F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short Fiction - (Modern American Literature and the New Twentieth Century) by Jade Broughton Adams (Paperback)

About the Book

By exploring Fitzgerald's fascination with the intertwined spheres of dance, music, theatre and film, this book demonstrates how Fitzgerald innovatively imported practices from other popular cultural media into his short stories, showing how jazz age culture served as more than mere period detail in his work.

Book Synopsis

A revisionist reading of Fitzgerald's short stories through the lens of popular culture from the 1910s to the 1930s
F. Scott Fitzgerald is remembered primarily as a novelist, but he wrote nearly two hundred short stories for popular magazines such as the widely-read Saturday Evening Post. These are vividly infused with the new popular culture of the early twentieth century, from jazz to motion pictures. By exploring Fitzgerald's fascination with the intertwined spheres of dance, music, theatre and film, this book demonstrates how Fitzgerald innovatively imported practices from other popular cultural media into his short stories, showing how jazz age culture served as more than mere period detail in his work.
Key Features
Interdisciplinary formal and thematic analysis of popular cultural references in Fitzgerald's short fictionOffers fresh readings of longstanding concepts in Fitzgerald studies, such as his 'double vision'Contributes to the growing field of popular cultural studies of modernist authors

From the Back Cover

A revisionist reading of Fitzgerald's short stories through the lens of popular culture from the 1910s to the 1930s F. Scott Fitzgerald is remembered primarily as a novelist, but he wrote nearly two hundred short stories for popular magazines such as the widely-read Saturday Evening Post. These are vividly infused with the new popular culture of the early twentieth century, from jazz to motion pictures. By exploring Fitzgerald's fascination with the intertwined spheres of dance, music, theatre and film, this book demonstrates how Fitzgerald innovatively imported practices from other popular cultural media into his short stories, showing how jazz age culture served as more than mere period detail in his work. Jade Broughton Adams is an independent scholar, specialising in American fiction and popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s.

Review Quotes

Adams shines welcome light on the popular-culture background of several overlooked stories [...] draws from abundant theory to offer provocative interpretations of scenes that rarely inspire much interpretation at all.--Kirk Curnutt "The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review"

Jade Broughton Adams' book opens new and important territory in F. Scott Fitzgerald studies. This is an investigation of Fitzgerald's understanding of the popular culture of his time. Adams identifies the influences of music, dance, theatre, and film on his short fiction, still the most neglected part of his oeuvre. The writing in this book is sprightly and the research impeccable.-- "James L. W. West III, General Editor, Cambridge Fitzgerald Edition"

About the Author

Jade Broughton Adams is an Independent Scholar, specialising in American fiction and popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford, and completed a PhD at the University of Leicester. Her doctoral research focused on the use of parody in the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald.