The Price Was High: Fifty Uncollected Stories

by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (Editor)

The smilers --
Myra meets his family --
Two for a cent --
Dice, brassknuckles & guitar --
Diamond Dick and the first law of woman --
The third casket --
The pusher-in-the-face --
One of my oldest friends --
THe unspeakable egg --
John Jackson's arcady --

Not in the guidebook --
Presumption --
The adolescent marriage --
Your way and mine --
The love boat --
The bowl --
At your age --
Indecision --
Flight and pursuit --
On your own --

Between three and four --
A change of class --
Six of one --
A freeze-out --
Diagnosis --
The rubber check --
On schedule --
More than just a house --
I got shoes --
The family bus --

In the darkest hour --
No flowers --
New types --
Her last case --
Lo, the poor peacock! --
The intimate strangers --
Zone of accident --
Fate in her hands --
Image on the heart --
Too cute for words --

Inside the house --
Three acts of music --
"Trouble" --
An author's mother --
The end of hate --
In the holidays --
The guest in room nineteen --
Discard [Director's special] --
On an ocean wave --
The woman from twenty-one.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics

784 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

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

[Thomas Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are his short stories that people deemed not good enough to be in other collections. While some of the stories relied too much on two young people meeting and then immediately wanting to get married, they were still great. It is a thick book, but all the stories were memorable and unique. Fitzgerald's writing style was able to create great imagery and intriguing worlds simply and quickly. These stories still show why Fitzgerald was sough after for his short stories.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of incredible short stories from a writer who, in my opinion, is simply the greatest. Nobody writes prose like poetry like Fitzgerald.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE HIS SHORT STORIES.CAPTURED AND CREATED HIS TIMES

[Will García · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are recurrent themes in Scott Fitzgerald's stories in this book: money, beauty, love and also loneliness. This is an inherently american collection of short stories, framed in its own historical background, sure, but some of the longings are universal. Meanwhile, the other stories show how much old F.S. Fitzgerald needed money and was willing to write for it.

[Mike Booth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really quite varied selection of stories from an incredible author. As the stories come from all parts of his life, there is a wide range of quality here - from some which are almost nonsensical or end abruptly to works which could easily have been expanded into a novel, and were a delight to read. Because of the inclusion of some of the worse ones, it's only a 4* from me, but there definitely are some gems in here. I read this as I'd read most other collections and the 5 novels, and I think it will be the last time I read any Fitzgerald for a while, as the sheer volume of stories in here did start to drag on me after a while. This coupled with the subject material almost always being somewhat similar - love, money, and melancholy of some sort - meant I found myself not reading as much. I'm sure I'll come back to read more eventually, as I do love most of his writing, but for every Great Gatsby there is a Tarquin of Cheapside, and both are represented in this anthology.

[Noel Cisneros · Rating 4 out of 5]

La apariencia del mundo de los millonarios, de las escuelas de la Ivy Leage, de las estrellas de cine cansadas de serlo, de hombres pusilánimes que descubren un día el poder que tienen en los puños, jovencitas engañadas por sus pretendientes (porque las consideran buscafortunas) que en venganza también los engañan a ellos, enamoramientos que se dieron en la guerra (la primera guerra mundial), son algunos de los temas que con dominio del arte de narrar desarrolla Fitzgerald a lo largo de este libro.

[Dan Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fitzgerald was definitely a writer of his time: his stories center around outdated themes and stereotypes surrounding women, money, luxury, and love. But you don’t read Fitzgerald for the moral content; you read him for the poetry of his prose. His lyrical writing creates worlds with bold, colorful middles and soft edges. It makes you feel like you’re floating above his stories, looking down on a nostalgic world of dreams and glory.

[Ann Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely love Fitzgerald short stories. They are beautifully written portrayal of an elite, but with so much sensibility that it is hard not to feel for the characters. Always a pleasure.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has a lot of very meh stories. There's a reason some of these weren't in any other collection

[Alex Ankarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mostly awesome, sometimes transcendent, the occasional dud. 'Three Acts of Music' is the saddest thing ever committed to paper.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

When first published in 1979 these 50 short stories had not been collected in any other book. That still holds true today for most of them. This book belongs on the shelves of any FSF afficionado.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

La elegancia en la escritura de Fitzgerald se hace notar haciendo de estos relatos exquisitos y dinámicos, fáciles de leer y ambientados en el Estados Unidos de La Gran Depresion que le da un toque especial, con arqueotipos personajes típicos de la época este libro te hace viajar en el tiempo.
Sin duda Francis Scott Fitzgerald es un gran escritor.
Recomiendo este libro para disfrute de su escritura y en caso de que se necesite algo fresco que leer.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's no such thing as a bad Fitzgerald story -- just some that aren't as great as others. This collection is not necessarily the junior varsity of Fitzgerald stories. Some of them are among his most interesting works. It is certainly worth delving into this book if you enjoy one of the 20th century's greatest writers and want to explore beyond the most well-known stories.