The Vegetable: or, from President to postman

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In Fitzgerald's only play and political satire, Jerry Frost, an ordinary railroad clerk and would-be postman, gets drunk on the evening of Warren Harding's nomination and finds himself and his family ensconced in the White House

Genres: Plays, Drama, Satire, Fiction, Classics, Politics, Theatre

250 pages, Hardcover

First published February 22, 2012

About the author

Francis 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.

Reviews

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't the dumbest thing I've ever read because I've plowed my way through a number of idiotic emails from my school district's superintendent over the years. But as far as a hardback book published by an author of what we former AP teachers usually deem "literary merit"? Yeah, this just might be some of the stupidest shite I've ever forced myself to wade through. It's hard to believe that the author of this moronic third-rate screwball comedy actually had the seeds of The Great Gatsby in him and managed to pull that book off a mere three years later, but human beings are strange creatures and oddly complex, so I don't really know how to explain it.

Jerry Frost is a George Wilson kind of guy who works in a dead-end job for the railroad, dumb as hell, dissatisfied with his life, and married to Charlotte, a real piece of work. Fortunately, as far as we know, she never goes off and fucks some rich asshole in his upper westside Manhattan love nest, but Jerry's life is nonetheless miserable and, like Gatsby and George, he dreams of much better things, like being president. Or a mailman.

Jerry would also like a drink and so he enlists Mr. Snooks, the neighborhood bootlegger who has absolutely nothing in common with Fitzgerald's more famous one, to brew him up some powerful medicine; Jerry gets drunk and dreams about being president; absurdities abound as the middle of the play is Jerry's extended alcohol-induced hallucination, and by the end he's disappeared on what everyone assumes is a week-long bender. However, lo and behold, he reappears in the final act as your friendly neighborhood mailman with a new lease on life. And while the mailman certainly looks familiar to everyone, no one quite realizes it's old broke-dick Jerry. Did I mention it's stupid? Yes, it is. Really, really stupid.

Maybe the stupidest thing in the book, however, can be found in its introduction, in a note from Fitzgerald's pal Bunny, literary critic Edmund Wilson, who writes, "So far as I am concerned, I think it is one of the best things you ever wrote." Because it's not; it's laughably bad and as social satire, it's at the level of a failed SNL skit that should have been killed in the early stages but they ran with anyway because it would probably be better than ten minutes of dead air at the end of the show. For his encouraging words, Edmund, not George, Wilson gets a dedication on the title page. To Wilson, Fitzgerald writes, "...who deleted many absurdities from my first two novels, I recommend the absurdities set down here." I, alas, do not.

So, F. Scott, despite your buddy's high praise, this really sucks, but I'll give you that second star just for being you and for somehow allowing this ridonculously stoopid early take on the shallowness of the American dream to marinate in your beautifully screwed-up mind and blossom into The Great Gatsby. And take that second star for writing something really dumb that captures a really dumb moment in U.S. history, a slice of Harding administration Americana with its illicit booze and nightmare capitalism and psychoanalysis and silly slang and goofy-ass popular music. And go ahead and take that second star for the only moment in the entire comedy that could be construed as funny, that moment when postman Jerry tells Charlotte her missing husband will be home by six that evening, and she replies, "I'll be waiting...Tell him to stop by a store and get some rubbers."

Yeah. F. Scott Fitzgerald actually wrote that sentence in something he dreamed to open one day on Broadway and published under his real name. Keep reaching for that green light, Francis.

[itsdanixx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fitzgerald’s attempt at a play! It’s a bit absurd, but in a fun way. It reads well, though I’m not actually sure how well it could be performed as a play since so much of what it is is in the stage directions and humorous directions.

[Flybyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am utterly speechless, I mean literally I am out of speech.
I don’t know how to interpret this. It may be one most genius pieces of literature or the silliest, most absurd thing I have ever read, but nothing in between.
The satire is heavy and strong, there is no end to the absurdities and Fitzgerald is quite generous when it comes to criticism albeit with soft and sweet choice of words.
I might have loved it, hated it, I have absolutely no idea. All I know is I feel like I’ve been thunderstruck by the whole thing.
Read and decide.


