Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) - Softcover

From the Introduction by David Greenstein

No writer's debut in the world of American letters made a bigger splash than F. Scott Fitzgerald's. From his first appearance as a novelist with This Side of Paradise, published in 1920, he was acclaimed as the writer who defined and personified a new era. Fitzgerald coined the phrase 'the Jazz Age," and along with his wife, Zelda, set the standard for its lifestyle. Known today primarily for his novels'The Great Gatsby above all'he was famous in the 1920s and 1930s as a writer of short stories.  The nineteen stories in this volume (two of which are presented as one-act plays) first appeared in weekly or monthly magazines between January 1920 and June 1922, and shortly thereafter, in two hardcover collections, Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age.  The great writer's gifts'what Matthew Bruccoli, a leading Fitzgerald scholar, has called "the Fitzgerald touch"'were sharp wit, gorgeous description, and precise observation. With these, he portrayed the emotional depth of a society devoted to excess and racing heedlessly towards catastrophe that was only a few years ahead.

The stories in this volume, like much of Fitzgerald's work, come directly from the circumstances of his life, but they are not autobiographical. Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896 to an upper-middle-class Irish-American family. On his father's side, he was a distant relation to Francis Scott Key, who penned the 'the Star Spangled Banner'; hence his full name, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. His Midwestern background and Roman Catholicism made him (at least in his own eyes) a permanent outsider in the world of the urbane East. Thanks to his mother's inheritance, he attended several prep schools and from thirteen years old on wrote articles and stories for his school papers. In 1913, Fitzgerald entered Princeton where he devoted more time to writing and performing in plays and musicals than to his studies. On the verge of flunking out, he quit Princeton in 1917 and joined the army as America entered the First World War.   

The war ended before Fitzgerald could go overseas, but during his military service he completed a first draft of a novel that eventually became This Side of Paradise. Also, while stationed at Camp Sheridan in Alabama, he met the beautiful and talented Zelda Sayre, the belle of Montgomery, Alabama. Their courtship was rocky. Upon leaving the army, Scott worked for an advertising agency in New York and began writing stories for publication with virtually no success. His prospects appeared so dim that Zelda broke off their engagement. Retreating to his parents' home in St. Paul, Fitzgerald revised the novel. This time it was accepted by Scribner's, whose editor Maxwell Perkins became Fitzgerald's lifelong friend as well as his literary and financial supporter. This Side of Paradise was published in March 1920.

The years following the end of World War I in 1918 saw a tremendous change in American lifestyles and morals, and This Side of Paradise perfectly captured the new mood of the young. As Fitzgerald put it in the novel, 'Here was a new generation . . .  grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.' These were the Americans that Gertrude Stein dubbed 'the Lost Generation."

The acceptance of his novel prompted Zelda to reconsider her engagement to Fitzgerald and they were married a week after its publication. Scott and Zelda instantly became a celebrity couple in New York's café society and, for the press, the embodiment of everything the new era promised or threatened. Fitzgerald's income (as recorded in his meticulously kept notebooks) was only $879 in 1919, but between 1920 and 1922, he averaged around $20,000 to $25,000 a year. In terms of current dollars, this would be an increase from about $9,000 per year to over $250,000. The Fitzgeralds lived extravagantly, bought a Rolls Royce, and took extended trips to Europe.

With the end of the First World War, America was at the dawn of a decade of unprecedented prosperity and change. In 1920, women won the right to vote. Hemlines rose from the ankle to the knee. Prohibition ended the legal sale and drinking of alcohol throughout the country, but increased its widespread consumption. Speakeasies and private cocktail parties became the center of social life for men and women, a striking break from previously all-male bars. Automobile ownership grew rapidly, as did cigarette smoking (especially by women for whom it had previously been taboo). The saxophone became the favored instrument of the younger generation while on the dance floor the provocative Charleston and Shimmy replaced the stately prewar waltz.  America wanted nothing to interfere with its prosperity: the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia ignited a 'red scare' in the United States that led to riots and even lynching in 1919 and for some years thereafter. Real strife'like a riot at a Socialist newspaper on May 1, 1919'became the crux of Fitzgerald's story, 'may Day."

Fitzgerald's income from his novels (The Beautiful and Damned was published in 1922 and The Great Gatsby in 1925) could not support him, Zelda, and their daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald ('scottie'), born in 1921. As a result, he wrote stories for magazines including popular 'slicks' such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's, as well as the more intellectual The Smart Set. In addition to This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald wrote four other novels: The Beautiful and Damned (serialized in 1921 and published in hardcover in 1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender is the Night (1934), and The Last Tycoon (left unfinished at his death in 1940 and published the following year).  He also wrote about one hundred sixty stories. Although Fitzgerald considered his novels to be his major works of art, the stories paid the bills. Despite his own tendency to devalue them, some of his best writing appears in his short stories.

America in the early 1920s had three mass-entertainment media: radio, silent movies, and magazines. A number of Fitzgerald's magazine stories found their way onto to the movie screens, adding to his income. From both a business and personal standpoint, Fitzgerald was lucky to find a literary agent, Harold Ober, who would manage his magazine work (and serve as his unofficial banker) until near the end of Fitzgerald's life. A January 1920 letter from Fitzgerald to Ober, referring to 'the Camel's Back," sets the importuning tone for hundreds that would follow: