What do you think?
Rate this book
I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories
I'd Die for You is a collection of the last remaining unpublished short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, iconic author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.
All eighteen short fictions collected here were lost in one sense or another: physically lost, coming to light only recently; lost in the turbulence of Fitzgerald's later life; lost to readers because his editors sometimes did not understand what he was trying to write. These fascinating stories offer a new insight into the arc of Fitzgerald's career, and demonstrate his stylistic agility and imaginative power as a writer at the forefront of Modern literature.
All eighteen short fictions collected here were lost in one sense or another: physically lost, coming to light only recently; lost in the turbulence of Fitzgerald's later life; lost to readers because his editors sometimes did not understand what he was trying to write. These fascinating stories offer a new insight into the arc of Fitzgerald's career, and demonstrate his stylistic agility and imaginative power as a writer at the forefront of Modern literature.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published April 25, 2017
349 people are currently reading
4293 people want to read
About the author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
2,320 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 214 reviews
May 23, 2017
What a wonderful collection of stories!
Being the massive F. Scott Fitzgerald fan that I am, to say that it was a pleasant surprise to find this new collection of previously unpublished collection of stories on Amazon would be an understatement. It felt like Christmas came early!
To me, Fitzgerald had a way with words that is unparalleled in modern literature. While reading this book, I lost track of how many times decided to re-read a particular paragraph multiple times because I was so taken back by how beautifully written it was. Once wasn’t enough to take it all in properly.
Here’s an example of one such paragraph:
“She was the girl from foreign places; she was so asleep that you could see the dream of those places in the faint lift of her forehead. The doctor took out his watch—it was after three. He walked with practiced dexterity across the wooden verandah but he struck the inevitable creaky strip and promptly the map of wonderland written on the surface of women’s eyebrows creased into invisibility.”
One of the featured stories titled “What to do about it,” (written in 1933) is now one of my all-time favorite short stories. I actually read it again after finishing the book. It’s a simple story about a young doctor who gets sent out on a house call at the last minute (filling in for his boss) to check on a woman who may or may not be a hypochondriac. He arrives at the house to instead find her daughter, a beautiful but mysterious girl who he is immediately smitten with, who claims that her supposedly sick mother is out for the evening and knows nothing about him being called in. The doctor winds up sticking around for a few minutes and even speaks to the absent woman’s witty young son, who appears to be truly sick in bed, partly so that he can eventually talk to the daughter some more. There are some interesting twists and turns throughout, and it features a fantastic ending that I absolutely adore; finishing on such a sweet, charmingly romantic note that I could hardly believe how perfect it was.
There’s another story titled “The Couple” (written in the 1920’s) that struck all the right chords with me, about a married couple who have decided to separate after one too many arguments, even though it’s apparent that they still love and care about each other. The wife decides she will wait two weeks before moving out, and in the meantime they hire another married couple to come stay with them and get paid to be their maid and cook. Comedy and drama ensues and I loved every page of it. The first page alone managed to convey one of primary elements that is so heartbreaking about divorce, which is that, more of often than not, at least one of them doesn’t really want the marriage to end at all, even if they agree to it, they just feel as though they’ve done all they can possibly do to try and make the other person happy, and have ultimately failed:
“No. If that’s the way you feel I’ll do the getting out. I just thought that if it didn’t annoy you to have me here—”
“Annoy me! Not a bit. Why—” He bit his lip. The whole reason for the separation was just that. Everything he did annoyed her terribly. He had given up the struggle to try and please her, several weeks ago.”
I didn’t love all the stories, though. I’d say I loved about 50% of them, liked 25%, and found the last 25% to be boring and chore to get through. But the ones I loved, I really loved! And as a writer myself, I found myself to be continuously inspired with new ideas as I read through them all.
Some of the stories are comedic all the way through. Then others, such as the title story (I’d die for you), are drenched in touching melancholy throughout, with inner turmoil and thoughts of suicide hanging desperately onto the character’s words.
Also, short stories aside, I feel it’s important to note that this book is a dream come true for any die hard FSF fan. Usually books like this start out with a tediously long intro by the editor or someone else, detailing why the book was made and relaying little tidbits about the authors life around the time these stories were written. Which would have been fine. but the people who put this book together decided to go above and beyond and feature the story behind the story before each and every one, describing exactly why it was rejected initially, showing actual letters that Fitzgerald wrote to the publishers as well as their responses, accompanied by photos of both him and the original version of the story, sometimes hand-written. I, for one, loved all the attention to detail that was put into this book. Someone truly cared about the subject matter.
So overall I highly recommend checking this book out, especially if you’re already a fan of his short stories (or short stories in general) like I am. And if your someone who likes “The Great Gatsby” but have never read anything of his beyond that, then you’re missing out.
Being the massive F. Scott Fitzgerald fan that I am, to say that it was a pleasant surprise to find this new collection of previously unpublished collection of stories on Amazon would be an understatement. It felt like Christmas came early!
To me, Fitzgerald had a way with words that is unparalleled in modern literature. While reading this book, I lost track of how many times decided to re-read a particular paragraph multiple times because I was so taken back by how beautifully written it was. Once wasn’t enough to take it all in properly.
Here’s an example of one such paragraph:
“She was the girl from foreign places; she was so asleep that you could see the dream of those places in the faint lift of her forehead. The doctor took out his watch—it was after three. He walked with practiced dexterity across the wooden verandah but he struck the inevitable creaky strip and promptly the map of wonderland written on the surface of women’s eyebrows creased into invisibility.”
One of the featured stories titled “What to do about it,” (written in 1933) is now one of my all-time favorite short stories. I actually read it again after finishing the book. It’s a simple story about a young doctor who gets sent out on a house call at the last minute (filling in for his boss) to check on a woman who may or may not be a hypochondriac. He arrives at the house to instead find her daughter, a beautiful but mysterious girl who he is immediately smitten with, who claims that her supposedly sick mother is out for the evening and knows nothing about him being called in. The doctor winds up sticking around for a few minutes and even speaks to the absent woman’s witty young son, who appears to be truly sick in bed, partly so that he can eventually talk to the daughter some more. There are some interesting twists and turns throughout, and it features a fantastic ending that I absolutely adore; finishing on such a sweet, charmingly romantic note that I could hardly believe how perfect it was.
There’s another story titled “The Couple” (written in the 1920’s) that struck all the right chords with me, about a married couple who have decided to separate after one too many arguments, even though it’s apparent that they still love and care about each other. The wife decides she will wait two weeks before moving out, and in the meantime they hire another married couple to come stay with them and get paid to be their maid and cook. Comedy and drama ensues and I loved every page of it. The first page alone managed to convey one of primary elements that is so heartbreaking about divorce, which is that, more of often than not, at least one of them doesn’t really want the marriage to end at all, even if they agree to it, they just feel as though they’ve done all they can possibly do to try and make the other person happy, and have ultimately failed:
“No. If that’s the way you feel I’ll do the getting out. I just thought that if it didn’t annoy you to have me here—”
“Annoy me! Not a bit. Why—” He bit his lip. The whole reason for the separation was just that. Everything he did annoyed her terribly. He had given up the struggle to try and please her, several weeks ago.”
I didn’t love all the stories, though. I’d say I loved about 50% of them, liked 25%, and found the last 25% to be boring and chore to get through. But the ones I loved, I really loved! And as a writer myself, I found myself to be continuously inspired with new ideas as I read through them all.
Some of the stories are comedic all the way through. Then others, such as the title story (I’d die for you), are drenched in touching melancholy throughout, with inner turmoil and thoughts of suicide hanging desperately onto the character’s words.
Also, short stories aside, I feel it’s important to note that this book is a dream come true for any die hard FSF fan. Usually books like this start out with a tediously long intro by the editor or someone else, detailing why the book was made and relaying little tidbits about the authors life around the time these stories were written. Which would have been fine. but the people who put this book together decided to go above and beyond and feature the story behind the story before each and every one, describing exactly why it was rejected initially, showing actual letters that Fitzgerald wrote to the publishers as well as their responses, accompanied by photos of both him and the original version of the story, sometimes hand-written. I, for one, loved all the attention to detail that was put into this book. Someone truly cared about the subject matter.
