The Pat Hobby Stories - by F Scott Fitzgerald (Paperback)

About the Book

Written for Esquire magazine late in Fitzgerald's career, The Pat Hobby Stories is a bittersweet, humorous recollection of a down-and-out Hollywood screenwriter trying to break back into show business who has better success breaking into bars.

Book Synopsis

Written during F. Scott Fitzgerald's Hollywood years, a witty collection of tales where humor and heartbreak collide through the eyes of a once-successful screenwriter--now with a new foreword by Fitzgerald's great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a bonus Pat Hobby story that has never before been published in print.

Literary legend F. Scott Fitzgerald pulls back the curtain on the glitz, chaos, and absurdity of the movie industry through the eyes of Pat Hobby, a screenwriter clinging to his faded dreams. Pat's amusing misadventures offer a glimpse into the life of a man caught between the illusions of ambition and reality's disappointments.

Set in 1930s Hollywood--a place where lunchroom gossip held as much power as the scripts themselves--Pat's world is one of desperation and hustle. Once celebrated for his screenwriting, he's now a relic, scraping by on odd jobs and his half-baked schemes to make a buck. Pat navigates town with a blend of cunning and futility. "This was not art, this was an industry," he observes, capturing the soul of a system where creativity takes a back seat to profit.

Originally published in Esquire from 1939 to 1940, these stories were born from Fitzgerald's own struggles to make it in Hollywood. The result is a darkly funny and brilliantly crafted portrait of an antihero writer who's willing to go for broke.

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald's novels include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald's fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.