Product Description
Here is a compelling account of the romantic lives and times of five great writers of this century--D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Dyland Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Passionate Lives evokes how these writers lived on the cutting edge of passionate intensity, shows how their own love affairs influenced their writing, and brings a unique perspective to the work and lives of some of the best literary artists of the 20th century. ... Read more

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From the dust jacket notes: "...The Elizabethan Dramatic Club of St. Paul - a group of about forty youngsters - was founded in 1911 when Fitzgerald was only fourteen. It was named for its 'directress,' Elizabeth Magoffin, who had just turned twenty. She had the foresight to save a number of manuscripts including her transcriptions of her friend Scott's first four attempts at writing for the theatre. The club produced one of his plays each summer during the years 1911 through 1914. A year after her death in 1951, Princeton University Library purchased the manuscripts, but they have remained unpublished until now. Alan Margolies has edited these plays with a clear text for the general reader and full textual notes for the Fitzgerald scholar. The first, The Girl from Lazy J, is brief and extremely flawed, but each succeeding play shows great improvement over the previous summer's efforts. Fitzgerald acted the leading role in The Captured Shadow (1912), performed two parts in Coward (1913), and both stage-managed and acted in Assorted Spirits (1914). After the demise of the Elizabethan Club and his departure from Princeton for the Amry, he devoted his professional efforts to fiction, beginning with This Side of Paradise in 19120. Only once again did he complete a full-length work for the stage, and that was a political satire, The Vegetable, which closed after a brief tryout in Atlantic City in 1923...." ... Read more

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Contains The Bridal Party, Three Hours Between Planes, Babylon Revisited, and The Lost Decade. 2 cassettes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fitzgerald for the Road
This is a great collection of short storys.But Alexander Scourby does a wonderful job reading them are helps bring the characters to life... a great tap to listen to on the way to work. ... Read more

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Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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This digital document is an article from St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1875 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Signed essays ranging from 500 to 2,500 words, written by subject experts and edited to form a consistent, readable, and straightforward reference. Entries include subject-specific bibliographies and textual cross-references to related essays. ... Read more

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Fourteen of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-loved and most beguiling stories, together in a single volume

In 1928, while struggling with his novel Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald began writing a series of stories about Basil Duke Lee, a fictionalized version of his younger self. Drawing on his childhood and adolescent experiences, Fitzgerald wrote nine tales that were published in the Saturday Evening Post about his life from the time he was an eleven-year-old boy living in Buffalo, New York, until he entered Princeton University in 1913. Then from 1930 to 1931, with Tender Is the Night still unfinished, Fitzgerald wrote five more stories (also published in the Post) that centered around Josephine Perry, Basil's female counterpart. Although Fitzgerald intended to combine the fourteen Basil Lee and Josephine Perry stories into a single work, he never succeeded in doing so in his lifetime. Here, The Basil and Josephine Stories brings together in one volume the complete set, resulting in one of Fitzgerald's most charming and evocative works. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The Most Beautiful Book Ever.
I don't suppose I'll ever be able to find another book quite like this.All my life, I've searched up and down and around and around for books that have characters I can identify with; I just didn't understand what was so different about me that I just couldn't find one, when it seemed as if left and right, my peers were devouring books with characters that were carbon copies of themselves.After a long day of reading Tender and Beautiful/Damned in the library when I was about 15 or 16, I was hungry for more of Mr. Fitzgerald's books, and by some chance of the most perfect cosmic alignments or magnificent starlit fates, I found a dusty old copy of Basil & Josephine.It was almost as if my whole life FINALLY made some kind of sense; as if Mr. Fitzgerald and I had been connected in some other-worldly kind of way.Past lives, maybe.

Now, I can't say I'm the BIGGEST fan of Basil, although I do love him dearly, and so on.I suppose he somewhat reminds me of Dexter Green, almost weak in a sense, and always being the boy BEFORE the boy you end up with; never the one true love.I suppose a lot of Mr. Fitzgerald's men were that way.But when I got to the Josephine stories, it was as though I had finally found my match, my character love; finally someone I could really relate to and understand!SO many people in this world will hate little Josephine Perry; they will absolutely despise her for her impossible charm and utterly unstoppable beauty, with her gray eyes and that "high" color in her cheeks, that is so sure to stop any red-blooded male in his tracks without him even knowing what came over him. Most other girls hate this kind of girl; and I will never be able to thank my friend Josephine enough for teaching me everything I needed to know about "the ugly and jealous" girls and how to avoid and overcome them.No matter how "good" or kind or ideal they may be, the boys will always come back to the one they really want; unable to be stopped by the ugly and jealous girl, unable to even think without some sort of permission or emotional outpouring from his one true love, his own girl, his beautiful.And when that happens, it will never be our fault, no matter how much the ugly and jealous girl does try to fault us with it; how could we be blamed for looking the way we do?

Needless to say, I love Josephine so much, almost as if she were just my older sister giving me advice on how to turn down too many party invitations, or how to fall madly and passionately in love with an older boy and dump him immediately when he shows the first sign of affection back.You really just have to be a special kind of person to understand her, and not many will.You have to have that certain kind of face and this special "thing" about you.Ah, Josephine.You've taught me more than I could ever thank you for.

A Collection of Classics
Originally published serially in "The Saturday Evening Post," Fitzgerald's "The Basil and Josephine Stories" was probably underappreciated in its time--the late 1920s.Fitzgerald's mastery of prose and storytelling shine, however, in this collection of short stories.The book is divided into two halves, the first dealing with Basil (a fictionalized version of Fitzgerald as a young man) and the second with Josephine (a fictional young woman in America in the early part of the 20th century).We follow Basil through the adventures and misadventures of his early life as he searches for acceptance and meaning.Josephine searches for love and friendship, among other things.Both meet with success that can only be described as questionable.Beautifully written and suprisingly deep, this collection offers profound insight into the psyche of the Lost Generation.I highly recommend it to anyone interested in modern American literature.

the best collection of short fiction yet
this charming collection of stories written by f. scott fitzgerald follows the physical, emotional, and social growth of two characters at the turn of the century.Basil, the typical rebellious child, struggles to find some understanding of life, school, friendship, and, most importantly, women.fitzgerald details a number of episodes in basil's life starting with his childhood and following him through his entrance into school.i don't know if basil ever entirely grew up or learned as much as he desired, but he came as close as any man can.the josephine stories follow roughly the same time span, but tend to focus more on her relationships and her place in society as a young woman at the turn of the century.all of the stories are masterfully told and it is obvious why fitzgerald became such a well known and respected writer.his storytelling is unparalleled and his descriptive language and imagery transports the reader to a different place and time.i highly recommend this book to any fitzgerald fan, whether an experienced one or a not-so-experienced one.i think it a shame that this book does not get more recognition than it does, recognition that it most definitely deserves.

Review
I really liked this book.And this isn't coming from some super-articulate adult.This is coming from a 14-year-old High School Freshman. It really shows you what life was like back then in the early1910's, and how teens back then deal with the same stuff as we do, such aspopularity, dating, cars, etc.

The Basil stories are tremendous, Josephine's are bland.
I found the Basil stories to be much better written than the Josephine stories.Basil's stories are fun and full of irony and satire.The reader sees definite growth in Basil.The Basil stories are excellent and worthy of great praise. As for Josephine's stories, I often found myself loosing interest in the stories.They tended to be bland, and I found it much more difficult to connect with Josephine than with Basil. The four star rating is largely based on the Basil stories, which account for about 2/3 of the book, and for the one Josephine story I really liked. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Interesting beginning
The biggest problem with this novel is that Fitzgerald never finished it. The Scribner Classics editors provided a decent resource in trying to reconstruct the rest of the novel from Fitzgerald's notes and letters, but it just falls apart once we lost Fitzgerald's narrative structure and voice.

The novel itself is fascinating in its treatment of gender. Fitzgerald tries to use a female narrator, but there are points when she is so overly feminized that she becomes almost absurd. Plus, Fitzgerald's characteristic admiration for strong, lonely male figures continues straight from Gatsby to Monroe Stahr.

Another critically interesting element in this novel is the economic commentary coming from Fitzgerald's characters. They struggle with union problems, business issues, financial issues, and the business practices of 1940's Hollywood. It is fascinating to hear the commentary on the Post-Depression film industry.

One warning though, Fitzgerald provides an ambivalent portrayal of Jews.

The never ending unfinished novel
While I am not really a Fitzgerald fan I am not sure how relyable this review is, but I had to read the book for a class. I think if you like his style the book is good, and many say that it would have been his best workhad he been able to finish it. Because there is no ending, and the plot isnot that enticing you really must read the book for readings sake and notto get a great adventure from it. If you have the time check it out andhopefuly it will do more for you then me, but otherwise this would not bemy first choice of books. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The First Twenty-Six Stories
The book is in great condition.I love reading the work of Scott Fitzgerald. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

One of the best American books of short stories
I've read many books of short stories in my life, by authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Saul Bellow, Haruki Murakami, Julio Cortazar, Ian McEwan etc. (all great writers in their own right), but none of these authors has been able to write stories as exciting, complete, and satisfying as Fitzgerald's in "Six Tales of the Jazz Age and other stories."In this book, Fitzgerald combines wit, Jazz Age glamour, emotions and moral messages to perfect effect."The Jelly-Bean" is a tale of love and longing between a Southerner and a wild woman."The Adjuster" tells of a wife who learns to be less selfish in her demands of her husband, and in "'O, Russet Witch!'" a woman symbolizes a man's desire to be irresponsible and spontaneous as he tries to live up to the responsibility that society and his family demand of him."Gretchen's Forty Winks" is about the balance between work and responsibility to one's partner."The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" narrates the (somewhat) absurd story of a man born old who lives his life getting steadily younger (I was reminded of Alejo Carpentier's "Viaje a la semilla" (Journey to the Seed), but Fitzgerald's story is better and slightly more daring)."The Camel's Back" is a lighter tale of confused identities, while "Hot and Cold Blood" ponders the conflicting responibilities to family and society.

Any writer could match Fitzgerald's moral demands, but few would be able to make such stories as entertaining and fast-paced as he does.I used to hate Fitzgerald as a writer--due in large part to being too young to appreciate what "The Great Gatsby" was really about (I read it in high school)--but these stories have inspired me to try to read (and in the case of the "Gatsby," re-read) the rest of his works.I highly recommend this book to all those who love great, profound, and thoroughly entertaining literature. ... Read more