“Any man who doesn't want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, hasn't got as much to him as a good dog has—he's nothing more or less than a vegetable.”
Fitzgerald

[Veerle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this absurd play. The jokes are at times so bad that I was howling with laughter. In these post Trump times this feels as a very relevant play. Anyone who wants can become president and appoint anyone he likes in his staff.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book in that it is the only play that FSF wrote as an adult. He was very involved in plays as a teenager, which includes most of his college years, so the genre was not totally foreign to him. The stage directions are clever and witty, and in my opinion a successful adaptation would include the role of a stage manager sharing many of those directions. Fitzgerald used a liberal amount of off-stage dialogue and sound effects to move the action along.

The play, intended for Broadway, is more of a high school farce though, such as Charlie's Aunt. It is sophomoric, snappy, and at times sappy. It has a much maligned and picked-on husband, Jerry Frost, and a domineering and critical wife, Charlotte. Jerry, a railroad clerk, would be most happy if he were simply a postman. His wife says that if he had any gumption at all, he would aspire to be President, thus explaining the subtitle of the play, From President to Postman. The set-up reminds me of The Secret Lives of Walter Mitty. Other characters of the day include the young, liberated flapper, a bootlegger, a general, assorted politicians, a troupe of musicians, and an octogenarian father who has yet to enter the twentieth century. There is a dream scene, a wedding reception at the White House, and a final resolution where everyone lives happily ever after.

I appreciated the reproduction of the original cover, including the artwork of John Held. Had this been written by anyone other than my favorite author, I would have paid no attention to it. But because it is part of his oeuvre, I felt compelled to give it a go.

[Greg Giles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely ludicrous. Some really funny stage directions, but really not a great play.

[Mark Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

F. Scott Fitzgerald is not known as a playwright. However, when he was in high school and college, Fitzgerald wrote four plays for the Elizabethan Dramatic Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In addition to writing those four plays, Fitzgerald also acted in them. When he was at Princeton University, Fitzgerald was a member of the Triangle Club, a drama club that wrote and performed satirical musicals. Fitzgerald provided the lyrics for several Triangle Club shows during his college years. However, once Fitzgerald became a professional author in 1919, the only play that he published was a comedy entitled The Vegetable, or from President to postman.

The Vegetable is a political satire, not the genre you might expect from an author best known for tackling subjects like love, class, status, and money. The title of the play comes from a quotation from “a current magazine.” (Fitzgerald doesn’t specify which one.) “Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, hasn’t got as much to him as a good dog has—he’s nothing more or less than a vegetable.” The “vegetable” in question here is one Jerry Frost, a railroad clerk who does not seek to park his toothbrush in the White House. His wife, Charlotte, is annoyed that Jerry does not have more ambition. In fact, Jerry’s real dream is to be a postman.

In the first act, Jerry is visited in his home by several characters—his aged father Dada, his sister-in-law Doris, a parody of a flapper, and a bootlegger named Snooks, who fixes Jerry several strong drinks. Jerry then has a dream/hallucination that he becomes President of the United States.
The second act finds President Jerry Frost dealing with a number of crises—the state of Idaho wants to impeach him for naming his father Secretary of the Treasury, and the military is eager for war. One of my favorite exchanges in the play is between General Pushing—a play on John J. Pershing’s name—and Jerry:

General Pushing: The people are restless and excited. The best thing to keep their minds occupied is a good war. It will leave the country weak and shaken—but docile, Mr. President, docile. Besides—we voted on it, and there you are.
Jerry: Who is it against?
General Pushing: That we have not decided. (p.70)

At the end of the second act, Jerry is impeached and removed from office. Act three finds us back at the Frost home, however, Jerry has been missing since the evening of his dream/hallucination. As the subtitle of the play indicates, Jerry has become a postman and found true happiness at last.

Fitzgerald’s concerns about money and class show up during the play. His stage directions describe Doris: “She’s a member of that portion of the middle-class whose girls are just a little bit too proud to work and just a little bit too needy not to.” (p.22) When Jerry is dreaming that he’s President, he learns that Dada has destroyed all of the money in the Treasury. Dada has taken the Biblical adage about rich men getting into heaven to heart, and he believes he has saved the country. That tells us something about Fitzgerald’s own ambivalent relationship to money.

Most critics of The Vegetable have noted that the first and third acts work well, while the second act is problematic at best. Personally, I think there are problems throughout the play, but I found the second act the most humorous. The second act is what makes the play, as the political satire becomes more pointed.

