The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Tales of the Jazz Age

As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at Home.  At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one.

source-wikipedia

A quick summary of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by me-
One day in 1860 a strange baby was born in a Baltimore hospital.  The new born baby appeared to be 70 years of age.

His father was determined to raise his baby as normally as possible and tries to ignore the appearance of his child.

They soon discover, the old man-baby, ages in reverse.

He contiues to live his life.  He goes to school.  He works.  He gets married.  He enlists.  He has his own family.

Eventually he ages back to the age of zero.

My Thoughts on the Curious Case of Benjamin Button-

I have never thought of Fitzgerald as a fantasy writer, but after the Diamond and Benjamin Button, I am hooked on his fantasies. 

Fitzgerald acknowledges the idea for this story came from a quote by Mark Twain- "Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen".  However, Fitzgerald takes it a bit further and applies it to a whole life.

I love the heart of this story.  It is not a love story per se, it is just a story of a man trying to get through and life and the unusual circumstances of his birth.

As with my favorite Fitzgerald stories, it plays with how an individual navigates life and experiences.  How, as Benjamin gets younger, must deal with the realization that his wife is no longer doing it for him, or that he needs to have his son enroll him in prep school, or that he is unable to even understand the ways of the world.

As with all fantasies, you need to suspend belief.  I suspended my belief and have become enchanted with the life of Mr. Benjamin Button.

Read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button online

Classics Circuit-The Lost Generation: Winter Dreams, May Day and Diamond Big as the Ritz

This is my first time participating in a Classics Circuit tour.  I stumbled upon it by accident, and I am so glad that I did.

As you may have guessed, by my blog title, I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I want to highlight some of his short stories, including:

Winter Dreams- One of the Gatsby cluster stories
May Day- A Novella
and
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz- One of his best fantasies

If you are unfamiliar with Fitzgeralds short stories, I feel these 3 are a great starting point.  They show a wide variety in his writing style and I just couldn't pick one.  I hope you bear with me.

Fitzgerald was usually hard on himself for having to write short stories for the magazines. He felt that they took away from his more important, serious work of writing novels.  In all he wrote around 160 short stories.

Personally, I enjoy the connection his short stories create to his novels. His big themes are there in the short stories.  It is interesting to see him working it all out.

Please pop over to each page

Winter Dreams

May Day

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

Winter Dreams- Classics Circuit, The Lost Generation

Some of the caddies were poor as sin and lived in one-roomed houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but Dexter Green's father owned the second best grocery store in Dillard--the best one was "The Hub, " patronized by the wealthy people from Lake Erminie--and Dexter caddied only for pocket-money.

Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Winter Dreams, A summary by me-

A young caddy is smitten with a young girl from the wealthiest family in town.  Upon seeing her he quits his caddy job.

He goes into the world and makes something of himself.

He later meets and falls in love with the young girl who is now a young lady.  She is the "Top Girl" and plays all of the boys in town, including our hero.

He realizes he can never have her, and becomes engaged to another girl.

The rich young lady will not stand for this and get him to throw over his new fiance.  She soon gets bored and throws our young man away as well.

Years later, he learns his great love is no longer a great beauty.  He is devastated. 

 source-sc.edu

Now time for my thoughts-

Fans of The Great Gatsby should definitely have Winter Dreams on their reading list.  Winter Dreams examines some of the same themes that Gatsby does, in fact Winter Dreams is one of the Gatsby cluster stories.  These cluster stories were written around the same time dealing with similar themes.  


I especially enjoy seeing how Fitzgerald played with perception and action between the hero and heroine.  In Winter Dreams, instead of Jay Gatsby, there's Dexter Green.  He is similar to Gatsby as he falls in love with a rich girl, becomes a self-made man from humble beginnings, and lives for his love. And instead of Daisy Buchanan, Winter Dreams heroine is the captivating Judy Jones.  


While reading Winter Dreams, you can't help but see similarities in the characters.  Judy is the celebrated beauty who plays with men, and Dexter is caught in her web.  Where Fitzgerald really deviates is how Dexter is able to move on and away from Judy, where Gatsby is frozen and tries desperately to recreate the past.  And unlike Daisy, we see Judy's beauty fade.  In the end both Jay and Dexter loose their dreams, it just unravels in different manners.


