Synopsis: |
Tales of the Jazz Age is a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". Fitzgerald's introduction captures the spirit of the book fairly: 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. All of these stories, like his best novels, meld Fitzgerald's fascination with wealth with an awareness of a larger world, creating a subtle social critique. Fitzgerald elucidates the interactions of the young people of post-World War I America who sought their place in the modern world amid the general hysteria of the period that inaugurated the age of jazz. |