29Aug/105
Tales of the Jazz Age
Product Description
Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) is a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". Several of the stories had also been published earlier, independently, in either The Metropolitan, Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier's, Chicago Tribune, or Vanity Fair.
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August 29th, 2010 - 15:18
Although the stories are complete, they are filled with errors. It is distracting when sentences don`t make sense and it takes away from the experience. It is understandable why it was so affordable.
Rating: 3 / 5
August 29th, 2010 - 17:22
This is a well-bound, well illustrated hardcover reprint of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second collection of short stories, including “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “May Day,” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.”
Rating: 5 / 5
August 29th, 2010 - 19:51
This 1922 short story collection is a trip back in time through the eyes of this celebrated author. There are 11 stories here, of varying quality and I enjoyed reading them all and letting myself visit the time and a place and the culture that is now just a small blip in the annals of history. Some stories are set in the world of the moneyed, others are set in the world of fantasy and there are other that are just figments of the author’s imagination. I didn’t like all of these stories. As the saying goes, “when they were good they were very very good, and when they were bad they were horrid”, but I felt I got to know F. Scott Fitzgerald through these stories, see how his mind worked, and understand how he became so well known and was able to come to his full power in his novels.
His strongest stores were set in the real world, the young southern man who was smitten by a rich young woman, two recently released soldiers from the War in Europe who stumble upon some party-going socialites, a very funny story about a costume party where two men dress in a camel costume, and a sad story about a happy marriage which is spoiled by the husband’s illness.
I don’t like fantasy and found myself annoyed by these stories, even the one about the Curious Case of Benjamin Button which was recently made into a movie, or The Diamond as Big as the Ritz which was a fantasy of enormous wealth and cruelty. There were stories of unfulfilled dreams and real emotion which I liked. And others that were just stupid and silly and hard to follow.
Yes, I enjoyed this book, even the stories I didn’t like. Having a critical attitude towards something I am reading is not a bad thing. However, I was really annoyed at the plethora of typographical errors throughout the book. There is no excuse for that.
Rating: 4 / 5
August 29th, 2010 - 20:11
F Scott Fitzgerald public domain on my Kindle–doesn’t get better than that. Thanks Amazon!
Rating: 5 / 5
August 29th, 2010 - 20:53
This paperback Pine Street Press edition of “Tales of the Jazz Age” (the press is an imprint of the University of Pennsylvania Press) is afforable and well-edited. This edition, printed in 2003, contains the same content of eleven short stories as the original Charles Scribner’s Sons edition published in 1922.
I was most interested in reading “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” because of the winter 2008 release of the Brad Pitt film. This story is not contained in the other two Fitzgerald short story anthologies which I own. The story is a fascinating little foray into straight-forward fantasy, as a man is “born” fully cognizant (and speaking the King’s English), fully-grown (Fitzgerald never explains how Ben’s poor mother survived, let alone managed, the birthing ordeal), and obviously very old. Benjamin then proceeds, Merlin-like, to live his life backwards, growing younger and younger. The story is only 32 pages long, and ends rather sadly and abruptly. However, it is so un-Fitzgerald-like that I found it intriguing, and am now anxiously awaiting the movie to see what Hollywood does with it.
Fitzgerald, although an artist and genius of the highest calibar, also had to eat. These stories were written for money, and they are not as well-wrought as the best of his prose stylings in his novels. (Fitzgerald states candidly in his intros to the stories that several of them are re-worked stories which he had first done at Princeton while an undergraduate.) But this is Fitzgerald, after all, and a very young Fitzgerald, at that. So I found this collection highly interesting and devoured it in one sitting.
I will now save my money and purchase the expensive hardback version of this collection for my own library.
Rating: 5 / 5