it’s not worth our time. “The Bridal Party” focuses on love and class, two of Fitzgerald’s favorite subjects. It also features this gorgeous description: “On the corner the long dresses of girls, five abreast, fluttered many-colored in the wind. Girls had become gossamer again, perambulatory flora; such lovely fluttering dresses in the bright noon wind.” (p.283)
There are a few stories in this collection that don’t appear in any other Fitzgerald collection. “Magnetism” isn’t a totally successful story, and it belongs to what I’d call the “Lois Moran story cluster.” Lois Moran was an 18-year-old actress when the 31-year-old Fitzgerald met her on his trip to Hollywood in 1927. Fitzgerald quickly became besotted with Moran and based several characters on her, including Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night. “Magnetism” features this sentence as the 30-year-old protagonist thinks about the 18-year-old female: “He had felt that they both tolerated something, that each knew half of some secret about people and life, and that if they rushed toward each other there would be a romantic communion of almost unbelievable intensity.” (p.224) One wonders if this is how Fitzgerald felt about Lois Moran.
Another story unavailable in any other collection is the excellent “The Rough Crossing,” which documents a turbulent Atlantic crossing on an ocean liner. The protagonist is a married playwright who embarks on a shipboard romance with a younger woman. “He could not remember when anything had felt so young and fresh as her lips. The rain lay, like tears shed for him, upon the softly shining porcelain cheeks. She was all new and immaculate, and her eyes were wild.” (p.262) “The Rough Crossing” fits into both the “Lois Moran cluster” and the “marriage problems cluster,” several stories written in 1929 and 1930 that give the reader the distinct impression that all was not well between Scott and his wife Zelda.
One of my favorites of Fitzgerald’s late short stories is “Three Hours Between Planes,” posthumously published in Esquire in 1941. It’s a beautiful little miniature of the kind that Fitzgerald excelled at during his final years. It’s only five pages long, but it’s stuck in my mind since I first read it more than 20 years ago.
The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald did exactly what Malcolm Cowley wanted it to do: demonstrate definitively that Fitzgerald’s finest short stories were indeed works of art, not mere potboilers tossed off to keep the creditors at bay in between parties with Zelda.
August 11, 2019
scott was good friends with hemingburg for a time and indeed inspired hem with his quick and early success and i am glad the two share more in common than a deep desire for drunkenness. fine short story telling is a fine skill and these are funny, sad, and well told. scott is a swell writer as evidenced by tender is the night and the great gatsby, the other two works of his i have read, and the introduction and notes by mr cowley here are an illuminating addition. i will be happy to read portions of this collection til the end of my days.
October 17, 2023
A quote goes something like "We spend the first half of our lives getting stuff and the second unloading it" and isn't that true? I ran across a hardcopy of this 1951 (first) edition in my condo library and grabbed it to keep (but I left five other books as a 'payment' of sorts). These stories span the author's entire career which for me improved as time passed. The 'Basil' stories serve as a memoir and in general are the best. Early stories feel a bit overwritten while later stories are shorter and to the point. Definitely a keeper to reread.
October 14, 2019
I added this cover because I needed an alternate cover to add as an audio Great Gatsby as I’d already read that. Or had I?? I remember reading it in high school but remember nothing except the movie with Robert Redford. After listening to a podcast by Maureen Corrigan I decided a reread was needed. I’m glad I did. There’s so much in here - besides just a good story - I wish I could sign up for a college course in it.
October 15, 2019
Duldu, akşamları mektup yazacak yakın akrabaları yoktu, haftada bir filmden fazlası gözlerine dokunuyordu, sonuçta sigara içmek, yollarda geçen bir günün uzun sürmüş cümlesinin sonuna konan bir noktalama işaretiydi...
March 23, 2024
Fitz writes brilliantly. I just wish his subjects were all useless little bluebloods bemoaning the cruelty of fate because their fathers haven't yet been able to buy Europe.
December 21, 2017
Great collection. Most of the stories are worth reading, although there were a few I wish I hadn’t spent the time on. That’s the only reason I’m giving this a 4 Star, which I usually dominate do, since I generally love most books I read (I pick them carefully now, thanks to goodreads!). “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” was one of my favorites from my first read of Fitzgerald’s stories in high school, and it still holds up as an entertaining short for adults.
November 17, 2020
Amazing writing. Period. Every word counts.
1922 and so contemporary.
1922 and so contemporary.
