Many years ago, I was talking to a gentleman who, like myself, took great pleasure in reading amazing authors. I mentioned that, in my opinion, F. Scott Fitzgerald never fully reached the total potential he was capable of achieving. To me, despite the brilliance of "Gatsby," I always found something lacking in his works, a tragic flaw, a missing something that would have made so many more of his works comparable to Gatsby. Maybe, he should have practiced more self control, a little less partying...

One of the best short story collections I've ever read! Many of the stories felt like 5-starred reads, but some were just s0-so (hence the 4 stars). A must read for any one who enjoys excellent writing and touching stories. Somehow these stories felt more powerful than some of his novels. I was reminded what a brilliant writer Fitzgerald was.

The remarkable story "THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON" is even better then the movie which was made based on this story.This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler's "No...

Tales of the Jazz Age is a collection of 11 short stories published in 1922, although most had been published earlier in national magazines. Fitzgerald published 4 novels, that was his preferred way of writing. But he wrote short stories to make money, and being in constant financial trouble, it was the fastest way for him to make cash. This collection was good, it contains probably his most famous short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, as well as a few other very good ones. A couple

This collection of short stories, short plays, and novelettes is so varied in style and execution forming an opinion of the whole is damn near impossible. So I shall break it down tale-by-tale. The Jelly Bean ☆☆I felt this story caricatured American Southerners rather disgracefully.The Camel's Back ☆☆☆☆Wild, clever humor from a talented humorist.May Day ☆☆☆☆I love the characters featured in this story's vignettes. Their interactions truly captured the age from a broad spectrum of classes and bac...

My favourite short story collection of Fitzgerald’s so far, I feel this is where he was really starting to experiment/branch out and come into his own. Contains 11 short stories, grouped into three parts. The stories were as follows: My Last Flappers:The Jelly-Bean - 4 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️The Camel’s Back - 4 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️May Day - 4 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Porcelain and Pink - 3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️Fantasies: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz - 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Ta...

Tales of the Jazz Age was an anthology of short stories and novellas by F. Scott Fitzgerald first published in 1922 that pretty much established Fitzgerald as the definitive writer about the Jazz Age. This series was divided into three sections entitled "My Last Flappers." "Fantasies," and "Unclassified Masterpieces." Some of my favorites were "The Jelly-Bean," "May Day," "O Russet Witch," and "The Lees of Happiness." These stories were submitted over a period of three years to several differen...

This collection has eight stories: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Head and Shoulders, The Four Fists, The Cut-Glass Bowl, May Day, O Russet Witch, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, and The Lees of Happiness. A handful are incredible: Head and Shoulders, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, and The Lees of Happiness were far and away my favourites. Benjamin Button was great, The Four Fists was fun but forgettable, and The Cut-Glass Bowl was just alright. But May Day, and O Russet Witch, while being not only the lon...

Despite reading so much about him and his wife Zelda, I cannot help but reveal my mad crush on Fitzgerald. This short story collection of 15 different stories offered a little bit of everything that I adore about the author. Men who crave women they can't have, WWI veterans readjusting to life after the battlefield, rich versus poor, big city thrills, rural intrigue, and a little bit of comedy and mystery to boot! Some of my fave sentences All life was weather, a waiting through the hot where e...

Considering I didn't like The Great Gatsby, I'm amazed at how I'm loving the other works of F. Scott Fitzgerald so far! I read This Side Of Paradise and was enthralled, and this book of short stories was equal parts enchanting and intelligent. I read it on my Kindle, and I ended up highlighting a lot of sentences and passages because they were so beautifully written. The book includes "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which is nowhere near as complex a story as the movie version. I did enjo...

Over the last 10 minutes I must have switched between 3 and 4 stars about 20 times - but I did really like most of the short stories. Fitzgerald has a way of creating the not always endearing but nevertheless interesting characters in his short stories that are sadly missing in his novels (The Great Gatsby excepted).

I'm still on the Fitzgerald kick, having purchased his complete works and finding a fair share of gems. TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE (1922) contains one story I adored - "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," some surprisingly funny tales like "The Camel's Back," and "Pink and Porcelain," and some fumbling others, all of which I dissect below.“The Jelly Bean” 1920★★★☆☆This mildly humorous and wistful little jaunt was cowritten by Zelda Fitzgerald, though in the opening, Francis merely notes that “his wife”

The Jelly Bean - 2/5 starsThe Camel's Back - 2/5 starsMay Day - 4/5 starsPorcelain and Pink - 2/5 starsThe Diamond as Big as the Ritz - 4/5 starsThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 5/5 stars FAVOURITETarquin of Cheapside - 3/5 starsO Russet Witch - 5/5 stars FAVOURITEThe Lees of Happiness - 4/5 starsMr Icky - 2/5 starsJemina, the Mountain Girl - 3/5 stars

I can conclude, having finished this collection of short stories, that with the exception of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald is just not really for me. This collection was saved, in my opinion, by The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Porcelain and Pink, and Jemina the Mountain Girl. Barring some moments of subtle but shocking endings, I found the rest of the stories dull, and the characters empty, and the prose ineffective.

Two overlapping themes recur: (i) wasted privilege, youth, lives; (ii) all that glitters is symbolic & brittle.

Some lives just ring empty like empty crocks… And F. Scott Fitzgerald was a great scholar of human emptiness… And his stories, despite their wickedness, boast an atmosphere of merry fairytales.In The Jelly-Bean life is a precarious gamble of chance:With the awakening of his emotions, his first perception was a sense of futility, a dull ache at the utter grayness of his life. A wall had sprung up suddenly around him hedging him in, a wall as definite and tangible as the white wall of his bare roo...

I've been intending to read Fitzgerald for some time and I'm very glad to have begun with this collection of stories. There is such a show of versatility and skill here. Not all stories are equally successful but all are interesting and some are truly wonderful, Among those I particularly enjoyed were "The Camel's Back", "May Day"", "O Russett Witch" and "The Lees of Happiness". Themes central to Fitzgerald's life and other works are scattered through these tales: the disparity of wealth and pov...

Abandoned.The first 3 stories were very entertaining and I'm so sorry this collection didn't continue in the same vein. However, the next section was called "Fantasy". I guess I didn't understand what that meant. The first story was "A Diamond as Big as the Ritz". Some of my friends liked it. Not my thing in any way shape or form and whatever humor was supposed to be there fell flat flat flat. There were more stories to come and I just didn't want to face them.

This edition of Tales of the Jazz Age features only four short stories from the original volume, the other four short stories are taken from Flappers and Philosophers, thus dating the publication from 1920 to 1922. Originally, I wanted to unhaul this book because A) I am not the biggest fan of short stories and B) quite frankly, I am not the biggest fan of Fitzgerald himself. There. I said it. It's not just the fact that I have massive problems with his "casual" racism and sexism (whatever casua...

If you like Fitzgerald at all, or even the idea of him, you should read his short stories as they are really the backbone of his career. This particular electronic volume is available at no cost from Project Gutenberg. I imagine there are many other choices also.That being said, most of these works will not stun you. Some don't even make sense, many are decent and a few are fine. I did think many of them were mostly told on the surface, without a lot of introspection or development of the charac...