The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection [Paperback]

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

Book Description

Release date: September 20, 1995

Today F. Scott Fitzgerald is better known for his novels, but in his own time, his fame rested squarely on his prolific achievement as one of America's most gifted writers of stories and novellas. Now, a half-century after the author's death, the premier Fitzgerald scholar and biographer, Matthew J. Bruccoli, has assembled in one volume the full scope of Fitzgerald's best short fiction: forty-three sparkling masterpieces, ranging from such classic novellas as "The Rich Boy," "May Day," and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" to his commercial work for the Saturday Evening Post and its sister "slicks."

For the reader, these stories will underscore the depth and extraordinary range of Fitzgerald's literary talents. Furthermore, Professor Bruccoli's illuminating preface and introductory headnotes establish the literary and biographical settings in which these stories now shine anew with brighter luster than ever.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bruccoli's ( Some Sort of Epic Grandeur ) collection of 43 Fitzgerald stories includes 23 not featured in Malcolm Cowley's landmark 1951 collection, expanding the canon of a peerless American writer who was deeply ambivalent about the role of short fiction in his art. Published in commercial magazines (e.g., the Saturday Evening Post ), the stories brought their author as much as $4000 each--but also exacted a price, distracting Fitzgerald from work on his novels. Regardless, many of the stories are unequalled in achievement--inspirited with a delicate wit, a shrewd perception of character and a poetic sense of place--and lead us through Fitzgerald's rich creative chronology, from unforgettable evocations of the enchanting but ruthless social whirl of the young in the 1920s ("Bernice Bobs Her Hair") to the exhaustion of spirit chronicled 16 years later in "Afternoon of an Author." Among the 23 stories, nearly all of which have appeared previously in magazines, is one--"Last Kiss"--published for the first time in the author's final revision. Invaluable to Fitzgerald admirers, Bruccoli's collection should also capture a new generation of readers. BOMC alternate, QPB main selection .
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This collection of 43 stories--culled from some 160 in the Fitzgerald canon--is designed to replace Malcolm Cowley's 1951 selection of 28 stories. Bruccoli has prefaced each story briefly and reasserted his conviction that Fitzgerald is of paramount importance as a short-story writer. Those already thus persuaded may welcome this new edition. Others, less enchanted by such claims, will not. So much of Fitzgerald seems hopelessly dated, so much O. Henry-ized, so much twisted into easy magazine-acceptability that the occasionally brilliant sentence that Fitzgerald could always unexpectedly produce serves more as a gauge of the normal mediocrity of his imagination than the mark of any enduring value.
- Earl Rovit, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner Paperback edition (September 20, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068480445X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684804453
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the major American writers of the twentieth century -- a figure whose life and works embodied powerful myths about our national dreams and aspirations. Fitzgerald was talented and perceptive, gifted with a lyrical style and a pitch-perfect ear for language. He lived his life as a romantic, equally capable of great dedication to his craft and reckless squandering of his artistic capital. He left us one sure masterpiece, The Great Gatsby; a near-masterpiece, Tender Is the Night; and a gathering of stories and essays that together capture the essence of the American experience. His writings are insightful and stylistically brilliant; today he is admired both as a social chronicler and a remarkably gifted artist.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 98 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't believe the old canards about Fitzgerald's Short Story May 17, 2001

By William

Format:Hardcover

As a devoted admirer of the form, I can tell you that this book has more gems in it, POUND FOR POUND that virtually any other book of it's type.

Do you enjoy the poetry of Keats and the other Romantic poets? Do you enjoy Shakespeare's sonnets? Then you'll LOVE this book. It BREATHES, it shivvers with vitality and lyricism. I've read the entire book twice, and individual stories like "Rich Boy", "Babylon Revisited", "Absolution"; which many consider as a trial for the "Great Gatsby", "Jacob's Ladder", "Winter Dreams", etc., too many times to recount. THERE IS BEAUTY AND POETRY IN THE WRITING! Does the plot always nail us to our chairs? No, not even in Gatsby; but the writing does. That is why I agree with Gertrude Stein's assesment of Fitzgerald vis-a-vis Hemingway: That his flame burns a little brighter. She was so enraptured by "Gatsby", that she drew a line on her wall, with the request to "please, next time, write one THIS thick".

Are they all great? Well, to a degree, greatness is in the eye of the beholder. SOME individual stories which are raved over by critics and readers alike leave me relatively cold. "Benjamin Button"; the case of a person born elderly and "aging" in reverse, to me reads like bad science fiction. "Diamond as Big as the Ritz", is interesting only in several short sections in which Fitzgerald is trying to describe the most opulent scene which his fertile imagination can create. The rest of if to me is more farce than satire; and what precious little satire is available, seems a bit threadbare.

BUT IF YOU HAVE A SENSITIVITY FOR PURE POETRY, you can not help but be moved by this book. Look at it this way, Hemingway wrote "Moveable Feast", BECAUSE HE WAS INTIMIDATED BY FITZGERALD. Did Fitzgerald drink too much? Sure he did, but so did Joyce, Faulkner, Lardner, and Hemingway himself. It's nothing but lamentable, but we can't start disregarding writers because of their personal habits, or we're all going to be reading O Henry and James Whitcomb Riley.

Did Fitzgerald flunk out of college? Yes, that is true also, but Hemingway didn't even GO TO COLLEGE, and has a memorable quote in a short story that "education is an opiate of the people". Edmund Wilson was a fantastic scholar--and a boring writer. Don't judge the EXTRANEOUS, judge the writing itself. Don't confuse brilliance with being an academic. Einstein himself was a "C" student.

Too much is made about Fitzgerald's own negative assessment regarding his short stories. Scott could never handle pressure. He attributed this facility for "wavering at the critical moment" as a bequeathal from his father. It may have made him feel better to belittle the work he did everyday to earn his bread--so at least he could not be held to his own impossibly high standards for something so mercenary, or so goes the logic. But he was craving desperatly for money during much of his life, so doesn't logic also imply that if he could earn more money for ONE story than the years of labor that went into "Tender is the Night" , that he would put forth something VERY CLOSE TO HIS BEST? When he was flat broke and his daughter and wife needing support and if his story wasn't accepted by a major magazine of the time, they would suffer terrible consequences? I can guarantee you that he tried and very hard. The proof as they say is in the pudding.

This book deserves a PROMINENT PLACE in any library where the premium is paid to writing for its own beauty and elegance. You too will wish this book of short stories was a little "thicker" by the time you finish it.

For God's sake, you should by this book if for no other reason than to honor the man's life. The fact that it IS so good, is more of a break than we typically get in life.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The essence of literary genius distilled in one volume. August 5, 1999

By Edward Dunn

Format:Hardcover

This book is the wellspring of Fitzgerald's literary genius. The first treat is Brucolli's informed selection of Scott's some 165 works and his brief, beautiful preface...followed by 43 perfectly crafted gems from the master: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. I read a clutch of Fitzgerald novels in my late teens. More than 20 years later, I started on this impeccable volume, which unfurled an additional world of wonders. Brucolli has gathered the best of Fitzgerald's short stories--in other words, the best of 20th century American short fiction--and provided brief, illuminating introductory passages for each journey into Scott's glorious prose. Some stories are realistic, while others are full of phantasm. Some are cruel and unnerving, while others are sweet and whimsical. But all of them are informed by Scott's style: poetic, melancholy, vibrant, forlorn, youthful, aged, dated, and eternally modern. I literally fell in love with Fitzgerald over the course of this book. He may have been an alcoholic spendthrift in life. But, in the undying world of words, he was a man of almost painfully honed sensibilities. Prepare yourself for a slow read--because you'll want to reread each phrase, each sentence, each paragraph, and each story....over and over again. This century has produced a pantheon of titanic American masters of short fiction: Hemingway, Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor, Cheever, Porter, Jewett, Stegner. Yet, when the sun sets, Scott Fitzgerald, gone too soon at 44, towers above all. Buy it! You'll savor it for a lifetime.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gatsby-like jewels scattered throughout August 1, 2000

By William

Format:Hardcover

Don't be misled by another reviewer who claimed that this book "leaves out his (Scott's) hits", as if that were a way to speak about pages written in blood. It doesn't leave them out anyway.

"May Day", with its tremendous symbolism and exploration of early socialism in this country. The insites into the North/South dichotomy reflected in his marriage to Zelda, and expounded upon in Ice Palace. The incredibly beautiful story "Winter Dreams" will strike a resonant chord with anyone who has every realized the gossamer nature of their most cherrished love illusions--I could go on about virtually every story in the Book--and for at least a little while I shall.

Not a big fan of "Diamond Big as the Ritz", or "Benjamin Button", but they are interesting as exercises in literature for anyone drawn to fantasy.

However when Fitgerald is dealing in a lyrical way with he topics which made Gatsby the Greatest Book of the century; as he does frequently, he is not to be surpassed.

Jacobs ladder, with the poignant story of a slightly (ahem) older man's fondness for a young girl which turns into a devastating love unrequitted for the adult. The novella/story Rich Boy, which I must say in agreement with Ring Lardner, contains if not the actual material, certainly the germ of many another authors novel's worth of writing. "Babylon Revisted" is one of the greatest short stories of this or any other author in this or any other time.

And then of course the wonderfully humorous and whimsical stories like "Dice, Brass, Knuckles, and Guitar", and "Jelly Bean"--yet still with that charactersitically Fitgeraldian sympathy for his characters.

The Basil Duke Lee stories are the best of that genre ever written. Period.

OK, I'm breathing easier after seing that last ridiculously tepid review.

If this book were priced by lyricism, insight, and general beauty of the prose, it should go for well over $1,000's in relation to other books of its kind.

An insult to Fitzgerald that it is sold this CHEAPLY.