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The Fitzgerald Reader
With F. Scott Fitzgerald's reputation standing higher today than ever before, either during his lifetime or since his death, this book comes at an opportune time. For both long-standing admirers and readers still discovering his writings, it provides an ideal one-volume treasury of Fitzgerald's finest work--as a novelist, a writer of some of the most luminous short stories in the language, and an essayist of sharp perception and frank purpose.
Arthur Mizener, critic, reviewer, and author of The Far Side of Paradise, the furst bull biography of Fitzgerald, has edited and made the selections for this Reader. In an acute and comprehensive introduction, he correlates Fitzgerald's work terms of the writer's thematic and technical progress. He has organized the selections into four distinct periods of Fitzgerald's career. The first is represented by six short stories--and by what many critics regard as his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, presented here in its entirety. The second includes four stories and the haunting opening passages of Tender Is the Night. The third period shows Fitzgerald coming out of the most serious crisis of his career with three remarkable essays. Five late short stories and two passages from his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon complete the selections.
--jacket
May Day
Winter Dreams
'Absolution
The Sensible Thing
The Great Gatsby
The Rich Boy
Basil and Cleopatra
Outside the Cabinet-Maker's
Babylon Revisited
Echoes of the Jazz Age
Crazy Sunday
Family in the Wind
Tender is the Night: Chapters I-VI
The Crack-Up
Pasting It Together
Handle with Care
Afternoon of an Author
I Didn't Get Over
The Long Way Out
Financing Finnegan
The Lost Decade
The Last Tycoon: Chapters I and IV
Arthur Mizener, critic, reviewer, and author of The Far Side of Paradise, the furst bull biography of Fitzgerald, has edited and made the selections for this Reader. In an acute and comprehensive introduction, he correlates Fitzgerald's work terms of the writer's thematic and technical progress. He has organized the selections into four distinct periods of Fitzgerald's career. The first is represented by six short stories--and by what many critics regard as his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, presented here in its entirety. The second includes four stories and the haunting opening passages of Tender Is the Night. The third period shows Fitzgerald coming out of the most serious crisis of his career with three remarkable essays. Five late short stories and two passages from his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon complete the selections.
--jacket
May Day
Winter Dreams
'Absolution
The Sensible Thing
The Great Gatsby
The Rich Boy
Basil and Cleopatra
Outside the Cabinet-Maker's
Babylon Revisited
Echoes of the Jazz Age
Crazy Sunday
Family in the Wind
Tender is the Night: Chapters I-VI
The Crack-Up
Pasting It Together
Handle with Care
Afternoon of an Author
I Didn't Get Over
The Long Way Out
Financing Finnegan
The Lost Decade
The Last Tycoon: Chapters I and IV
509 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1941
2 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
2,340 books25.5k 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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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