The Vegetable satirizes the Babbitt-like mindless boosterism of the 1920’s—the idea that every man should have the drive to want to be President is clearly one that Fitzgerald finds ridiculous. And so he gives us an Everyman as President and it’s a disaster.

Fitzgerald is also satirizing Warren G. Harding, who was President when Fitzgerald wrote the play. Harding was an affable Babbitt-type from Ohio who had somehow managed to win the presidency. He was regarded as a fairly ordinary and down to earth fellow. Unfortunately, Harding’s administration was about as successful as Jerry Frost’s. In the Teapot Dome scandal it emerged that the Secretary of the Interior had taken bribes from oil companies. Oops! Consequently, Harding is usually at the bottom of rankings of the presidents, hanging out with James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce.

Fitzgerald’s satire of Harding was a little ahead of its time. The Teapot Dome scandal that exposed the corruption in Harding’s cabinet had yet to fully break at the time The Vegetable was performed. And unfortunately for Fitzgerald, in between the time the play was published in April 1923 and performed in November, Harding died. Thus Fitzgerald was satirizing Harding during the brief window when he was one of the most beloved Presidents in our nation’s history. This isn’t the only reason the play was not successful, but it certainly didn’t help.

Fitzgerald satirizes Harding’s use of language in Jerry’s speech at the end of act two, as he is trying to defend himself from impeachment. Jerry strings together a series of empty patriotic phrases and slogans, a clear parody of Harding’s speeches. In the Introduction to the 1976 paperback reprint of The Vegetable, Charles Scribner III alerts us to another parody of political language. Chief Justice Fossile’s declaration of impeachment is an almost verbatim repeat of the speech given by Congressman George Boutwell of Massachusetts at the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868. (p.xvi) I certainly didn’t catch that reference.

Fitzgerald’s skill with humor is generally underappreciated. He wasn’t a humorist by any means, but he used irony very skillfully in his work, and there are numerous humorous moments throughout The Vegetable, even if it wasn’t the laugh-a-minute play Fitzgerald envisioned.
While Fitzgerald was writing the play, he was convinced it was going to be a massive hit. This wasn’t unusual for Fitzgerald, as he was always optimistic about the commercial prospects for his writing. What is striking with The Vegetable is how lofty his hopes were, and how completely the play failed.

In December of 1921, as he was writing the play, Fitzgerald made a bold prediction to his literary agent Harold Ober, writing in a letter to Ober: “My play is the funniest ever written + will make a fortune.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.32)

That same month Fitzgerald also wrote much the same thing to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s: “I am writing an awfully funny play that’s going to make me rich forever. It really is. I’m so damned tired of the feeling that I’m living up to my income.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.90)

Fitzgerald continued his bold predictions in a March 2, 1922 letter to Ober: “I feel that Acts I + III are probably the best pieces of dramatic comedy written in English in the last 5 years.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.39)

When Fitzgerald had finished the initial draft of the play, he wrote to Perkins in August 1922: “It is, I think, the best American comedy to date and undoubtedly the best thing I have ever written.” In this same letter Fitzgerald heaps praise upon “Tarquin of Cheapside” and “The Off-Shore Pirate,” two of his weaker short stories, so maybe he was just feeling especially exuberant that day. As the letter concludes, Fitzgerald badgers Perkins for another advance, and writes “After my play is produced I’ll be rich forever and never have to bother you again.” Fitzgerald was wrong on both accounts, as the play flopped and he continued to borrow against future royalties from both Perkins and Ober. (The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Andrew Turnbull, p.180)

While Fitzgerald’s exuberant enthusiasm for The Vegetable may seem overstated, his Princeton friend Edmund Wilson, on his way to becoming one of the country’s most esteemed literary critics, had similar praise for the play. He wrote Fitzgerald: “As I say, I think that the play as a whole is marvelous—no doubt, the best American comedy ever written.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.164-5) Wilson’s hyperbolic enthusiasm for The Vegetable might indicate his limitations as a critic of Fitzgerald’s work.

Throughout 1922 Fitzgerald tried to interest various theatrical producers in The Vegetable, but no one took the bait. I find that surprising, since he was probably at the peak of his popularity at that time, and was one of the hot young American novelists. However, the fact that no one wanted to produce it might also speak to the quality of the play.