So overall I highly recommend checking this book out, especially if you’re already a fan of his short stories (or short stories in general) like I am. And if your someone who likes “The Great Gatsby” but have never read anything of his beyond that, then you’re missing out.
Want to read
May 23, 2017A new book by my favourite author even though he's been dead for 77 years? YES PLEASE.
November 7, 2017
"Her eyes were full of tears for the unpreventable sadness in the world." (28)In a way, as a true Fitzgerald fan, aside from being delighted by this collection of genuinely previously-unpublished stories, you must also be pissed. And here's why: all of these stories—many of them particularly dear to Scott—were rejected by publishers and, to make matters worse, at times when he and Zelda sorely needed the money. The recurring theme of rejections: "not what our readers are expecting of a Fitzgerald story". And yet, here we are with the collection sitting firmly on the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list—too late for Scott. Anyone who wishes him and Zelda well, as I'm sure we all do, wishes that he could have seen these stories published in his lifetime. I suppose that there is a lesson here for writers: to hell with publishers, keep your stories, and one day they will sell. That is, of course, if they are good. Which, granted, not all of the stories in I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories are. Revised lesson: become great enough that the public will hunger posthumously for any scrap of unpublished work that bears your name.
"…it isn't particularly likely that I'll write a great many more stories about young love. I was tagged with that by my first writings up to 1925. Since then I have written stories about young love. They have been done with increasing difficulty and increasing insincerity. I would either be a miracle man or a hack if I could go on turning out an identical product for three decades. I know that is what's expected of me, but in that direction the well is pretty dry and I think I am much wiser in not trying to strain for it but rather to open a new well, a new vein…" (ix)You have to admire his honesty; and these stories do evidence at times a darker, gloomier Scott (although there is still plenty of lightheartedness and humor). Two stories especially stayed with me: Nightmare (Fantasy in Black), about a mental institution, and I'd Die for You, about suicide. As usual with Fitzgerald, much personal material went into these stories—Zelda's stay in various asylums in the first case, and Scott's attempt at suicide (which I actually didn't know about) in the latter. Many of the other stories also felt quite personal, drawing on troubled times in Scott and Zelda's lives. Thank You for the Light was a little gem at the very end, too scandalous to be published at the time, but right at home here in the 21st century.
January 12, 2020
Veoma lepo slozena zbirka izgubljenih i odbijenih pripovedaka, u vreme Ficzderaldovog stvaranja, objavljena naknadno u jednoj knjizi po hronoloskom redu. Za sve one koji vole da citaju FSF ( kako stoji ispod nekih autenticnih slicica koje se nalaze u knjizi, a prikazuju Ficdzeralda na raznim mestima i putovanjima tokom svog zivota), mislim da ce im se dopasti ova knjiga. Ovu sam knigu po preporuci uzeo da citam i mislim ne da nisam pogresio, nego je ova zbirka prica prevazisla moja ocekivanja. Neke od najlepsih prica koje su se meni dopale su : Nocna mora, Ciklon u zemlji tisine , Zene u kuci (Temperatura) .
May 4, 2017
Wish I could give this collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's previously unpublished short stories more than five stars. I adore FSF's writing, just one of the reasons I decided to write a novel about his tumultuous relationship with Sheilah Graham, a woman who is fascinating in her own right. My novel will be published by HarperCollins in 2018, most likely called ANOTHER SIDE OF PARADISE.
May 11, 2019
Чудесна книга, от която можеш да останеш само с един горчив спомен - защо, ама защо, по дяволите, тези разкази, разработки и прочие творби са останали неоценени. Тук има лек и елегантен хумор, тук има слънце и любов. Но "ние не очакваме това от Фицджералд"... да, просто чудесно.
Е, тук са събрани част от разказите отвъд "официалния" Фицджералд. Едно друго негово лице, много по-лъчезарно, дори и обърнато към камарата от трудности и лични трагедии. Някъде там, назад във времето, светът е бил елегантен, странно различен и неестествен, погледнат от нашето съвремие. Но много красив.
Разбира се, имаше и такива творби, на които наистина нещичко не им достига, или пък са се нуждаели от още мъничко редакция. Може би е щяло да стане, може би...
За самата книга на български - чудесно оформление, много снимков материал, много добри кратки рецензии. Единствено не ми харесаха повечето бележки на авторката на сборника, понеже половината от тях трябваше да ги чета по два пъти и пак се чудех каква връзка имаха с текста изобщо. Да, за някои се налагаше да са отвеяни от вятъра, за да схванеш връзката и намека, използван от самия Фицджералд, но други стояха повече като напълно ненужна информация.
Е, тук са събрани част от разказите отвъд "официалния" Фицджералд. Едно друго негово лице, много по-лъчезарно, дори и обърнато към камарата от трудности и лични трагедии. Някъде там, назад във времето, светът е бил елегантен, странно различен и неестествен, погледнат от нашето съвремие. Но много красив.
Разбира се, имаше и такива творби, на които наистина нещичко не им достига, или пък са се нуждаели от още мъничко редакция. Може би е щяло да стане, може би...
За самата книга на български - чудесно оформление, много снимков материал, много добри кратки рецензии. Единствено не ми харесаха повечето бележки на авторката на сборника, понеже половината от тях трябваше да ги чета по два пъти и пак се чудех каква връзка имаха с текста изобщо. Да, за някои се налагаше да са отвеяни от вятъра, за да схванеш връзката и намека, използван от самия Фицджералд, но други стояха повече като напълно ненужна информация.
Want to read
June 11, 2022i like to consider myself a massive fitzgerald fan.
like, massive, massive.
when i was younger, i read through his entire bibliography. i read every single biography, letter, and article about his life i could, including everything that was available about zelda (which included a lot of bad tv shows/movies.
although i have intense hate for the 2013 The Great Gatsby film (we don't talk about it!), i fought to see the Fitzgerald Suite at the Plaza Hotel and, (luckily), was let in for a private tour.
i am definitely no matthew j. bruccoli, but i definitely tried to be when i was 13.
i will never forget when an article popped up on my phone sometime in 2015 anouncing that a "lost" collection of short stories have been uncovered, and will be published sometime in 2017 in a book called I'd Die For You.
that was my christmas. and who could resist that title??
waiting for 2017 was agonizing and long, but ultimately worth it and i remember sprinting to the bookstore on the day of publication and reading the entire thing in a chair there.
this collection was everything to me.
and now, that i have graduated uni and am getting sentimental about the books/literature that shaped me, i want to revisit it.
fitzgerald never offered me any "good" advice or words of wisdom about growing up—his stuff did and does depress the hell out of me—but the agony, melancholy, and empty "joy" of his work did help me in many, unexplainable ways.
i always say that fitzgerald and jd saligner are my two favourite authors of all time, and i still stick by that—although i KNOW the salinger estate is holding out on us! release the unpublished stories!!!!
i am excited to start this summer—like many of my past summers—reexploring fitzgerald's devastating prose and characters that i would die for.
like, massive, massive.
when i was younger, i read through his entire bibliography. i read every single biography, letter, and article about his life i could, including everything that was available about zelda (which included a lot of bad tv shows/movies.
although i have intense hate for the 2013 The Great Gatsby film (we don't talk about it!), i fought to see the Fitzgerald Suite at the Plaza Hotel and, (luckily), was let in for a private tour.
i am definitely no matthew j. bruccoli, but i definitely tried to be when i was 13.
i will never forget when an article popped up on my phone sometime in 2015 anouncing that a "lost" collection of short stories have been uncovered, and will be published sometime in 2017 in a book called I'd Die For You.
that was my christmas. and who could resist that title??
waiting for 2017 was agonizing and long, but ultimately worth it and i remember sprinting to the bookstore on the day of publication and reading the entire thing in a chair there.
this collection was everything to me.
and now, that i have graduated uni and am getting sentimental about the books/literature that shaped me, i want to revisit it.
fitzgerald never offered me any "good" advice or words of wisdom about growing up—his stuff did and does depress the hell out of me—but the agony, melancholy, and empty "joy" of his work did help me in many, unexplainable ways.
i always say that fitzgerald and jd saligner are my two favourite authors of all time, and i still stick by that—although i KNOW the salinger estate is holding out on us! release the unpublished stories!!!!
i am excited to start this summer—like many of my past summers—reexploring fitzgerald's devastating prose and characters that i would die for.
June 22, 2017
From the editorial introductions, to a delightful collection of never before published photographs, to the rich and varied stories themselves, I'D DIE FOR YOU AND OTHER LOST STORIES is a rare treat, and one that should be savored. Editor Anne Margaret Daniel's arrangement and contextual description of each of Fitzgerald's writings not only provide fresh insights into one of America's finest writers, but also demonstrate deep understanding of and empathy for her subject.
Lovers of Fitzgerald's work will find echoes of Gatsby in stories like "Thumbs Up:"
"The two younger men started back toward shore in the dinghy and the hands that waved to them from the yacht as they gradually lost sight of it in the growing dark were like a symbol that the cruelty of a distant time was receding with every stroke of the oars into a dimmer and dimmer past." (p. 186)
Flashes of his genius in describing the nature of his characters in "Nightmare:"
"[H]e felt dissatisfied with the physical attitude she had assumed--somehow standing in the doorway like that betrayed the fact that her mood was centrifugal rather than centripetal--she was drawn toward the June afternoon, the down-rolling, out-rolling land, adventurous as an ocean without horizons. Something stabbed at his heart for his own mood was opposite--for him she made this place the stable center of the world." (p. 20)
And Zelda. Zelda everywhere:
"The girl hung around under the pink sky waiting for something to happen. She was not a particularly vague person but she was vague tonight: the special dusk was new, practically new, after years under far skies; it had strange little lines in the trees, strange little insects, unfamiliar night cries of strange small beasts beginning." (p. 41, "What to Do About It")
I confess that--like everything Fitzgerald--on these pages hangs a looming sadness. Even in the slivers of hope, knowing the whole Fitzgerald story casts a shadow. One will marvel, however, that even as Fitzgerald faced the darkness of professional rejection, personal crisis, and familial devastation, he was able to produce such an abundance and variety of material, and often infused with such hope.
I'D DIE FOR YOU AND OTHER LOST STORIES is one of the most genuine books I've read all year. Unfiltered Fitzgerald is a treat, and Daniel's expertise and admiration warm the pages of the stories. The way Daniel chooses to end the collection leaves last notes of satisfaction, contentment, and yearning. Fans of short fiction and those interested in delving more deeply into Fitzgerald's body of work will be smitten with this collection.
Lovers of Fitzgerald's work will find echoes of Gatsby in stories like "Thumbs Up:"
"The two younger men started back toward shore in the dinghy and the hands that waved to them from the yacht as they gradually lost sight of it in the growing dark were like a symbol that the cruelty of a distant time was receding with every stroke of the oars into a dimmer and dimmer past." (p. 186)
Flashes of his genius in describing the nature of his characters in "Nightmare:"
"[H]e felt dissatisfied with the physical attitude she had assumed--somehow standing in the doorway like that betrayed the fact that her mood was centrifugal rather than centripetal--she was drawn toward the June afternoon, the down-rolling, out-rolling land, adventurous as an ocean without horizons. Something stabbed at his heart for his own mood was opposite--for him she made this place the stable center of the world." (p. 20)
And Zelda. Zelda everywhere:
"The girl hung around under the pink sky waiting for something to happen. She was not a particularly vague person but she was vague tonight: the special dusk was new, practically new, after years under far skies; it had strange little lines in the trees, strange little insects, unfamiliar night cries of strange small beasts beginning." (p. 41, "What to Do About It")
I confess that--like everything Fitzgerald--on these pages hangs a looming sadness. Even in the slivers of hope, knowing the whole Fitzgerald story casts a shadow. One will marvel, however, that even as Fitzgerald faced the darkness of professional rejection, personal crisis, and familial devastation, he was able to produce such an abundance and variety of material, and often infused with such hope.
I'D DIE FOR YOU AND OTHER LOST STORIES is one of the most genuine books I've read all year. Unfiltered Fitzgerald is a treat, and Daniel's expertise and admiration warm the pages of the stories. The way Daniel chooses to end the collection leaves last notes of satisfaction, contentment, and yearning. Fans of short fiction and those interested in delving more deeply into Fitzgerald's body of work will be smitten with this collection.
July 6, 2019
Nedá se říct, že bych byla nějaký milovník Fitzgeralda; vlastně jsem zatím četla jen Velkého Gatsbyho a to s nijak valným nadšením. (Asi to bude tím, že mojí hlavní čtenářskou pohnutkou tehdy byl, ehm, Leonardo DiCaprio.) Zato tenhle povídkový soubor mě lákal, převážně svým názvem.
Všechny povídky v něm byly za Fitzgeraldova života odmítnuty – většinou proto, že nebyly dost fitzgeraldovské. Ohledně toho soudy vynášet nemůžu, zato ale musím říct, že mě to bavilo. Jak už to u povídkových souborů bývá, některé víc a některé míň, ale u všech jsem mimořádně ocenila, jaké dokáže Fitzgerald vymyslet zápletky. A kolik toho na relativně málo stránkách dokáže říct. (Vlastně by z jedné povídky byl skvělý young adult román, je tam všechno – láska do pěti minut, následovaná zradou, vzájemnou nedůvěřivostí až po nevyhnutelné usmíření, jak jinak než na plese. Copyright už vypršel, tak že by to někdo přetvořil na trilogii o čtyřech dílech?) Precizní charakteristiky postav, trefné pointy, sem tam vtip, to vše krásným bohatým jazykem, který se překladateli perfektně povedl převést do češtiny. Ale hlavně ty zápletky, ty budu z hlavy vyhánět ještě dlouho. Minimálně za mě dokázal F. S. Fitzgerald i sedmdesát osm let po své smrti, že je to zkrátka pan Spisovatel.
Tak nějak doporučuju číst spíš postupně, povídku po povídce. A pro všechny, kdo nejsou vyloženě ultra nadšenci do Fitzgeralda, možná i vynechat poznámkový aparát, který sice místy nabízí zajímavé souvislosti, ale jinde už je vyloženě přebujelý, a to se pak dozvíte, na jaký druh papíru FSF onu povídku napsal, a kde ten papír prodávali.
A já si teď asi půjdu zjistit, který z Fitzgeraldových méně známých románů si mám jít přečíst nejdřív.
Všechny povídky v něm byly za Fitzgeraldova života odmítnuty – většinou proto, že nebyly dost fitzgeraldovské. Ohledně toho soudy vynášet nemůžu, zato ale musím říct, že mě to bavilo. Jak už to u povídkových souborů bývá, některé víc a některé míň, ale u všech jsem mimořádně ocenila, jaké dokáže Fitzgerald vymyslet zápletky. A kolik toho na relativně málo stránkách dokáže říct. (Vlastně by z jedné povídky byl skvělý young adult román, je tam všechno – láska do pěti minut, následovaná zradou, vzájemnou nedůvěřivostí až po nevyhnutelné usmíření, jak jinak než na plese. Copyright už vypršel, tak že by to někdo přetvořil na trilogii o čtyřech dílech?) Precizní charakteristiky postav, trefné pointy, sem tam vtip, to vše krásným bohatým jazykem, který se překladateli perfektně povedl převést do češtiny. Ale hlavně ty zápletky, ty budu z hlavy vyhánět ještě dlouho. Minimálně za mě dokázal F. S. Fitzgerald i sedmdesát osm let po své smrti, že je to zkrátka pan Spisovatel.
Tak nějak doporučuju číst spíš postupně, povídku po povídce. A pro všechny, kdo nejsou vyloženě ultra nadšenci do Fitzgeralda, možná i vynechat poznámkový aparát, který sice místy nabízí zajímavé souvislosti, ale jinde už je vyloženě přebujelý, a to se pak dozvíte, na jaký druh papíru FSF onu povídku napsal, a kde ten papír prodávali.
A já si teď asi půjdu zjistit, který z Fitzgeraldových méně známých románů si mám jít přečíst nejdřív.
April 26, 2021
This is kind of book that you don't have to read all in one day to finish it. I enjoyed reading this book when I wanted to. I didn't read in one sitting. This book is suitable for light reading.
June 7, 2017
From BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime:
A selection of stories taken from a new collection of previously unpublished work by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I'D DIE FOR YOU: AND OTHER LOST STORIES.
