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=                       Tales_of_the_Jazz_Age                        =
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                            Introduction
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'Tales of the Jazz Age' (1922) is a collection of 11 short stories by
American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate
parts, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button". All of the stories had first appeared,
independently, in either 'Metropolitan Magazine', 'The Saturday
Evening Post', 'Smart Set', 'Collier's', the 'Chicago Sunday Tribune',
or 'Vanity Fair'.

Due to its adult theme, Fitzgerald did not consider the short story
"May Day" to be suitable for the family oriented readership favored by
the 'Saturday Evening Post'. He offered this "masterpiece" to H. L.
Mencken and George Jean Nathan, editors at 'The Smart Set', where it
appeared in the July 1920 issue. Fitzgerald termed the story "this
somewhat unpleasant tale".


                              Contents
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Fitzgerald provided his own annotated table of contents for the
collection, providing commentary on each story. The works are
presented in three categories: 'My Last Flappers', 'Fantasies', and
'Unclassified Masterpieces'. The original periodical publication and
date are indicated below.

My Last Flappers
* "The Jelly-Bean" ('Metropolitan Magazine', October 1920)
* "The Camel's Back" ('Saturday Evening Post', April 24, 1920)
* "May Day" ('The Smart Set', July 1920)
* "Porcelain and Pink" ('The Smart Set', January 1920)

Fantasies
* "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" ('The Smart Set', June 1922)
* "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" ('Collier's', May 27, 1922)
* "Tarquin of Cheapside" ('The Smart Set', February 1921)
* "O Russet Witch!" ('Metropolitan Magazine', February 1921)

Unclassified Masterpieces
* "The Lees of Happiness" ('Chicago Sunday Tribune', December 12,
1920)
* "Mr. Icky" ('The Smart Set', March 1920)
* "Jemina" ('Vanity Fair', January 1921)


                             Reception
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Critic Hildegarde Hawthorne in 'The New York Times', October 29, 1922,
commented on Fitzgerald's contemporary identification as a writer for
slick magazines, in particular 'The Saturday Evening Post'. Hawthorne
wrote that stories "give too much of the effect of samples... The book
is more like a magazine than a collection of stories by one man,
arranged by an editor to suit all tastes and meant to be thrown away
after reading."

Hawthorne closes with an upbeat assessment of Fitzgerald's potential
as a fiction writer: "These stories are announced as beginning in the
writer's second manner. They certainly show a development in his art,
a new turn... this 'second manner' is surely the outcropping of a rich
vein that may hold much wealth."


                         Critical appraisal
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Biographer Kenneth Elbe ranks three stories--"The Rich Boy," "Winter
Dreams," and "Absolution"--as "among the better ones in all his short
fiction." The other selections are reminiscent of Fitzgerald's
"contrived magazine fiction."

According to Elbe, Fitzgerald characterized some of the short fiction
as "cheap and without the spontaneity of my first work." Elbe adds
that "'Tales of the Jazz Age' suffers badly from the inclusion of some
early writing which might better have remained in 'The Nassau Literary
Review', where it first appeared."

Several stories in 'Tales of the Jazz Age' are notable for their
"authorial self-consciousness" registered through Fitzgerald's
editorial remarks directed towards the reader. Literary Critic John
Kuehl writes:



Kuehl argues that this "egotistical foregrounding" tends to squander
Fitzgerald's literary talents in favor of an intrusive approach that
fails to adequately dramatize his narrative.


                               Theme
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The stories comprising Fitzgerald's earliest professional fiction were
largely concerned with inherited wealth and the "indolent rich." These
preoccupations transitioned, however, toward narratives involving a
broader spectrum of social classes, including "businessmen, writers,
performers, priests and white-collar workers." Critic John Kuehl
reports that this emerging focus on essentially democratic concerns
"reaches its apotheosis in 'May Day,' where various socioeconomic
classes meet."


                           External links
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*
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6695 'Tales of the Jazz Age'] at
Project Gutenberg
* [https://archive.org/details/talesofjazzage00fitzuoft 'Tales of the
Jazz Age'] at Internet Archive
*


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