For his keen social insight, glib sophistication, and breathtaking
lyricism, F. Scott Fitzgerald stands as one of the most important
American writers of the twentieth century. His biographers all note
the importance of his boyhood in St. Paul, where, as he put it, he
lived in "a house below the average on a street above the average."
Fitzgerald's sensitivity about wealth and position?later made
evident in such classics as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the
Night--was bred of his St. Paul family and associations. F. Scott
Fitzgerald's St. Paul is a city of winter dreams and ice palaces,
lakeside parties and neighborhood hijinks. These are stories of
ambition and young love, insecurity and awkwardness, where a poor
boy with energy and intelligence can break into the upper classes
and become a glittering success. This selection brings together the
best of Fitzgerald's St. Paul stories?some virtually unknown,
others classics of short fiction. Patricia Hampl's incisive
introduction traces the trajectory of Fitzgerald's blazing
celebrity and its connections to his life in the city that gave him
his best material. Headnotes by Dave Page provide specific ties
between the stories and Fitzgerald's life in St. Paul. "Fitzgerald
is a presence in St. Paul, a ghost who patrols his old neighborhood
and keeps talking to us. He sits on Mrs. Porterfield's porch on
Summit Avenue, smoking and talking about writing, and it is always
that gorgeous summer just before he finished the book, hit it big,
went to New York, married the girl. This lovely book sets out our
claim on him. We have no Fitzgerald museum in St. Paul, no boyhood
home restored--the family lived in apartments--but this book is the
only monument he needs, his own stories, with historical notes, and
Patricia Hampl's graceful shining essay for absolution, and Zelda's
benediction." -- Garrison Keillor "These are wonderful stories,
including several of the greatest Fitzgerald ever wrote. Anyone
interested in Fitzgerald or the importance of place in fiction will
want to read this book. And anyone who does will find it a
delight." -- Scott Donaldson, author of Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald
"In one of the ironies of fate of which life is so fond, the
literary world knows the biography and work of F. Scott Fitzgerald
better than it knows the particulars of the city where he was born.
Fitzgerald loved, hated, and was obsessed by St. Paul, and in her
brilliant introduction to these stories, Patricia Hampl shows us
why. These stories and this wonderfully informative introduction
give St. Paul a local habitation and a name, and they place
Fitzgerald's ambitions and gifts in a cultural context too often
ignored or forgotten." -- Charles Baxter, author of Saul and Patsy
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