Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and short-story writer. He was best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term which he popularized. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four collections of short stories, and 164 short stories. Although he temporarily achieved popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald only received wide critical and popular acclaim after his death.

Only posthumously would critics appreciate his merits, although understanding of his talent would compete with popular interest in his life and marriage. Fitzgerald’s main themes are ambition and loss, discipline vs. self-indulgence, love and romance, and money and class. Much like Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, his work is instantly recognizable due to its distinctive prose style. Whereas Hemingway’s is sparse and Faulkner’s veers toward psychological abstraction, Fitzgerald’s is intensely poetic to the point of rhapsodic, elevating his laments into songs of mourning for the sureties and stable values that he felt modernity superannuated.

Novels:
This Side of Paradise (1920) 305 pages
The Beautiful and Damned (1922) 422 pages
The Great Gatsby (1925) 218 pages
Tender Is the Night (1934) 315 pages
After a long struggle with alcoholism, he died in 1940, at the age of 44. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), was completed by Edmund Wilson and published after Fitzgerald's death. 208 pages

Short Stories (a few):
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (1922) 64 pages
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories (1922) 58 pages
Winter Dreams (1922) 48 pages

His stormy relationship with the love of his life Zelda formed the basis of many stories and a lot of gossip in the tabloids.
Both of them were heavy drinkers, loved to party, and fighting was second nature. Daisy in the Great Gatsby was based on her.

Jazzy wrote: "His stormy relationship with the love of his life Zelda formed the basis of many stories and a lot of gossip in the tabloids.
Both of them were heavy drinkers, loved to party, and fighting was seco..."

In university I took a semester of literature and when we read Fitzgerald we had to write a research paper. I did mine on Zelda because I found that she had such an interesting personality. I received an A-, wish I had kept the paper.

Mikiko wrote: "Jazzy wrote: "His stormy relationship with the love of his life Zelda formed the basis of many stories and a lot of gossip in the tabloids.
Both of them were heavy drinkers, loved to party, and fig..."

Zelda was a marvel. She suffered from mental illness, which might be hard for some to understand. I'd have liked to read your paper.

I would like to read
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

My junior year in high school literature class we had to choose from a list of topics for our research papers. Each topic was technically two connected topics. I chose F. Scott Fitzgerald and the 1920s. I wrote my paper from Zelda’s POV with alternating paragraphs about part of the 1920s and then what was going on in his life at that time. I ended the paper with her just cutting off the narrative as she noticed fire nearby. She passed away during a fire in a mental hospital. My teacher said she could tell I didn’t write it in one night. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was wrong. ;)

You were inspired, Samantha!

If you want to read Zelda's only novel it's 77p on the kindle.
Save Me the Waltz. I just read The Great Gatsby again last week, so will choose some others, Tender is the Night will be a good one.

Thanks, Rosemarie! I was inspired, but I was also in the process of moving across town and wrote the whole paper the night before it was due. Motivated might be more accurate. :D

I enjoyed Tender is the Night, when I read it a few years ago.

I just enjoyed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button this past month. I wasn’t wild about The Great Gatsby a while back. So the score is tied. What book is recommended tip the balance?

How about
Flappers and Philosophers: The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
8 short stories, thanks Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4368

Here it is on librivox, with one of my favourite classic book readers, mb.
https://librivox.org/flappers-and-phi...

Jazzy wrote: "Here it is on librivox, with one of my favourite classic book readers, mb.
https://librivox.org/flappers-and-phi..."

Thanks, Jazzy!

Annette wrote: "Jazzy wrote: "Here it is on librivox, with one of my favourite classic book readers, mb.
https://librivox.org/flappers-and-phi..."

Thanks, Jazzy!"

My pleasure little treasure! x

I will try Tender is the Night this month.

Trisha wrote: "I will try Tender is the Night this month."
And I will too!

Jazzy wrote: "Trisha wrote: "I will try Tender is the Night this month."
And I will too!"

That’s good, Jazzy.

I have Tender is the Night, I do believe. I don’t know if I’ll get to it this month. I am curious to learn of others’ favorite works by Fitzgerald. My junior year in high school (same year I wrote my paper on him and the 1920s) we read The Great Gatsby. At the time I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did rereading it a few years ago, because on my reread I could relate more to the story.

Unfortunately for me, I did not care for it as a teen, read it later on in my thirties and I still did not, and donated The Great Gatsby to our Church's Thrift Store about 10 years ago. Thinking the Jazz Age is just not my thing.

I just do not even want to purchase a book as of yet.