Fitzgerald decided to publish the play as a book first in order to attract a producer—an unusual decision. The book of The Vegetable was published on April 27, 1923, in a first printing of 7,650 copies. Sales were not outstanding. As Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli wrote: “There was only one printing.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.176) The book was dedicated to Edmund Wilson and Katherine Tighe, a St. Paul friend who had helped Fitzgerald edit his first novel, This Side of Paradise.

In a January 1923 note to Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald wrote: “To be advertised, it seems to me rather as a book of humor, like the Parody outline of History or Seventeen than like a play—because of course it is written to be read.” (Dear Scott/Dear Max, p.66) And that’s exactly the problem with the play—it’s meant to be read, not performed. Fitzgerald’s copious stage directions are some of the funniest things in the play, but it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to translate them to the stage.

In November 1923, seven months the book publication, The Vegetable made its stage debut in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It did not go well. In a December 1923 letter Fitzgerald wrote: “My play (The Vegetable) opened in Atlantic City and foundered on the opening night. It did better in subsequent performances, but at present is laid up for repairs.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.138) The Vegetable played for one week in Atlantic City, with Fitzgerald rewriting and revising the script throughout the week, but it did not inspire anyone to produce it on Broadway.

Fitzgerald uses The Vegetable as a comic motif throughout his 1924 essay “How to Live on $36,000 a Year.” In the essay, Fitzgerald keeps expecting that the play will bring him untold wealth. He writes about the first time he heard the play read by the cast: “I could almost hear the people scrambling for seats, hear the ghostly voices of the movie magnates as they bid against one another for the picture rights.” (A Short Autobiography, p.42)

Fitzgerald goes on to describe opening night: “It was a colossal frost. People left their seats and walked out; people rustled their programs and talked audibly in bored impatient whispers. After the second act I wanted to stop the show and say it was all a mistake but the actors struggled heroically on.” (A Short Autobiography, p.43)

Throughout the rest of his life, Fitzgerald was consistently dismissive of The Vegetable. The play is referenced in his letters more often than you might expect, but Fitzgerald never references it with any affection. Fitzgerald was always interested in his writing being discovered by new audiences, but he was continually uninterested in possible productions of The Vegetable, which is very surprising. That could be the key to his true feelings about the play—if he thought it was any good, he would have championed it more.

In a February 1925 letter to Harold Ober Fitzgerald wrote: “The second act was the biggest flop of all on the Atlantic City try out—and the whole thing has already cost me about a year + a half of work so I’d rather let it drop. It’s honestly no good. From Feb. 1922 until Nov. 1923 I was almost constantly working + patching the damn thing + I don’t think I could bear to look at it anymore. If I ever change I’ll let you know.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.75)

By 1929, Fitzgerald didn’t want the play produced at all. In a letter to Ober probably from late May, he wrote about a possible film version—which was never produced: “A talkie of Vegetable would be okay with me—only no more stage representations on any account, charity or otherwise. I wouldn’t feel guilty about a talkie.” (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.135)

In a February 9, 1934 letter to Ober Fitzgerald was uncharacteristically terse: “Dear Harold: I don’t want ‘The Vegetable’ produced.” That’s the entire text of the letter. (As Ever, Scott Fitz, p.203)

Fitzgerald explained himself in more detail in a letter to Barrett H. Clark, dated October 16, 1936. Clark was a drama critic and the executive director of the Dramatists Play Service. Fitzgerald wrote to him:

“’Vegetable’ reads well, but it simply won’t play, and I would be doing you a disservice and you would be doing an equal disservice to the prospective producers to offer it to them as part of any repertory. It reads well, but there is some difference between the first and second acts that is so disparate that every time a Little Theatre has produced it (and many of them have tried it), it has been a failure in a big way. This is not to say that I do not realize that the thing reads well, or that I am not tremendously grateful for your interest, but simply to say that I can’t give you the permission that you ask.” (Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.456)

Did he mention that it reads well? I think Fitzgerald knew deep down that The Vegetable clearly wasn’t his best work. Even Matthew J. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald’s most sympathetic biographer, didn’t have much good to say about The Vegetable: “The play is just not very funny, scarcely rising above the level of an undergraduate production. Despite Fitzgerald’s apprenticeship as a playwright, his talent was novelistic, not dramatic. His dialogue is not entertaining, and many of his jokes depend on the stage directions.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.165)

Bruccoli is a perceptive critic about those qualities that made Fitzgerald’s work so brilliant on the page: “much of the effectiveness of Fitzgerald’s stories depends on elements of style and narrative technique that cannot be transferred to the stage. He was a storyteller, relying heavily on tone, language, point of view, and authorial voice. A Fitzgerald story or novel in dramatic form loses many of the qualities that make it a Fitzgerald work—as the disappointing movie versions of his novels have demonstrated.” (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.184)

For Fitzgerald fans like me who live in his hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota, The Vegetable has a couple of interesting connections. When Fitzgerald started writing the play, he and Zelda, and their daughter Scottie, were living on Goodrich Avenue in Saint Paul. In the play, the Frosts live on Osceola Avenue. (p.10) What street is two blocks south of Goodrich? Osceola Avenue, of course! There’s also a reference in the play to Crest Avenue, which is a fictitious street that also appears in Fitzgerald’s short story “The Popular Girl,” and is modeled after Saint Paul’s Summit Avenue.

After The Vegetable failed, Fitzgerald found himself in debt, and so during the winter of 1923-4 he cranked out ten short stories for magazines. Fitzgerald finished the ten stories by March of 1924, and they earned him the impressive total of $16,450, which would be roughly $200,000 today. (Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, p.185) Earning that much money also bought Fitzgerald time he needed to work on his third novel, which had been put on hold for much of 1923 as he focused on the production of The Vegetable. Fitzgerald’s working title for the novel was Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires. As Scott and Zelda sailed off to Europe in May of 1924, little did he know that his third novel would prove to be one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century: a slim volume titled The Great Gatsby.

[Sowmya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a refreshing read from Fitzgerald compared to his often racist rhetoric.

What fun! I love reading plays. It seemed funny and relevant when I read it, especially with an election around the corner that time.

[Milford Public Library Library · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the only play that FSF published in his life-time.
It's a bit of an anomaly & curiosity among his works,
and remains the 'red-headed step child' of his canon, receiving little if any critical attention.

Over 30 years ago I read this little-known work by Fitzgerald, but remembered very little about it.
(Clearly it left an indelible impression on this once rabid fan who tried to read everything by him that I could get my hands on.)
With the centennial of the Roaring 20s & the Jazz Age being imminent I thought it'd be interesting to revisit it.

As someone who's an avid theater-goer, and also performs in community theater, I wanted to give this work another go. I hoped with the passage of time and more knowledge & experience it would be interesting to read this work once again.

Despite being 97 yrs. old, it's not as dated as I thought it may be.
There are some funny moments, witty dialogue, and even some hilarious stage business, as well as some political humor/satire about the presidency (which is always in vogue); but, I don't know if it's enough altogether to sustain an audience for 3 Acts.
(I daresay most modern audiences can't sit through long plays that are 3-5 acts long, with the possible exception of some classics by the Bard or O'Neill.)

Plays are meant to be performed as opposed to read, and it is hoped that out of a sense of both nostalgia & curiosity this show may be presented again for audiences in the coming years for re-evaluation as a performance piece, as well as a piece of mostly forgotten literature, by one of America's greats.

[Sparrow .]

When he’s being serious, Fitzgerald is wonderfully humorous, but when he’s trying to be funny, he’s like a half-drunk sociologist.

I had assumed this theatrical misfire was very early or very late (but how could it be late? He spent years writing The Last Tycoon, and never finishing it…) But in fact it’s right before The Great Gatsby. And you can see foreshadowings of that monster novel: bootlegging, rags-to-riches, perfectly rendered Midwestern speech.

The Vegetable is fun to read, and fast – but don’t worry, you’ll never read it.

The play flopped in New York, but was a hit in Holland and Czechoslovakia – where posturing absurdity counts as comedy.

Opening at random:

Fish [in wild alarm]. Good God! What’d he say?
Doris. He said I was stuck up because my brother-in-law was President, and I said: “Well, what if I am? I’d hate to say what your brother-in-law is.”
Fish [fascinated]. What is he?
Doris. He owns a garbage disposal service.

[ornella]

Me acabo de enterar que Fitzgerald escribió esta obra de teatro basándose en el Dadaísmo, y que aunque esperaba que fuera un éxito rotundo, en su noche debut le fue tan mal que la gente se iba en el medio de la función y se ponían a abuchear casi como si estuvieran gritando. También hay gente que dice que los mismos Scott y Zelda acompañaron los abucheos para no dejar en evidencia quiénes eran ellos y su relación con la obra. Todo este párrafo para decir que NECESITO leer esto.

[Sally · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty dumb. There are aspects of West’s A Cool Million and the musical I’d Rather Be Right. Jerry Frost, an unhappy clerk, gets drunk on bootleg liquor, dreams he’s president and gets impeached, and ends up as a postman, which is what he always wanted to do. Very minor Fitzgerald. The best aspects are in the stage directions.

[Linds · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is Scott Fitzgerald’s forgotten flop of a play.

An art movement of the time,Dadaism, embraced non-sensical nonsense. Fitzgerald tried to translate to the stage with failed results. Unless you are being a completionist like I am there’s no reason to read this.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thankfully his book/short stories are better.

[Nazanin · Rating 3 out of 5]

جدا از اینکه فیتزجرالد نویسنده‌ی موردعلاقه‌ی منه و این اولین نمایشنامه‌ی ایشون بوده، اما روند داستان و شخصیت��پردازی در سختگیرانه‌ترین نگاه، ۲ ستاره رو می‌گیره.

[Caleb Rumple · Rating 3 out of 5]

The satire was heavy-handed, but at least it was entertaining. The bootlegger was an endearing character.

[sarah ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Izunia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do not know why this play has such bad ratings (I have not read the reviews yet). Maybe I liked it because I do not read many plays (even though I enjoy them). I definitely liked the extensive stage direction. I found it very amusing and I would like to see it on stage.
The main criticism I have is that the ending seemed very abrupt. It was missing something for me.

[Wayne Giacalone · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Vegetable by F. Scott Fitzgerald This is the pretty good play. Solid, funny, with something to say. At times it was a bit farcical, even for my tastes. And you know how much I love farce... oh that Frasier Crane, I still chuckle at his antics. The best part about this play was the stage directions. You can really tell that it's Fitzgerald in lines of direction like:

That couch would be dangerous to sit upon without a map showing the location of all craters, hillocks, and thistle-patches. And three dead but shamefully unburied clocks stare eyelessly before them from their perches around the walls.

and

Those walls—God! The history of American photography hangs upon them. Photographs of children with puffed dresses and depressing leers... of babies with toothless mouths and idiotic eyes, of young men with... neckties that loop, twist, snag, or flare in conformity to some esoteric, antiquated standard of middle-class dandyism. And the girls! You’d have to laugh at the girls!.. Here’s one in the look-at-her-little-toes-aren’t-they-darling period, and here she is later when she was a little bother of ten. Look! This is the way she was when she was after a husband. She might be worse. There’s a certain young charm or something, but in the next picture you can see what five years of general housework have done to her. You wouldn’t turn your eyes half a degree to watch her in the street. And that was taken six years ago—now she’s thirty and already an old woman.

and finally:

The phonograph whines, groans, gags, and dies, and almost simultaneously with its last feeble gesture a man comes into the room, saying: “What?”

In fact, if the play has a major problem, it's that those are the most entertaining moments. I can only imagine that it would take a hell of a production to make a performance of The Vegetable as fun as reading it.

[Cecilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting play about measuring success in an individual life. It starts with the idea that every man (note, written in 1932) should and does want to be president. Then it shows the "everyman" as president, and guess what, he sucks at it and doesn't enjoy it anyway. (imagine) then it shows him as a postman, which he loves and is great at. (and they all lived happily ever after)

[Siyu · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a very sarcastically appealing play and even without being able to find a video of the play itself, I picture every scene in my mind while I read the script. I have to admit that it is quite entertaining even by just thinking about it.

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst play I've ever read. It still boggles my mind that such a great writer could ever write this badly. I know feral cats that could write a better play.

[carl theaker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fitzgerald's only play and probably a good thing.
It's interesting for Fitzgerald fans and probably
the only reason you ended up with it.

[Ashley:) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️