The series opens with an extract from editor Anne Margaret Daniel's essay and the atmospheric vignette, 'Thank You For The Light'.
Readers Laurel Lefkow and Karen Bartke
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Romance, parties, cocktails and glamour - as a young writer in the 1920s F. Scott Fitzgerald gave the magazines what they wanted. He had little choice; short stories were his bread and butter. But as the author matured he yearned to explore darker territory. This desire wasn't cushioned by wealth; The Great Gatsby hadn't sold well and as the Depression crunched in the early 30s, Fitzgerald was hit by large medical bills for both himself and his wife Zelda. Despite the financial pressures he resisted the easy censorship requested by editors, who balked at Fitzgerald's portrayal of confusing generational freedoms, sex before marriage, divorce and working women.
Growing increasingly uncompromising about deletions and sanitisations, Fitzgerald preferred to let these stories lie in wait until their time came.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rq1p6
A selection of stories taken from a new collection of previously unpublished work by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I'D DIE FOR YOU: AND OTHER LOST STORIES.
The series opens with an extract from editor Anne Margaret Daniel's essay and the atmospheric vignette, 'Thank You For The Light'.
Readers Laurel Lefkow and Karen Bartke
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Romance, parties, cocktails and glamour - as a young writer in the 1920s F. Scott Fitzgerald gave the magazines what they wanted. He had little choice; short stories were his bread and butter. But as the author matured he yearned to explore darker territory. This desire wasn't cushioned by wealth; The Great Gatsby hadn't sold well and as the Depression crunched in the early 30s, Fitzgerald was hit by large medical bills for both himself and his wife Zelda. Despite the financial pressures he resisted the easy censorship requested by editors, who balked at Fitzgerald's portrayal of confusing generational freedoms, sex before marriage, divorce and working women.
Growing increasingly uncompromising about deletions and sanitisations, Fitzgerald preferred to let these stories lie in wait until their time came.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rq1p6
December 24, 2024
Un fin scriitor, constrâns mult timp de editori să rămână încremenit într-un tipar literar inițial, cu care a obișnuit publicul. Foarte posibil ca și asta să fi contribuit din belșug la prematura sa dispariție.
January 1, 2021
I don't know why but I struggle a lot with reading short stories collections, it's ridiculous. It's easier just to read a short story on its own. The few stories I could fully grasp in the collection, I did very highly enjoy. But maybe I should try to find the stories on their own if possible.
F.Scott Fitzgerald is an author that is slowly growing on me, I don't always love his works but they seem to always draw my attention to them and I'm sure it's one of those classics author I will go back to, time and time again.
F.Scott Fitzgerald is an author that is slowly growing on me, I don't always love his works but they seem to always draw my attention to them and I'm sure it's one of those classics author I will go back to, time and time again.
June 5, 2017
More than seventy-six years after his death in 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald continues to exert a fascination over readers and scholars. In April of 2017, I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories was published. The collection is made up of short stories that were unpublished during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. Edited by Anne Margaret Daniel, who also wrote the excellent explanatory notes, I’d Die for You adds some fine work to the official Fitzgerald canon.
Many of the stories in I’d Die for You date from Fitzgerald’s “crack-up” period of 1934-36, when he was at his lowest ebb personally and professionally. With his wife Zelda in a sanitarium due to her mental health issues—she had breakdowns in 1930, 1932, and 1934—Fitzgerald’s alcoholism, always problematic, now became debilitating. His 1934 novel Tender is the Night had gone through an extremely painful gestation. At a time when many novelists turned out a book a year, Fitzgerald had gone nine years between The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. Sales of Tender is the Night were not fantastic, and Scott was heavily in debt. At a time when Fitzgerald desperately needed money, it must have been a severe annoyance to him that the stories in I’d Die for You were rejected by so many magazines.
I’d Die for You is inevitably something of a hodgepodge, and the stories range from strong—“The I.O.U.,” “I’d Die for You,” and the very funny “The Women of the House,” to the weak—“Gracie at Sea,” written as a screen treatment for George Burns and Gracie Allen, “Travel Together,” and “The Pearl and the Fur.” What comes across most strongly in I’d Die for You is Fitzgerald’s great talent. Even in stories with generic plots, there are always sentences of beauty that stop you in your tracks.
Sentences like these: “Non-fiction is a form of literature that lies half-way between fiction and fact.” (p.7)
“Her eyes were full of tears for the unpreventable sadness in the world.” (p.28)
“The girl hung around under the pink sky waiting for something to happen.” (p.41)
“She sat with Delannux on the side of a beached raft while the sunset broke into pink picture puzzle pieces that solved themselves in the dark west.” (p.93)
“Women don’t get bored the same way men do. They can sort of shut off their attention—but they always know when men are bored.” (p.115)
“He was one of those men who seem eternally stolid, even unobserving—and then announce the score added up to the last digit.” (p.115)
“It was a fine day with the buildings sparkling upward like pale dry ginger ale through the blue air.” (p.143)
“The sun shone bright on Kiki, a brisk November sun, blue in the drifting cigarettes of the crowd.” (p.209)
“…within a few hours he had become that strange dreamy figure of one whom we have been very close to and who is neither a stranger nor quite a friend.” (p.213)
Even the weaker stories are still interesting. “Travel Together,” from 1935-6, anticipates the plot of Preston Sturges’ classic 1941 comedy Sullivan’s Travels, as a screenwriter travels the country as a hobo in order to get material. For a moment as the story begins you wonder what’s happening—F. Scott Fitzgerald is writing about hobos riding the rails during the Depression? Has he been reading too much John Steinbeck and James T. Farrell? But then we learn that the main hobo is actually a Hollywood screenwriter, and we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing we’re back in Fitzgerald territory. And there’s a girl. In Fitzgerald’s stories there is always a girl, and she is always beautiful. Fitzgerald paid close attention to women, and his descriptions of women in these stories are wonderful to read.
There are always connections to be made between these stories and Fitzgerald’s own private life. One of the odder connections is in the short story “Cyclone in Silent Land,” which is set in a hospital and features a male patient who doesn’t want to take his socks off. It turns out that the man has an extra toe. Fitzgerald also hated to reveal his bare feet. He wrote in his ledger about a neighbor boy who “went barefoot in his yard and peeled plums. Scott’s Freudian shame about his feet kept him from joining in.” (Fool for Love, by Scott Donaldson, p.179) His last girlfriend Sheilah Graham wrote, “All the time I knew him he always refused to take off his shoes and socks on the beach.” (The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald Thirty-Five Years Later, p.33)
Through these stories the reader gets a sense of Fitzgerald’s diverse interests. “Offside Play” is about college football—one of the characters mentions that a star player should get paid, an issue still relevant in 2017, 80 years after the story was written. Fitzgerald was a lifelong football fan, and when his fatal heart attack struck he was making a list of football players in his copy of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. The last note he made was “good prose” on a story about Princeton’s football team. We learn from the explanatory notes to “The Women in the House” that Fitzgerald knew a lot about flowers and kept notes about them in his notebooks.
Another minor obsession of Fitzgerald’s was the Civil War. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, had deep roots in Maryland, a border state that allowed slavery but remained in the Union. However, Edward Fitzgerald had an affection for the Confederates, and passed this nostalgia for lost causes on to his son. (One could go deeper into the psychological consequences of Fitzgerald identifying more with failure than success, but I’ll stop here.) And of course, Scott went on to marry Zelda Sayre, a true Southern belle from Alabama. The Civil War is the setting for the stories “Thumbs Up” and “Dentist Appointment,” which start out in a similar manner, and then diverge into two different endings. The story was eventually published in 1940 in Collier’s in a very different format as “The End of Hate.” I actually think “The End of Hate” is the best of the three. “Thumbs Up” and “Dentist Appointment” come so close to working, but just don’t quite get there. Although “Dentist Appointment” does feature a wonderful sentence describing Fitzgerald’s hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota, during the 1860’s: “The rude town was like a great fish just hauled out of the Mississippi and still leaping and squirming on the bank.” (p.196) “The End of Hate” was published in the 1979 collection The Price was High: The Last Uncollected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a title that is now out of date, thanks to I’d Die for You.
