Collected Stories 4: Bernice Bobs Her Hair

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

What we know of that unique period in American history labeled the Jazz Age has been defined by F. Scott Fitzgerald's piercing fiction. His short stories brilliantly realize an era both exploding with opportunity and seething with decadence. His prose captures the melancholy lacquered over with merriment, the corruption interlaced with the glamour, all refracted through a spectrum of human lives.

Bernice bobs her hair --
Winter dreams --
"The sensible thing" --
Absolution --
The baby party --
A short trip home --
Magnetism --
The rough crossing.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics

paper

Published January 1, 1990

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

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Picked this up in a Church stall for 20 pence. It has to be the best 20 pence I have spent in a long time. Beautifully written, fantastic images and so often a sharp sting in the tail. I loved the way he cleverly leaves echoes of other stories, other writers and lets you struggle with them. In the title story on the first page this wonderful nudge or jibe at Jane Austen
' it can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one which states that every young man with a large income leads the life of a hunted partridge '.

There was romance and cruelty, sinister shadowy bullys and haunted frail failures. The title story was a perfect account of shyness being betrayed but coming to a new courage through the betrayal and this is the common journey in most of the stories. Moving from a naive perhaps apathetic or self obsessed state to a fuller reality through some sort of trial but in all the stories there is the sense that Fitzgerald gives that sadly something in that movement is lost. He is stating clearly that greater self knowledge normally involves loss and impoverishment as the counter-weight to any advantages. Excellent stories but sad, wistful ones that always seem to be looking over the shoulder to something moving away back into your history

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eight excellent short stories by a literary legend - who did actually write more than just the one novel...you know, the one with...a chap called Gatsby!...& dozens of short - though not much shorter than T.G.G! - stories that capture the post-war (the Great one!) years of American dreaming with un peu de la France...although Scotty used his own pen...not 'la plume de sa tante'!...& a whole feast of jazz & champers & flappers! Quite a deal of tensions & failed romances too.

[Aashima Prasad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three stories are the best of the collection. You can see the germ of Fitzgerald's characteristic writing voice in them. Winter Dreams was the precursor to our beloved The Great Gatsby. But it was Bernice Bobs her Hair that really took the cake for me in terms of how he writes about these ballroom dances, fashion, and gossip.

[Sem · Rating 5 out of 5]

These aren’t all masterpieces but the first three stories are of such absurdly high quality that it actually made me want to seek out all of Fitzgerald’s short work just to see what other heights he reaches.

[Polina Melnikova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly written and easy to read.

[Calum Orr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just really like these stories. Highlights are The Baby Party and The Rough Crossing

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

About the cover photo - someone said (don't know who)
"give Louise Brooks a string of pearls and watch her turn
a studio photo session into a memorable occasion". Fitting
that Brooksie should be on the cover as she was the ultimate
flapper who would have made scrambled eggs out of Zelda -
if only she knew where the kitchen was!! She was the real deal!!
Anyway back to the stories.
Welcome to the ruthless, cut throat world of young female society
- 1920's style. Into this scintillating world comes Bernice - at
home in Eau Paul she is in the social hub but here she is tongue
tied and dull, only commenting on the weather and what sort of
car do her dance partners have!! They say eaves droppers never
hear good of themselves but the earful that Bernice catches
causes her to put herself into cousin Marjorie's steely hands
and be reinvented as a witty eccentric - but Marjorie finds she
has created a monster!!
Marjorie is Fitzgerald's voice as she gives her forthright views
on whiney girls who expect everything from marriage but bring
nothing themselves except false expectations to their husbands
(shades of Edith Wharton) and the very Fitzgeraldian "If I'd
been irretrievably ugly I'd never forgive my parents for bringing
me into the world".
Bernice is caught up in the whirl of breezy chit-chat, returning
of an evening "dance tired" and the heavy debate of bobbed hair.
After a lot of goading and daring, Bernice, caught up in the giddy
moment, has her hair "bobbed" at the local barbers, then realises
it was all part of Marjorie's selfish plan to make her look a fool
at a dance to be given in her honour. Bernice's revenge is swift
and fast and Marjorie will find a need to speedily visit a barber
shop herself the next morning.
"The Baby Party" is one of my favourite Fitgerald short stories -
it's not angsty, it's all about when things get out of control at
a baby party. Damon Runyon would have been proud!! Two little
children fall out over a teddy bear, their mothers match insult
for insult in the drawing room and it ends up with a brawl for
the fathers out on the lawn. As someone says "I guess these baby
parties are pretty rough affairs"!!
These 8 stories span the decade of the twenties - "Winter Dreams"
(1922) and "The Sensible Thing" (1924) show how love is lost as
youthful ideals are grown out of to "A Short Trip Home" (1926)
about "a fellow who used to work the janes in car trains".
"Magnetism" - by 1928 F. Scott Fitzgerald was in Hollywood and
tearing his hair over the "Lipstick" script. This story reveals
his insightfulness into the picture business - the fact that
the old timers (actresses hovering around 30) from the Griffith
years had a humbleness and straightness about them sadly missing
from the rising stars of today (1927)!! "The Rough Crossing" also
has to do with a minor celebrity dealing with a persistant fan
and a storm at sea which almost threatens to turn the boat into
the "Titanic"!! Just love the last paragraph "Who do you suppose
were those Adrian-Smiths on board - not me - nor me - there are
so many Smiths in the world"!!!
Also included is the story "Absolution".

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, brief, romp in the roaring 20s. I think Bernice and I would have been friends.