Want to read
June 23, 2025Read so far:
*The diamond as big as the Ritz --
Bernice bobs her hair --3
The ice palace --3
May day --2
Winter dreams --2
*"The sensible things" --
*Absolution --
*The rich boy --
The baby party --3
Magnetism --
Last of the belles --2
Rough crossing --2
The bridal party --3
Two wrongs --
Scandal detectives --
*The freshest boy --
Captured shadow --
A woman with a past --
Babylon revisited --4
Crazy Sunday --2
*Family in the wind --
An alcoholic case --2
*A long way out --
Financing Finnegan --
Pat Hobby himself --
A patriotic short --
Two old timers --
Three hours between planes --
The lost decade--2
***
At your age--3
Benediction--2
The camel's back--4
The cut-glass bowl--3
Design in plaster--2
Head and shoulders (aka Topsy turvy)--4
In the holidays--2
The jelly bean--3
Last kiss
The night at Chancellorsville
On an ocean wave--2
Two for a cent--3
*The diamond as big as the Ritz --
Bernice bobs her hair --3
The ice palace --3
May day --2
Winter dreams --2
*"The sensible things" --
*Absolution --
*The rich boy --
The baby party --3
Magnetism --
Last of the belles --2
Rough crossing --2
The bridal party --3
Two wrongs --
Scandal detectives --
*The freshest boy --
Captured shadow --
A woman with a past --
Babylon revisited --4
Crazy Sunday --2
*Family in the wind --
An alcoholic case --2
*A long way out --
Financing Finnegan --
Pat Hobby himself --
A patriotic short --
Two old timers --
Three hours between planes --
The lost decade--2
***
At your age--3
Benediction--2
The camel's back--4
The cut-glass bowl--3
Design in plaster--2
Head and shoulders (aka Topsy turvy)--4
In the holidays--2
The jelly bean--3
Last kiss
The night at Chancellorsville
On an ocean wave--2
Two for a cent--3
February 19, 2018
It is a problematic group of stories. There is a similarity of guy wants girl guy doesn't get girl because the guy or the girl is kind of shallow. I felt that several of the stories are slight re-phrasing of the Great Gatsby myth. His best stories are the ones that do not involve guy wanting that neat society girl. If you didn't like the Great Gatsby you are not going to like this book one bit, if you are a fan of the Fitzgerald style (here here old chap and all) then you've got lots of stories to immerse yourself in. I don't think I would have finished this book if I wasn't reading it for a course.
December 20, 2015
The undoing of many a posthumous short story collection is that it comes with an agenda -- in this case, Malcolm Cowley's. So here, instead of getting top shelf F. Scott Fitzgerald, you get a mixture of his highs and his lows since Cowley is as fixated on the illustrative as he is on the qualitative. I'd have preferred if the anthologist had trimmed this down to Fitzgerald's finest (e.g., "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," "Winter Dreams," and "Babylon Revisited"). Fitzgerald had a perfectly good reason for not including some of the other tales in collections released during his lifetime. Let's respect the creator's taste!
July 17, 2016
Uma escrita impecável, no contexto social de uma época em que o grande objetivo da vida de uma mulher era o casamento (muitas vezes uma forma de libertação da casa dos pais). As mulheres eram censuradas até por falar com um homem! Outro aspeto que chama a atenção é o problema do alcoolismo, e os sinais exteriores de riqueza (carros, vestuário, festas). Alguns contos são parecidos, mas todos escritos com estilo e elegância da época.
July 27, 2024
“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” “Bernice Bobs her Hair” and so many other stories in the collection that encapsulate many themes Fitzgerald is known for. It's an easy read and perfect to pick up anytime—if one story doesn't suit your fancy, there's always another to enjoy.
March 5, 2017
When first published in 1951 ten of these 28 stories were previously uncollected. Since then most have appeared in other collections. "Magnetism" and "Three Hours Between Planes" stand alone as being available only in this book. They are worth the price.
June 9, 2007
fitzgerald offers a fabulous look at popular culture in the jazz era. if you've ever thought bobbed hair is immoral, this book is for you!
March 18, 2008
some of the stories are very similar to others; there's a whole series about a down-and-out Hollywood screenwriter; some definite gems, others are not so gem-like.
April 14, 2016
I like Fitzgerald reading style and the '20 and I found a lot stories what I've liked but there was one part what was full of depression, and that part was boring.
August 13, 2016
I liked this book full of Fitzgerald's stories. These shorts were previously published and unpublished both. If you like The Great Gatsby, you'll like these stories.
December 29, 2016
Incredible. Each and every one. Fitzgerald working his magic as always.
March 5, 2024
Traditional yet sophisticated short stories about disillusioned love. Themes of unromantic dating, love triangles, love off-to-war.
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