While it would seem to be a safe bet that I’d Die for You will be the very last collection of writing from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne Margaret Daniel makes the tantalizing admission in her editorial note that “Many examples of what Fitzgerald called ‘false starts’ and what are obviously drafts of incomplete stories survive. Some run to twelve or fifteen pages before they fade out or stop abruptly. Others are as short as a paragraph or two.” (p.xxi) Why not publish those false starts? Of course, Fitzgerald wouldn’t have intended for those to be published, but his notebooks have been published, as well as several collections of his letters, so why not the false starts as well?
I’d Die for You is probably not the best place to start with Fitzgerald’s short stories but it is well worth reading and provides yet more insight into one of America’s greatest writers.
Many of the stories in I’d Die for You date from Fitzgerald’s “crack-up” period of 1934-36, when he was at his lowest ebb personally and professionally. With his wife Zelda in a sanitarium due to her mental health issues—she had breakdowns in 1930, 1932, and 1934—Fitzgerald’s alcoholism, always problematic, now became debilitating. His 1934 novel Tender is the Night had gone through an extremely painful gestation. At a time when many novelists turned out a book a year, Fitzgerald had gone nine years between The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. Sales of Tender is the Night were not fantastic, and Scott was heavily in debt. At a time when Fitzgerald desperately needed money, it must have been a severe annoyance to him that the stories in I’d Die for You were rejected by so many magazines.
I’d Die for You is inevitably something of a hodgepodge, and the stories range from strong—“The I.O.U.,” “I’d Die for You,” and the very funny “The Women of the House,” to the weak—“Gracie at Sea,” written as a screen treatment for George Burns and Gracie Allen, “Travel Together,” and “The Pearl and the Fur.” What comes across most strongly in I’d Die for You is Fitzgerald’s great talent. Even in stories with generic plots, there are always sentences of beauty that stop you in your tracks.
Sentences like these: “Non-fiction is a form of literature that lies half-way between fiction and fact.” (p.7)
“Her eyes were full of tears for the unpreventable sadness in the world.” (p.28)
“The girl hung around under the pink sky waiting for something to happen.” (p.41)
“She sat with Delannux on the side of a beached raft while the sunset broke into pink picture puzzle pieces that solved themselves in the dark west.” (p.93)
“Women don’t get bored the same way men do. They can sort of shut off their attention—but they always know when men are bored.” (p.115)
“He was one of those men who seem eternally stolid, even unobserving—and then announce the score added up to the last digit.” (p.115)
“It was a fine day with the buildings sparkling upward like pale dry ginger ale through the blue air.” (p.143)
“The sun shone bright on Kiki, a brisk November sun, blue in the drifting cigarettes of the crowd.” (p.209)
“…within a few hours he had become that strange dreamy figure of one whom we have been very close to and who is neither a stranger nor quite a friend.” (p.213)
Even the weaker stories are still interesting. “Travel Together,” from 1935-6, anticipates the plot of Preston Sturges’ classic 1941 comedy Sullivan’s Travels, as a screenwriter travels the country as a hobo in order to get material. For a moment as the story begins you wonder what’s happening—F. Scott Fitzgerald is writing about hobos riding the rails during the Depression? Has he been reading too much John Steinbeck and James T. Farrell? But then we learn that the main hobo is actually a Hollywood screenwriter, and we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing we’re back in Fitzgerald territory. And there’s a girl. In Fitzgerald’s stories there is always a girl, and she is always beautiful. Fitzgerald paid close attention to women, and his descriptions of women in these stories are wonderful to read.
There are always connections to be made between these stories and Fitzgerald’s own private life. One of the odder connections is in the short story “Cyclone in Silent Land,” which is set in a hospital and features a male patient who doesn’t want to take his socks off. It turns out that the man has an extra toe. Fitzgerald also hated to reveal his bare feet. He wrote in his ledger about a neighbor boy who “went barefoot in his yard and peeled plums. Scott’s Freudian shame about his feet kept him from joining in.” (Fool for Love, by Scott Donaldson, p.179) His last girlfriend Sheilah Graham wrote, “All the time I knew him he always refused to take off his shoes and socks on the beach.” (The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald Thirty-Five Years Later, p.33)
Through these stories the reader gets a sense of Fitzgerald’s diverse interests. “Offside Play” is about college football—one of the characters mentions that a star player should get paid, an issue still relevant in 2017, 80 years after the story was written. Fitzgerald was a lifelong football fan, and when his fatal heart attack struck he was making a list of football players in his copy of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. The last note he made was “good prose” on a story about Princeton’s football team. We learn from the explanatory notes to “The Women in the House” that Fitzgerald knew a lot about flowers and kept notes about them in his notebooks.
Another minor obsession of Fitzgerald’s was the Civil War. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, had deep roots in Maryland, a border state that allowed slavery but remained in the Union. However, Edward Fitzgerald had an affection for the Confederates, and passed this nostalgia for lost causes on to his son. (One could go deeper into the psychological consequences of Fitzgerald identifying more with failure than success, but I’ll stop here.) And of course, Scott went on to marry Zelda Sayre, a true Southern belle from Alabama. The Civil War is the setting for the stories “Thumbs Up” and “Dentist Appointment,” which start out in a similar manner, and then diverge into two different endings. The story was eventually published in 1940 in Collier’s in a very different format as “The End of Hate.” I actually think “The End of Hate” is the best of the three. “Thumbs Up” and “Dentist Appointment” come so close to working, but just don’t quite get there. Although “Dentist Appointment” does feature a wonderful sentence describing Fitzgerald’s hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota, during the 1860’s: “The rude town was like a great fish just hauled out of the Mississippi and still leaping and squirming on the bank.” (p.196) “The End of Hate” was published in the 1979 collection The Price was High: The Last Uncollected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a title that is now out of date, thanks to I’d Die for You.
While it would seem to be a safe bet that I’d Die for You will be the very last collection of writing from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne Margaret Daniel makes the tantalizing admission in her editorial note that “Many examples of what Fitzgerald called ‘false starts’ and what are obviously drafts of incomplete stories survive. Some run to twelve or fifteen pages before they fade out or stop abruptly. Others are as short as a paragraph or two.” (p.xxi) Why not publish those false starts? Of course, Fitzgerald wouldn’t have intended for those to be published, but his notebooks have been published, as well as several collections of his letters, so why not the false starts as well?
I’d Die for You is probably not the best place to start with Fitzgerald’s short stories but it is well worth reading and provides yet more insight into one of America’s greatest writers.
February 11, 2019
Ufff. Nekako sam baš odugovlačila sa čitanjem. Utisci su mi malo zbrkani.
Jedna posebna kolekcija priča, sa dodatnom dozom ogoljenosti. Ovaj mali dodatak prije svake priče, toliko me intimno povezao sa autorom, nekako ga spusti na nivo običnog čovjeka, koji muči sve naše brige, i prolazi kroz sve naše strahove.
Fitzgerald, naravno, maestralno piše. Ko sam ja da tu nešto sudim?
Ako baš moram, izdvojila bih Umrla bih za tebe, Par i Slobodan dan od ljubavi.
Jedna posebna kolekcija priča, sa dodatnom dozom ogoljenosti. Ovaj mali dodatak prije svake priče, toliko me intimno povezao sa autorom, nekako ga spusti na nivo običnog čovjeka, koji muči sve naše brige, i prolazi kroz sve naše strahove.
Fitzgerald, naravno, maestralno piše. Ko sam ja da tu nešto sudim?
Ako baš moram, izdvojila bih Umrla bih za tebe, Par i Slobodan dan od ljubavi.
January 5, 2019
Taky o Vánocích čtete, jak se dá? Mně to k tomu nějak patří. A teď o prázdninách jsem konečně dočetla tuhle fotogenickou knížku. Nejsem úplně povídkový typ, ale tyhle mě bavily hlavně svou rozmanitostí. Každá jiná. Zábavné, vypointované, vážné i prostinké, veselé i smutné a i takové, které mě nudily nebo jsem je hned zapomněla. Přečtěte si to.
July 11, 2023
4 stars!
This is a very special short story collection to me since its not every day that a book is released by one of my favorite authors who just happens to have been in his grave for over 80 years.
I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories catalogues several stories (primarily from Scott's 'Crack-Up' years) that were either rejected by publishers or filed away to be found again over the years. What made this even more of a intriguing read was the introductions before each story made by the editor, Anne Margaret Daniel. She explains not only the background behind each story but the reasons as to why it was rejected in the first place. I highly recommend this collection to any fan of Fitzgerald; it is one whole collective testament to Scott's desire to begin anew. He understood he was not that same man who wrote This Side of Paradise or The Great Gatsby. The times had changed and he along with it. He witnessed a different world and he wanted to chronicle what he saw to the best of his skill and will, despite the fact publishers and readers only saw him as that bright boy from the Jazz Age who wrote stories about boys and girls beautifully falling in love.
These stories have grimmer taste to them, touching on themes that people at the time did not and probably could not associate with the name F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are stories that are colored by his experiences in Hollywood, in hospitals, under care, etc. They vary in quality but they're 100% Fitzgerald, astute and poignant as ever.
Favorite Stories
Nightmare
I'd Die for You
Thank you for the Light
"We'll travel a lot, won't we?"
"Yes, and always together."
"No, You'll travel alone sometimes - but I'll always be there when you come back."
"You better be."
"Asking you to read it I want to get two things clear. First, that it isn't particularly likely that I'll write a great many stories about young love. I was tagged with that by my first writings up to 1925. Since then I have written stories about young love. They have been done with increasing difficulty and increasing insincerity. I would either be a miracle man or a hack if I could go on turning out an identical product for three decades.
I know what's expected of me, but in that direction the well is pretty dry and I think I am much wiser in not trying to strain for it but rather to open up a new well, a new vein. You see, I not only announced the birth of my young illusions in This Side of Paradise but pretty much the death of them in some of my last Post stories like Babylon Revisited."[February 1931]
This is a very special short story collection to me since its not every day that a book is released by one of my favorite authors who just happens to have been in his grave for over 80 years.
I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories catalogues several stories (primarily from Scott's 'Crack-Up' years) that were either rejected by publishers or filed away to be found again over the years. What made this even more of a intriguing read was the introductions before each story made by the editor, Anne Margaret Daniel. She explains not only the background behind each story but the reasons as to why it was rejected in the first place. I highly recommend this collection to any fan of Fitzgerald; it is one whole collective testament to Scott's desire to begin anew. He understood he was not that same man who wrote This Side of Paradise or The Great Gatsby. The times had changed and he along with it. He witnessed a different world and he wanted to chronicle what he saw to the best of his skill and will, despite the fact publishers and readers only saw him as that bright boy from the Jazz Age who wrote stories about boys and girls beautifully falling in love.
These stories have grimmer taste to them, touching on themes that people at the time did not and probably could not associate with the name F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are stories that are colored by his experiences in Hollywood, in hospitals, under care, etc. They vary in quality but they're 100% Fitzgerald, astute and poignant as ever.
Favorite Stories
Nightmare
I'd Die for You
Thank you for the Light
"We'll travel a lot, won't we?"
"Yes, and always together."
"No, You'll travel alone sometimes - but I'll always be there when you come back."
"You better be."
"Asking you to read it I want to get two things clear. First, that it isn't particularly likely that I'll write a great many stories about young love. I was tagged with that by my first writings up to 1925. Since then I have written stories about young love. They have been done with increasing difficulty and increasing insincerity. I would either be a miracle man or a hack if I could go on turning out an identical product for three decades.
I know what's expected of me, but in that direction the well is pretty dry and I think I am much wiser in not trying to strain for it but rather to open up a new well, a new vein. You see, I not only announced the birth of my young illusions in This Side of Paradise but pretty much the death of them in some of my last Post stories like Babylon Revisited."[February 1931]
November 10, 2017
Like many fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I expect, I was very excited to get my hands on I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories. Released this year, the volume is comprised of eighteen stories in all, including two uncollected fragments; they are the 'last remaining unpublished short stories' which will be published. Fitzgerald was prolific in writing short stories, and also a shrewd fellow; he recognised that he could make a great deal more money more quickly in selling them to magazines, than he could with writing and then serialising a full-length novel.
A lot of the tales in I'd Die for You were rejected by editors who had previously published his work; some are a little experimental, and veer away from the themes and character studies which seem characteristic of Fitzgerald's prose. Each of the stories is preceded with details of its writing process, and details those magazines which Fitzgerald approached to publish them.
As I expected, some of the stories here are far better than others, but each has a lot to discover and discuss. Overall, the quality is unsurprisingly high, and it is fascinating to chart Fitzgerald's progress as a short story writer. It is clear to the discerning reader that Fitzgerald refined early techniques over time, and a lot of these fragments and short stories are echoed within the likes of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. I'd Die for You is a must read for all fans of Fitzgerald's longer work, and is sure to make the perfect gift.
A lot of the tales in I'd Die for You were rejected by editors who had previously published his work; some are a little experimental, and veer away from the themes and character studies which seem characteristic of Fitzgerald's prose. Each of the stories is preceded with details of its writing process, and details those magazines which Fitzgerald approached to publish them.
As I expected, some of the stories here are far better than others, but each has a lot to discover and discuss. Overall, the quality is unsurprisingly high, and it is fascinating to chart Fitzgerald's progress as a short story writer. It is clear to the discerning reader that Fitzgerald refined early techniques over time, and a lot of these fragments and short stories are echoed within the likes of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. I'd Die for You is a must read for all fans of Fitzgerald's longer work, and is sure to make the perfect gift.
March 30, 2020
Забравените истории на Фицджералд: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/b...
И недоумявам – от Фицджералда са искали леки романтични истории, които завършват с хепи енд. А голяма част от събраните в този сборник са именно такива, стоплящи сърцето, красиво остарели, предадени с цветущия език отпреди век, който може да обагря емоциите така, както съвременният просто не е способен. Но както е описано в прекрасния предоговор и сетне в подробната информация преди всеки разказ, в тях присъстват елементи, които ги правят неприемливи за изданията, на които са предлагани – макар че без съмнение сумите, за които писателят все пак продава свои творби, са наистина впечатляващи дори в наши дни, да не говорим за стойността им тогава.
Издателска къща Хермес
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/b...
И недоумявам – от Фицджералда са искали леки романтични истории, които завършват с хепи енд. А голяма част от събраните в този сборник са именно такива, стоплящи сърцето, красиво остарели, предадени с цветущия език отпреди век, който може да обагря емоциите така, както съвременният просто не е способен. Но както е описано в прекрасния предоговор и сетне в подробната информация преди всеки разказ, в тях присъстват елементи, които ги правят неприемливи за изданията, на които са предлагани – макар че без съмнение сумите, за които писателят все пак продава свои творби, са наистина впечатляващи дори в наши дни, да не говорим за стойността им тогава.
Издателска къща Хермес
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/b...
February 26, 2020
Един автор, различни стилове и кратка предистория за всеки разказ.
July 9, 2017
While some of these stories should probably have remained lost, it's just impossible for Fitzgerald to be all bad. Even in the stories that are half-baked or poorly realized, there's some stunning turn of phrase or masterful, evocative description that blows the reader away. Three and one-half stars.
August 27, 2018
Λατρεύω τον Fitzgerald. Δεν τον θεωρώ απλά έναν εμβληματικό συγγραφέα, μα έναν μοναδικό, ιδιαίτερο και με πολύ ξεχωριστή ταυτότητα δημιουργό, τα έργα του οποίου δεν μπορείς να μπερδέψεις με κανενός άλλου. Έχουν τη δικιά του σφραγίδα, μιλάνε στην καρδιά σου μ' έναν τρόπο αξεπέραστο. Μα ακόμα κι αν υποθέσουμε πως ανήκεις σε αυτούς που δεν σε αγγίζει η πένα του -πράγμα που μου φαίνεται σχεδόν αδιανόητο-, δεν μπορείς να μην αναγνωρίσεις πως το συγγραφικό ύφος του είναι κάτι παραπάνω από χαρακτηριστικό, μα και πως είναι ο συγγραφέας που κατάφερε να ζωντανέψει καλύτερα από οποιονδήποτε άλλον ομότεχνό του, την Αμερική των δεκαετιών του '20 και το '30, με ό,τι αυτό συνεπάγεται.
