The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald

McQuillan, had come to Saint Paul from Ireland when he was just a boy. Fitzgerald’s family was socially well-connected in Saint Paul, as his mother, Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald, was born into a prominent and wealthy family. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Patricia Hampl and Dave Page, does a superb job of advocating for the importance of Saint Paul in Fitzgerald’s writings. Fitzgerald always saw places through the lens of an outsider, and I suspect that he secretly wondered if he truly belonged anywhere. However, Saint Paul was where he first entertained the idea of becoming a writer, where he published his first writings, and where he finished his first two novels. It’s difficult to say that any one place has a special claim on him. Scott and Zelda never owned a home of their own. And that’s not even counting the numerous places where he and Zelda lived in France. His family moved to Buffalo, New York in 1898, but they returned to Saint Paul in 1908, and the city would be Scott’s home, off and on, until 1922.įitzgerald led a peripatetic life, spending considerable amounts of time in Minnesota, New York, Montana, Louisiana, Connecticut, Delaware, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and California. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. Scott, you continue to confound me, and I may never forgive you for your treatment of Zelda, but you sure had a way with words.į. I think, at the root, I take issue with the entitlement and possessiveness of Fitzgerald's male narrators, particularly in 'At Your Age' found in this edition-which felt alarmingly Lolita-like and seemed to be an account of grooming between a 50 year old man and an 18 or 19 year old girl. Still, it's evident that, in many ways, Fitzgerald's women are still confined by the dictations of turn-of-the-century society, still viewed as marriageable commodities. For instance, Jay Gatsby pines away for Daisy for years, and, when she reenters his life, he is captive to her whims.

And I think there is palpable power found in their beauty in most of his stories, the women possess some form of control and agency. Yes, they float sublimely around the dance floor.

Yes, they have cheeks flushed like sunsets and voices like money. I do have many mixed feelings through regarding his women characters. It was enlightening to see how his short stories related back to his place of birth. His prose is divine, and he has an uncanny way of portraying adolescence just as it is, then and now. I've been swooning over Fitzgerald since high school, and I don't anticipate this changing anytime soon.

The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald