Reviews

The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald

joannaautumn's review

4.0

Best spent 14 dollars in 2020. Okay, one of the best spent 14 dollars in general.

The thing with Fitzgerald is that his writing takes me to another world, the aesthetic of his writing is something I admire a lot; all the work he puts into the form, polishing it until we get perfection. He is one of those writers that use a careful selection of words that in a small amount of space(pages) tells a lot and lingers in your mind.

➔Some themes, motifs, and characters you will find in these stories:

The Flapper✔

Conflicting feelings about religion(Catholicism)✔

Tragic love✔

Irony✔

Hope and longing for what is gone✔

South vs North ✔

➔Benediction

“Well, he and I were talking about sweetness a few weeks ago. Oh, I don’t know — I said that a man named Howard — that a man I knew was sweet, and he didn’t agree with me, and we began talking about what sweetness in a man was: He kept telling me I meant a sort of soppy softness, but I knew I didn’t — yet I didn’t know exactly how to put it. I see now. I meant just the opposite. I suppose real sweetness is a sort of hardness — and strength.”

*******

“I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to.”

One of the stories I liked the least in this collection. It’s a story about a 19-year-old Lois, visiting her brother who she hasn’t seen for 17 years, ever since he has gone training to be a priest. They discuss religion and what it takes to be a good priest, and how people aren’t religious anymore. The story left me neutral after reading, since it leaves a lot of the things unsaid.

2,5/5

➔Head and Shoulders

"But life hadn’t come that way. Life took hold of people and forced them into flying rings. He laughed to think of that rap at his door, the diaphanous shadow in Hume, Marcia’s threatened kiss.

“And it’s still me,” he said aloud in wonder as he lay awake in the darkness. “I’m the man who sat in Berkeley with temerity to wonder if that rap would have had actual existence had my ear not been there to hear it. I’m still that man. I could be electrocuted for the crimes he committed.
“Poor gauzy souls trying to express ourselves in something tangible. Marcia with her written book; I with my unwritten ones. Trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get — and being glad.”

The delicious irony in this one. I loved it. Definitely a story that stays with the reader, it gets even more tragi-comic when you tie the characters to Fitzgerald and Zelda.

Clearly a 5/5 for me.

➔The Ice palace

" You’ve a place in my heart no one else ever could have, but tied down here I’d get restless. I’d feel I was — wastin’ myself. There’s two sides to me, you see. There’s the sleepy old side you love an’ there’s a sort of energy — the feeling that makes me do wild things. That’s the part of me that may be useful somewhere, that’ll last when I’m not beautiful any more.”

Now this one. It resonated with my southern soul a lot. The difference between North and South is striking in any country it seems; This story also tied it down to the Flapper Sally Carrol Happer, which is one of his iconic flappers.

5/5 for relatability and South/North Polarisation.

➔Bernice bobs her hair

“People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.”

Social competition + pettiness = a fun story with a snappy ending and a message about how hypocritical society can be.

4,5/5.

➔ The Offshore pirate

“Courage—just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage—the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more—I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions—just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way…”

One of those stories that has elements that generally work together – a flapper sassy main female character, a kidnapping, a love story, and a twist at the end. Although not my favorite from the collection, the story is charming.

3/5.

➔May Day

“Just that. I was always queer — little bit different from other boys. All right in college, but now it’s all wrong. Things have been snapping inside me for four months like little hooks on a dress, and it’s about to come off when a few more hooks go. I’m very gradually going loony.”

The lengthiest in the collection, this story used May day riots as a historical context and well.. I am not well educated in that part of American history, so it was tough for me to get through, will return to this one in the future for a reread when I have more info on the topic.

➔The Jelly Bean

This story left me indifferent, overall wasn’t a bad story but compared to the other stories from this collection it falls into the background.
2/5.

➔The Diamond as big as the Ritz

“Under the stars,” she repeated. “I never noticed the stars before. I always thought of them as great big diamonds that belonged to some one. Now they frighten me. They make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth.”

“It was a dream,” said John quietly. “Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”
“How pleasant then to be insane!”

I loved everything about this. The fantastical elements were incorporated in such a good way into the story. I want to read Benjamin Button now, because damn.
4,5/5

➔Winter dreams

"The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on SherryIsland and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck’s soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.

For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

“Long ago,” he said, “long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.”

A mixture of Gatsby-esque main character and love story with elements of Fitzgerald’s own life and with his reoccurring theme of longing for what is gone – what’s there not to love?
5/5

➔Absolution

Another story that centers around religion, reminds me a lot of The sisters by James Joyce. However, I don’t connect with those types of stories a lot, so they leave me cold
3/5.

Overall, I am not disappointed by this collection, would recommend it to any Fitzgerald lover, off to find [b:Tales of the Jazz Age|702817|Tales of the Jazz Age|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177430735l/702817._SX50_.jpg|21695643], because apparently, this man can’t do bad.
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Fitzgerald has never let me down. Review to come.

daansb's review

emotional lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

sarahwolfe's review

4.0

I didn't know Fitzgerald wrote such fantastic short stories; I've only ever read The Great Gatsby. I can't believe we didn't study these in my Short Narrative courses in college! He writes such vivid characters and in such phenomenal visual detail. The plots can be thin or unlikely, but it doesn't even matter because the writing is so good.

wynne_ronareads's review

4.0

I recently read F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (or novella) "May Day," published by Art of the Novella, which makes beautiful graphically designed books. I'm adding this book cover since it doesn't exist as a single title.
I read it alongside "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," which I am about 20 pgs. away from finishing.

"May Day" was unlike other Fitzgerald I'd read. First, the language was very simple to understand. It follows four characters who interact with each other over the period of single afternoon and evening. There's down on his luck Garret (I think), beautiful but finicky Edith, and soldiers Kay and Rose. In typical Fitzgerald style, all are generally unlikeable. Edith looks at herself in the mirror while she tells herself she's pretty and ready for love, the soldiers are slimy guys hell bent on scoring some booze, and the story opens on Garret begging money off of a friend because he's caught in a toxic relationship with a woman named Jewel.
Not much happens other than watching the characters maneuver through as the night deteoriates. But it's still beautiful. The novella I had included a single quote on the back: "All crowds need to howl." What a great line...

I've read a couple places that Scott took credit for a few short stories that Zelda wrote. It just so happened I read that while I was reading this and it made me wonder (since the language seemed so different) but who cares who wrote it? It's still great.