Αγαπώ τον Fitzgerald, όχι τόσο για όλους αυτούς τους δεκάδες ακαδημαϊκούς λόγους που θα μπορούσε ν' αραδιάσει ο καθένας που έχει μελετήσει λίγο πιο ενδελεχώς το έργο του, μα για τη μοναδική του ικανότητα να μας ταξιδεύει στον χρόνο και στον χώρο, με μια αφηγηματική δεινότητα και μια λεπτομερή, άκρως ζωντανή παραστατικότητα, που κάνει το χθες να φαντάζει πως ξυπνάει και αναγεννιέται στο σήμερα. Πάνω απ' όλα, όμως, και περισσότερο από κάθε άλλο λόγο, αγαπώ τον Fitzgerald γιατί υπήρξε ένας από τους τελευταίους πραγματικά, βαθιά και πηγαία ευαίσθητους και ρομαντικούς της γενιάς του -και όχι μόνο. Ένας ρομαντισμός και μια ευαισθησία που διαφαίνεται ξεκάθαρα σε κάθε κείμενό του, συναισθήματα που εναποθέτονται σε κάθε ήρωα και σε κάθε ιστορία του μ' έναν τρόπο λεπτεπίλεπτο και ευάλωτο, που αφυπνίζει συνειδήσεις, γεννά προβληματισμούς, προκαλεί τον εσωτερικό μας κόσμο με τρόπους πρωτόγνωρους κι επίπονους πολλές φορές, μα τόσο αληθινούς, ανθρώπινους, που σε κάνουν να αισθάνεσαι πιο ζωντανός από ποτέ.
Εκεί που χτυπάει η καρδιά των ηρώων του Fitzgerald, στα πρόσωπα των οποίων, ουκ ολίγες φορές, αναγνωρίζουμε το δικό του πρόσωπο, εκεί είναι που χτυπάει και η δική μας, σε ρυθμούς αλλόκοτους, ξέφρενους, για άλλους πρωτόγνωρους, για εμάς που αναπνέουμε κάθε φορά νέο αέρα μέσα από τα γραπτά του, αγαπημένους. Και ακριβώς αυτό συμβαίνει και στη νέα αυτή, μοναδικά υπέροχη έκδοση των εκδόσεων Κλειδάριθμος, που μέσα από σκοτεινά και σκονισμένα συρτάρια, ανασύροντας κείμενα, άλλα ξεχασμένα, άλλα θαμμένα, μέσα από τη δίνη του χρόνου που σαρώνει τα πάντα στο πέρασμά του, μας χαρίζει μια σειρά από 18 ανέκδοτα, μέχρι σήμερα, διηγήματα του μεγάλου συγγραφέα, όλα με τη δική του ξεχωριστή και χαρακτηριστική σφραγίδα, και το καθένα από αυτά με τη δική σου σημαντικότητα, εμπνευσμένα από την ίδια τη ζωή και τον άνθρωπο.
Δυστυχώς, ο Fitzgerald υπήρξε ένας πολύ αδικημένος συγγραφέας, όσο αυτός βρισκόταν εν ζωή. Πολλά από τα έργα του λογοκρίθηκαν, άλλα γιατί προκαλούσαν, μια εποχή που η Αμερική έβραζε μέσα στο ίδιο της το ζουμί και που οι κοινωνικές, οικονομικές, πολιτικές αλλαγές έφερναν μια για πάντα τα πάντα κάτω στη ζωή ολόκληρης της χώρας και του λαού της -ο οποίος δεν ήταν προετοιμασμένος για όλα αυτά, ζώντας μέσα σε μια υπέρλαμπρη φούσκα ωραιοπάθειας και σνομπισμού απέναντι ακόμα και στον ίδιο τον Θεό και τη ζωή ολάκερη-, ενώ άλλα επειδή το νόημά τους ήταν τόσο βαθύ και ουσιώδες για τους τότε επιμελητές, αξιολογητές, εκδότες, που τους ήταν αδύνατο, όχι να το κατανοήσουν, αλλά ακόμα και να το επεξεργαστούν σε βασικό επίπεδο. Αυτό, όμως, ίσως και να είναι το τίμημα που πρέπει να πληρώσουν οι πραγματικοί καλλιτέχνες. Να θυσιάσουν μια ζωή για ν' αναγνωριστεί η αξία τους μετά το τέλος αυτής, κάνοντάς τους, τελικά, να μείνουν αιώνιοι στη μνήμη της Ιστορίας και του κόσμου που ξέρει να εκτιμάει με το μυαλό του και ν' αγαπάει με την καρδιά του. Και οι αναγνώστες του Fitzgerald είμαστε τέτοιοι άνθρωποι.
Αγαπώ τον Fitzgerald, όχι τόσο για όλους αυτούς τους δεκάδες ακαδημαϊκούς λόγους που θα μπορούσε ν' αραδιάσει ο καθένας που έχει μελετήσει λίγο πιο ενδελεχώς το έργο του, μα για τη μοναδική του ικανότητα να μας ταξιδεύει στον χρόνο και στον χώρο, με μια αφηγηματική δεινότητα και μια λεπτομερή, άκρως ζωντανή παραστατικότητα, που κάνει το χθες να φαντάζει πως ξυπνάει και αναγεννιέται στο σήμερα. Πάνω απ' όλα, όμως, και περισσότερο από κάθε άλλο λόγο, αγαπώ τον Fitzgerald γιατί υπήρξε ένας από τους τελευταίους πραγματικά, βαθιά και πηγαία ευαίσθητους και ρομαντικούς της γενιάς του -και όχι μόνο. Ένας ρομαντισμός και μια ευαισθησία που διαφαίνεται ξεκάθαρα σε κάθε κείμενό του, συναισθήματα που εναποθέτονται σε κάθε ήρωα και σε κάθε ιστορία του μ' έναν τρόπο λεπτεπίλεπτο και ευάλωτο, που αφυπνίζει συνειδήσεις, γεννά προβληματισμούς, προκαλεί τον εσωτερικό μας κόσμο με τρόπους πρωτόγνωρους κι επίπονους πολλές φορές, μα τόσο αληθινούς, ανθρώπινους, που σε κάνουν να αισθάνεσαι πιο ζωντανός από ποτέ.
Εκεί που χτυπάει η καρδιά των ηρώων του Fitzgerald, στα πρόσωπα των οποίων, ουκ ολίγες φορές, αναγνωρίζουμε το δικό του πρόσωπο, εκεί είναι που χτυπάει και η δική μας, σε ρυθμούς αλλόκοτους, ξέφρενους, για άλλους πρωτόγνωρους, για εμάς που αναπνέουμε κάθε φορά νέο αέρα μέσα από τα γραπτά του, αγαπημένους. Και ακριβώς αυτό συμβαίνει και στη νέα αυτή, μοναδικά υπέροχη έκδοση των εκδόσεων Κλειδάριθμος, που μέσα από σκοτεινά και σκονισμένα συρτάρια, ανασύροντας κείμενα, άλλα ξεχασμένα, άλλα θαμμένα, μέσα από τη δίνη του χρόνου που σαρώνει τα πάντα στο πέρασμά του, μας χαρίζει μια σειρά από 18 ανέκδοτα, μέχρι σήμερα, διηγήματα του μεγάλου συγγραφέα, όλα με τη δική του ξεχωριστή και χαρακτηριστική σφραγίδα, και το καθένα από αυτά με τη δική σου σημαντικότητα, εμπνευσμένα από την ίδια τη ζωή και τον άνθρωπο.
Δυστυχώς, ο Fitzgerald υπήρξε ένας πολύ αδικημένος συγγραφέας, όσο αυτός βρισκόταν εν ζωή. Πολλά από τα έργα του λογοκρίθηκαν, άλλα γιατί προκαλούσαν, μια εποχή που η Αμερική έβραζε μέσα στο ίδιο της το ζουμί και που οι κοινωνικές, οικονομικές, πολιτικές αλλαγές έφερναν μια για πάντα τα πάντα κάτω στη ζωή ολόκληρης της χώρας και του λαού της -ο οποίος δεν ήταν προετοιμασμένος για όλα αυτά, ζώντας μέσα σε μια υπέρλαμπρη φούσκα ωραιοπάθειας και σνομπισμού απέναντι ακόμα και στον ίδιο τον Θεό και τη ζωή ολάκερη-, ενώ άλλα επειδή το νόημά τους ήταν τόσο βαθύ και ουσιώδες για τους τότε επιμελητές, αξιολογητές, εκδότες, που τους ήταν αδύνατο, όχι να το κατανοήσουν, αλλά ακόμα και να το επεξεργαστούν σε βασικό επίπεδο. Αυτό, όμως, ίσως και να είναι το τίμημα που πρέπει να πληρώσουν οι πραγματικοί καλλιτέχνες. Να θυσιάσουν μια ζωή για ν' αναγνωριστεί η αξία τους μετά το τέλος αυτής, κάνοντάς τους, τελικά, να μείνουν αιώνιοι στη μνήμη της Ιστορίας και του κόσμου που ξέρει να εκτιμάει με το μυαλό του και ν' αγαπάει με την καρδιά του. Και οι αναγνώστες του Fitzgerald είμαστε τέτοιοι άνθρωποι.
