Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
In 1929 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Ernest Hemingway that because his short stories now earned $4000 a pop he was "an old whore" who had "mastered the 40 positions" when "in her youth one was enough." But were the upwards of 180 stories he cranked out when not writing The Great Gatsby really the work of a literary prostitute selling out his talent for a fast buck? Kirk Curnutt and Robert Trogdon don't think so. Each episode they draw a random title from a hat and explore its place in Fitzgerald's career, in the magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post or Esquire where it may have appeared, and in the overall development of the American short story. Along the way, they talk literary politics, history, and gossip from the 1920s and 1930s, rediscovering the lively personalities and rivalries that tried to define the porous boundaries between commercial and artistic fiction, between the popular and the avant-garde, between the forgotten and the canonized.
Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
May Day
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Most fans agree that "May Day" is among Fitzgerald's all-time greatest stories: certainly Top 10, arguably Top 5, quite possibly No. 2 behind only "Babylon Revisited." Some might even argue that this ambitious "novelette," first published in The Smart Set in July 1920 when its author was all of twenty-three, tops that most-anthologized, most-ubiquitous of Fitzgerald's short fictions. Based on real-life riots that erupted in New York City on May 1, 1919, this panoramic political tale pits four separate duos in intersections of restless violence and spoiled privilege: the dissatisfied debutante Edith Bradin and her brother Henry, the editor of a socialist newspaper; the failed artist Gordon Sterrett and the working-class woman, Jewel Hudson, who bribes him into marriage; the drunken Yale grads Philip Dean and Peter Himmel, who dub themselves Mr. In and Mr. Out as they trash elite restaurants and hotels; and Gus Rose and Carrol Key, two demobilized World War I vets who beat socialists bloody on the street. Critiquing both the proliferating Red-Scare neuroses and consumer opulence that inaugurated the Jazz Age, "May Day" finds Fitzgerald experimenting with naturalism, a style he adopted to curry the favor of The Smart Set's co-editor, H. L. Mencken. We dissect the historical background, examine the literary affinities, and celebrate the political insight and artistic ambition.