In some ways it makes me wonder what would have happened if Daisy's beauty had faded.  What would Gatsby have done?


Take the time and read it for your self-  Winter Dreams

 

May Day, Tales of the Jazz Age- Classic Curciuts, The Lost Generation Tour

There had been a war fought and won and the great city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white, red and rose.

Delmonico's in New York -library of congress prints

May Day a quick summary by me-
May Day is a dark novella from Fitzgerald, where he follows 3 groups of characters and how they spend an evening on May 1, 1919 in New York City.*

There is Gordon Sterret, down on his luck, hitting up his friends and trying to just get himself out of a situation.  He runs into an old flame, Edith Bradin, who discovers she still has feelings for her one time lover Gordon, but soon is repulsed by his down and out attitude.  Edith goes to visit her brother who, writes for a socialist paper and is rushed by a mob.  The third leg of the triangle is Carrol Key and Gus Rose, who are returning soldiers and members of this mob.

Much more happens, but I am going to let you read it for yourself. I will not be divulging the ending of this one.


My Thoughts on May Day-
Although Fitzgerald was noted saying he wasn't completely happy with the outcome of the story, and felt he was unsuccessful in tying the 3 groups together, it is a well written short story and one of his best (in my humble opinion), a must read for any one interested in F Scott Fitzgerald.

The passages of the down on his luck Gordon meeting and begging money from a successful former class mate are classic Fitzgerald.

Gordon rose and picking up one of the shirts, gave it a minute examination. It was of very heavy silk, yellow with a pale blue stripe-- and there were nearly a dozen of them.  He stared involuntarily at his own shirt cuff--they were ragged and linty at the edges and soiled to a faint gray.  Dropping the silk shirt, he held his coat-sleeves down and worked the frayed shirt-cuffs up until they were out of sight. 

However, it is the passages when Edith goes from love to repulsion of Gordon Sterret that are at the heart of my love of Fitzgerald.

...her face touched the black cloth of his dinner coat. She loved him--she knew she loved him--then for a minute there was silence while a strange feeling of uneasiness crept over her.  Something was wrong.

Of a sudden her heart wrenched, and turned over as she realized what it was.  He was pitiful and wretched, a little drunk, and miserably tired.

 "Oh----" she cried involuntarily.

In the end May Day is a tragedy, on all levels.

 Read May Day online

* On May 1, 1919, the left mounted especially large demonstrations, and violence greeted the normally peaceful parades in Boston, New York, and Cleveland. In Boston, police tried to stop a march that lacked a permit. In the ensuing melee both sides fought for possession of the Socialists' red flags. One policeman was stabbed and died. Later a mob attacked the Socialist headquarters. Police arrested 114, all from the Socialist side. Each side's newspapers provided uncritical support to their own the next day.^[37] In New York, soldiers in uniform burned printed materials at the Russian People's House and forced immigrants to sing the Star-Spangled Banner.^{[38]
From Wikipedia}

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tales of the Jazz Age- Classic Curciuts, Lost Generation Tour

John T. Unger came from a family that had been well known in Hades--a small town on the Mississippi River --for several generations.

source

I am going to forgo my usual format for this story, and just go right into my thoughts.

Fitzgerald said he wrote Diamond for his own amusement,  he was having a craving for luxury.  This story goes far beyond simply gorging on opulence.  Yes, there is an over abundance of what money can buy in this story, but in the end it is the ultimate gilded cage.

What would you do of you discovered a mountain made of a solid diamond?  Would you spend it, would you reveal your good fortune?  Would you hide it away?  The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is one families choices when they discovered just that.

When reading Diamond you can just tell that Fitzgerald was having fun when writing this piece.  And even though in the end it is a dark and sinister story you still get all the glitz and opulence that is promised in the title.

Afterward John remembered that first night as a daze of many colors, of quick sensory impressions, of music soft as a voice in love, and of the beauty, lights and shadows, and motions and faces.  There was a thimble set on a golden stem.  There was a girl with a flowery face, dressed like Titania with braided sapphires in her hair.  There was a room where the solid, soft gold of the walls yielded to the pressure of his hand, and a room that was like a platonic conception of the ultimate prison -- ceiling, floor, and all, it was lined with an unbroken mass of diamonds, diamonds of every size and shape, until with tall violet lamps in the corners, it dazzled the eyes with a whiteness that could only compare with itself, beyond human wish or dream.

Read The Diamond as Big as the Ritz online

Chemical Madness

"Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness"

-from The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

source

Love is Fragile

"Love is Fragile--she was thinking--but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said.  The new love words, the tenderness learned, are treasured up for the next lover."

-from May Day

source

Youth's felicity

"It is youth's felicity as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present, but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly imagined future--flowers and gold, girls and stars, they are only prefigurations and prophecies of that incomparable, unattainable young dream."

 From The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

Where there's smoke there's fire by Russell Patterson

Pink and Porcelain-Tales of the Jazz Age, 1922

"A Room in the Downstairs of a summer cottage.  High around the walls runs an art frieze of a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and so on."

Pink and Porcelain- A quick summary by me...
A girl takes a bath.

A girl has a conversation while in the bath.

My Thoughts...
This is a story I had not encountered before.

Pink and Porcelain is a very short, short story.  Actually most of it is written as a play.  This little story shows off Fitzgerald's playful style.  He takes a very simple moment and writes about that short period of time.  It is just short and sweet.

You can read it here- Pink and Porcelain

The Blue Bath Tub

...I am distracted by one of the two objects in the room--a blue porcelain bathtub. It has character, this bathtub.  It is not one of the new racing bodies, but it is small with a high tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; discouraged, however, by the shortness of its legs, it has been submitted to its environment and to its coat of sky-blue paint.

 -Pink and Porcelain 

source-Hidden in France

Marcia Meadow-Head and Shoulders

"Marcia was nineteen.  She didn't have wings, but audiences agreed she didn't need them.  She was a blonde by natural pigment, and she wore no paint on the streets at high noon.  Outside of that she was no better than most women."

source

"Marcia Meadow had to talk her songs, but her speaking voice was like byplay on a harp."

"There was something about Hume (Marcia) that was strangely and inexpressibly different."..."Hume was radiating attar of roses."

The Lost Generation Tour at the Classics Circuit

The Classics Circuit is reading the writings of the Lost Generation.

 

And I am participating.  I mean really, how could I not.  

Are you familiar with The Classics Circuit?

I was not, until I recently stumbled upon them, which I must admit is how I find a lot of things on the internet, usually by accident.

Anyways,  The Classics Circuit is one be big book club, of a sorts.  You can read about it here.  They have hosted all sorts of reading tours including The Ancient Greek Tour, The Anthony Trollope Tour,  and The Golden Age of Detective Tour just to name a few.

The next Tour is dedicated to the authors of the Lost Generation, my tour date is March 29th.  Now I just have to decide on what short story I want to contribute.  Right now I am thinking either May Day or Winter Dreams.

What do you think?

Quote-Bernice Bobs Her Hair

"People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything,  At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide."

                                  -Bernice Bobs Her Hair

source

Quote- Head and Shoulders

"Every person I've met on the streets since I met you has made me jealous because they knew what love was before I did.  I use to call it the 'sex impulse.' Heavens!"

            -Horace Tarbox, Head and Shoulders

This particular quote has been floating around in my head.  I love it.

This is what makes me love Fitzgerald's writing.  He is able to condense so much feeling in one sentence (OK technically 2 sentences).

Emma Block-More Fitzgerald inspired art

Emma Block is an Illustrator with a very sweet style.  I love what she does.

So imagine how thrilled I was when I found these?

Yep, that's right.  Those are illustrations of Bernice Bobs Her Hair.

Here are some for the Cut Glass Bowl.

I love the detail in the wall paper.

Make sure to check out her work.  Emma Block's Blog.

Sally Carrol Happer/Hopper

"She approached a mirror, regarded her expression with a pleased and pleasant languor, dabbed two spots of rouge on her lips and a grain of powder on her nose, and covered her bobbed corn-colored hair with a rose littered sunbonnet." *

source **

"...she let the savory breeze fan her eyes and ripple the fluffy curls of her bobbed hair." *

"Sally Carol Hopper, blonde and lazy-eyed, appeared clad in her favorite pink and blinking like an awakened rose." +

* quotes taken from The Ice Palace
+ Quotes taken from The Jelly Bean

** Picture is of Constance Bennett