February 3, 2018
I'd Die For You, a collection of previously unpublished and uncollected short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, really delivers. Most of these were written when Fitzgerald was going through difficult periods in his personal life, which are reflected brilliantly on the page. Unfortunately, this also means that many of the stories are darker, or more somber, than the works that made him famous (it was for this reason that most didn't sell). Luckily for us, these stories remain unedited and unaltered, as he originally wrote them. This is a true treat, as is the commentary by Anne Margaret Daniel, who includes background information on each story, as well as photographs and correspondences between Fitzgerald and others. Fans of Fitzgerald, and those interested in the writing process, will really enjoy going through these. Given four of five stars only because the quality of the stories are uneven; some were absolutely incredible, a handful fell flat, and the rest hovered somewhere in between. That being said, this is worth reading just to explore the breadth and depth of his overall body of work.
July 23, 2024
immaculately curated selection of Fitz’s works as he tried to mature his post-Gatsby literary reputation through the ‘30s. these often darker-themed stories and screen scenarios are a mix of hits and misses, but the hits are solid!
FWIW, I think my favorites are “Salute to Lucy and Elsie”, “The Couple”, and “What to Do About It”, though I want to revisit the title story and the Civil War sagas too.
FWIW, I think my favorites are “Salute to Lucy and Elsie”, “The Couple”, and “What to Do About It”, though I want to revisit the title story and the Civil War sagas too.
July 22, 2025
a really well compiled collection that gives a look into who fitzgerald was as a writer. i liked the explanations before each story that highlighted the way he pulled from his experiences in his writing, as well as the photos of him and his original manuscripts! I wouldn’t say I’m Fitzgerald’s biggest fan but this collection definitely gave me a new perspective on his style and significance as an author!
April 15, 2021
A few of these stories resonated with me, namely Nightmare, I’d Die for You, Offside Play and What to Do About It but all these were written with characteristically excellent prose by Fitzgerald. If it’s a dichotomy I think I’m a Hemingway fan though
September 2, 2021
Jak to często bywa z opowiadaniami, jedne są lepsze, a inne gorsze. Najbardziej podobały mi się opowiadania o wojnie secesyjnej.
💛💛💛
💛💛💛
August 4, 2018
While it's clear that these are the "b sides" of Fitzgerald's work, they do him no favors being published.
Almost every one contains an original and interesting premise where the execution is downright tiresome. It's hard to see how they were innovative, even when they were written, but it must be so because everyone says it.
The best stories are the "movie treatments" where Fitzgerald is outlining a plot and a few details without trying to flesh out an entire story. These, more than the stories, are reflective of the years when they were written (especially of Hollywood's idea of a good movie) and contain quite a few between-the-lines indications of Fitzgerald's sense of obligation to and disdain for the industry.
I can't say there's anything here for the average literature lover (although I'm sure Fitzgerald fans are in heaven.) I wish I'd skipped these in favor of reading one of his novels that are still on my "someday" list.
Almost every one contains an original and interesting premise where the execution is downright tiresome. It's hard to see how they were innovative, even when they were written, but it must be so because everyone says it.
The best stories are the "movie treatments" where Fitzgerald is outlining a plot and a few details without trying to flesh out an entire story. These, more than the stories, are reflective of the years when they were written (especially of Hollywood's idea of a good movie) and contain quite a few between-the-lines indications of Fitzgerald's sense of obligation to and disdain for the industry.
I can't say there's anything here for the average literature lover (although I'm sure Fitzgerald fans are in heaven.) I wish I'd skipped these in favor of reading one of his novels that are still on my "someday" list.
January 5, 2020
Много ярко си личи защо тези разкази са цензурирани и отхвърляни – в тях Фицджералд открито говори за Голяма депресия в Америка, за бедността в страната, за неуспехите в Холивуд, алкохолизма, леките жени, сексът за една вечер, лудите, лудниците, животът в тях ... Теми, които по това време не са очаквани от него.
Това е било и голямата болка на Фицджералд – той е искал да пише за истинските неща от живота, а от него са изисквани истории за младежки любови и животът на богатите. А в тези разкази той е много по-черноглед, обстановката е много по-тъмна, много по-реалистична .. и така той с години се е разминавал с редакторите. Много от разказите имат автобиорафичен елемент. Фицджералд е обичал да преплита фикция и реалност. И му се е получавало много добре.
Пълното ревю може да прочетете тук ===> https://bookadventureclub.blogspot.co...
Това е било и голямата болка на Фицджералд – той е искал да пише за истинските неща от живота, а от него са изисквани истории за младежки любови и животът на богатите. А в тези разкази той е много по-черноглед, обстановката е много по-тъмна, много по-реалистична .. и така той с години се е разминавал с редакторите. Много от разказите имат автобиорафичен елемент. Фицджералд е обичал да преплита фикция и реалност. И му се е получавало много добре.
Пълното ревю може да прочетете тук ===> https://bookadventureclub.blogspot.co...
February 21, 2019
Most of the stories in this collection date from the 30's, during the Depression, when Fitzgerald was trying to move his genre away from love stories about pretty, rich girls, parties and high living to the grittier aspects of real life. During this period, his agent and publishing editors frequently demanded changes to soften the content, or rejected it entirely. Also, during the period, he had spells of working in Hollywood, which, while financially attractive, was frustrating in that he viewed the literary output requirements as very ordinary and it took time away from his chosen pursuits.His writing is imaginative and direct, without elaboration, and often involves a young, pretty, somewhat naive and love-struck girl and one or more older men with obvious character defects. There is no sex, but it is sometimes implied. The plot doesn't end as one might expect, but rarely badly.The first story in the book is The I.O.U. written in 1920 for Harper's Bazaar which didn't publish, nor did The Saturday Evening Post. Fitzgerald was working on his second novel The Beautiful and Damned at the time, and the story was 'lost in the shuffle'. Yale's Beinecke Library purchased the manuscript in 2012 for $194,500 (14 printed pages). The story is a light-hearted satire of the publishing industry, featuring a stressed-out publisher, a mad-as-a-hatter psychic doctor/author, a war hero and a pretty girl. The improbable antics are certainly entertaining, and the story ends with the public unmasking of the fraudulent author via an IOU for $3.80.Gracie at Sea is a screen play scenario written for George Burns and Gracie Allen, who were a famous cinema comic duo at the time (1934). It is based on the proposition that wealthy father will not allow his pretty, younger daughter to marry until her older, very awkward sister is married. Gracie is the awkward sister and George Burns in the incompetent PR man hired to make Gracie look marriageable. Everything goes wrong as one slap-stick scene follows another. This may have worked in the hands of an able director, but as a screen play scenario written as a serious short story it falls completely flat, and Paramount didn't buy it.Travel Together written a year or two after Gracie at Sea concerns a Hollywood writer who is living the life of a hobo in order to gain experience for a screen play he is writing. He meets a pretty, young hobo girl, with whom he travels to the west coast. The girl is looking for a woman to whom her rich, senile father gave a large diamond just before he died; she views the diamond as her rightful inheritance. It is a lovely, imaginative story.There are plenty of other good stories in this collection; some of them ahead of their time in dealing with taboos like un-married pregnancy, illicit funding of college sports, suicide and criminal activities. Fitzgerald wanted to tell it like it is, not like his audience might have wanted it to be. This made his efforts to change genres more difficult, and his finances more strained, while his ventures into Hollywood were frustrating, and his own health and that of his wife were deteriorating.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 214 reviews