A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Kirk Curnutt

Historical Guides to American Authors

This volume of commissioned essays explores topics concerning the historical context of Fitzgerald's writings. Its topics include the literary marketplace of the 1920s and 1930s, the influence of public figures such as Walter Lippmann and H. L. Mencken, the mass market, film and its treatment of the "New Woman," and the aftermath of World War I.

A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Kirk Curnutt

Historical Guides to American Authors

Description

Although perceived in his own day as a lightweight chronicler of 1920s trends and fads, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is now recognized as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. Whether for his classic novels (The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night), his frequently anthologized short stories ("Babylon Revisited," "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"), or his searing essays of personal examination (The Crack-Up), Fitzgerald is rightly celebrated as a master stylist who plumbs the depths of love, loss, and longing. Unfortunately, much of the interest in Fitzgerald has focused on biographical concerns, including his meteoric rise to fame, his tempestuous marriage to quintessential flapper Zelda Sayre, his rivalry with Ernest Hemingway, and his tragic descent into alcoholism and depression. The resulting, somewhat distorted, image of Fitzgerald has been that of a self-destructive literary playboy. Even scholarly treatments of the author have tended to depict him as a mere spokesman for the Lost Generation, a symbol of the excesses of his era, without properly appreciating the range of his writing or his intellect. This volume of historically minded, newly commissioned essays looks beyond the Jazz Age façade to topics that reveal how Fitzgerald's work both illumines and challenges conceptions of his milieu. Studies of the literary marketplace of the 1920s, the influence of public intellectuals such as Walter Lippmann and H. L. Mencken, film and its treatment of the New Woman, and the aftereffects of World War I all document the depth and breadth of Fitzgerald's thinking.

A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Kirk Curnutt

Historical Guides to American Authors

Introduction, Kirk Curnutt
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940: A Brief Biography, Jackson R. Bryer

Fitzgerald in His Time
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Author, James L. W. West III
2. Fitzgerald's Intellectual Context, Ronald Berman
3. Fitzgerald's Consumer World, Kirk Curnutt
4. Fitzgerald's Flappers and Flapper Films of the Jazz Age: Behind the Morality, Ruth Prigozy
5. Fitzgerald and War, James H. Meredith

Illustrated Chronology
Bibliographical Essay: The Contours of Fitzgerald's Second Act, Albert J. DeFazio III
Contributors
Index

A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Kirk Curnutt

Historical Guides to American Authors

Author Information

Kirk Curnutt is Professor of English at Troy State University Montgomery.

A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Kirk Curnutt

Historical Guides to American Authors

Reviews and Awards

"Restores Fitzgerald to his literary, intellectual, and cultural contexts.... Delightfully jargon-free and fulfilling its brief to provide an interdisciplinary and historically sensitive context for Fitzgerald's work, the collection also contains much perceptive close reading of the novels and stories.... Curnutt's own rather dazzling contribution to the collection explores Fitzgerald's ambiguous attitude towards consumerism.... A superb illustrated chronology and bibliographical essay completes a worthy volume."--Times Literary Supplement

"A collection of valuable resources and new essays by some of the most distinguished scholars in Fitzgerald studies.... There are clearly many rewards to be found in A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The essays are compelling.... It is an important and useful volume for students and scholars of Fitzgerald and his work."--The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review

"A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald will prove useful for academics, graduate students, and even undergraduates engaged in learning more about the Jazz Age America that inspired Fitzgerald's fiction. In particular, the volume's brief biography and illustrated chronology will serve as valuable teaching tools in an undergraduate survey, in which historical context is often sacrificed for broader literary coverage. Curnutt and his contributors have provided excellent examples of how combining literary studies, history, and cultural studies can produce vibrant images and important insights into a world almost forgotten."--Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Edited by Kirk Curnutt

Historical Guides to American Authors

From Our Blog

Roll over, Rimbaud: P. F. Kluge, Walt Whitman, and Eddie and the Cruisers

By Kirk Curnutt Ask someone who came of age in the 1980s what they remember about the movie Eddie and the Cruisers and one of the following responses is likely: it spawned the great rock-radio staple 'On the Dark Side' and briefly made MTV stars of the improbably named John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band...

Posted on July 23, 2014

Read the blog post

"The Mouth that roared": Peter Benchley's Jaws at 40

By Kirk Curnutt The novel that scared a generation out of the ocean and inspired everything from Shark Week to Sharknado recently turned forty. Commemorations of Peter Benchley's Jaws have been as rare as megalodon sightings, however.

Posted on April 11, 2014

Read the blog post

10 moments I love in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby that aren't in Baz Luhrmann's film

The build-up to Baz Luhrmann's frenetic, chromatic interpretation of The Great Gatsby was a wild ride for those of us who live and breathe F. Scott Fitzgerald daily. One minute you're grading end-of-the semester papers, the next you're fielding phone calls from NPR or the Associated Press.

Posted on May 14, 2013

Read the blog post

The Love Songs of F. Scott Fitzgerald

By Kirk Curnutt According to literary legend, the author of The Great Gatsby sold his soul. Perpetually cash-strapped, F. Scott Fitzgerald spent much of his twenty-year career cranking out popular fiction for the Saturday Evening Post and other high-paying 'slicks.' While Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and William Faulkner racked up double digits in the novels column, Fitzgerald completed a paltry four and a half, with only one of them (Gatsby, of course) truly great. By contrast, he produced 160 short stories, earning a total of $241,453 off the genre ' more than $3 million in today's dollars.

Posted on April 10, 2012

Read the blog post