I hoping to hear some great discussion on novels or shorts that Members did enjoy.

I don't know why in school they insist on making young people read books they cannot identify with. How can anyone with no life experience really appreciate The Great Gatsby? How can they understand what it's like to love someone for years? How can they understand obsession?

I remember in school we were meant to answer a question that I had no idea how to answer. The question was, What would you do if you met an old flame?

First I had no idea what an old flame was. Second I had never had a flame of any kind. When they told me it was like meeting an old boyfriend I couldn't relate to that at all. I had never had a boyfriend. Happy? Is that what you feel? They said I was wrong but I didn't have the life experience to properly answer the question.

I agree with you, Jazzy. Reading classics in school is great, but some classics are better meant for an older audience. The primary themes in The Great Gatsby are more identifiable with those in their 20s or older, not high school teenagers. When the book originally got popular during the 1940s (almost 20 years after its publication), that popularity stemmed from soldiers overseas reading it, because of course they could identify.

There was an article today in the literature section of a certain newspaper over The Great Gatsby titled the world's most misunderstood novel.
Not sure if I may share the link here so please let me know if I may and if anyone is interested in reading it.

I read that article just an hour ago. So glad someone else read it as well.

What article where?

Mikiko, you’re welcome to share the article link here.

Jazzy, the article is available on the BBC News app, which is free. I just finished reading it.

I don't have the app what is the name of the article please? Although if its on BBC website they might make me pay the TV licence to access it . (I don't pay because I don't watch TV).

I don't know why the BBC is such a secret though! ahaha

Aha I found it, here is the link for everyone else.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/2...

FYI:
Literary opinion makers were reluctant to accord Fitzgerald full marks as a serious craftsman. His reputation as a drinker inspired the myth that he was an irresponsible writer; yet he was a painstaking reviser whose fiction went through layers of drafts. Fitzgerald’s clear, lyrical, colorful, witty style evoked the emotions associated with time and place. When critics objected to Fitzgerald’s concern with love and success, his response was: “But, my God! it was my material, and it was all I had to deal with.” The chief theme of Fitzgerald’s work is aspirationòthe idealism he regarded as defining American character. Another major theme was mutability or loss. As a social historian Fitzgerald became identified with the Jazz Age: “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire,” he wrote in “Echoes of the Jazz Age.”

Jazzy wrote: "I don't have the app what is the name of the article please? Although if its on BBC website they might make me pay the TV licence to access it . (I don't pay because I don't watch TV).

I don't kno..."

Jazzy, the BBC website is free. It’s only iPlayer that needs a TV licence so people can watch tv programmes there. You can’t make a mistake & get billed for it, every time I use iPlayer it asks me if I have a tv licence before showing any content.

I just don't want the TV Licence people surprising me in the early hours of the morning ahahaha

Thanks Trisha.

I’ve started reading Tender is the Night. Is anyone else reading this?

I am now!

Samantha wrote: "Mikiko, you’re welcome to share the article link here."

I see that Jazzy already has. :-)

Mikiko wrote: "Samantha wrote: "Mikiko, you’re welcome to share the article link here."

I see that Jazzy already has. :-)"

Bedankt Mikiko!

This is an very interesting article I found a while back.

And one of the gravediggers described to us how, when they exhumed the coffins, some wood had rotted on Scott’s and he could see through a hole the green plaid wool of his funeral suit

https://www.salon.com/2013/05/13/rebu...

Since I've started several hefty reads this year, I decided to read one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I found it a quirky tale and quite enjoyed it. In all societies, our lives have a biological order - we're born, we grow into adulthood, we grow old and then pass away. To imagine this in reverse was interesting.

Quirky, indeed Mikiko!

I re-read Selected Short Stories and enjoyed them, especially that one and Bernice Bobs Her Hair!

I eventually finished reading Tender is the Night today, after abandoning it for a while then returning to it. The writing is quite clever but it isn’t a style that I enjoy much.

Bravo! You did it Trisha 💕

Thanks, Jazzy!

Trisha wrote: "I eventually finished reading Tender is the Night today, after abandoning it for a while then returning to it. The writing is quite clever but it isn’t a style that I enjoy much."

Glad you stuck with it. I'm hoping to get to it later this spring.
If I find it difficult to get through a book, I sometimes combine it with the audio version which helps me get to the last page. I have this already downloaded just in case :-)

Jazzy wrote: "Quirky, indeed Mikiko!

I re-read Selected Short Stories and enjoyed them, especially that one and Bernice Bobs Her Hair!"

I think I read this back in uni but can't remember so I'll have to reread it just because of the title.