A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald / Edition 1

by Kirk Curnutt

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195153033
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/14/2004
Series:	Historical Guides to American Authors
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	8.56(w) x 5.52(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Introduction, Kirk CurnuttF. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940: A Brief Biography, Jackson R. Bryer
Fitzgerald in His Time1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Author, James L. W. West III2. Fitzgerald's Intellectual Context, Ronald Berman3. Fitzgerald's Consumer World, Kirk Curnutt4. Fitzgerald's Flappers and Flapper Films of the Jazz Age: Behind the Morality, Ruth Prigozy5. Fitzgerald and War, James H. Meredith
Illustrated ChronologyBibliographical Essay: The Contours of Fitzgerald's Second Act, Albert J. DeFazio IIIContributorsIndex

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher