Echoes of the Jazz Age

In what publications did Fitzgerald often publish his essays?

The Saturday Evening Post and widely read magazines like Esquire.

What is the subject of Fitzgerald's essay "One Hundred False Starts" (1933)?

The anxieties and frustrations of a writer and the repetition of transformative events in an author's work.

What is the subject of Fitzgerald's essay "How to Live On $36,000 a Year" (1924)?

Excessive spending, poor financial decisions, and ironic self-reflection on the Fitzgeralds' extravagant lifestyle.

According to the essay, what was the Fitzgeralds' initial reaction to being broke at the Plaza Hotel?

Denial; Fitzgerald believed it was impossible for him to be poor while living in a luxurious hotel.

What lesson did Fitzgerald ironically claim to have learned from being broke?

That his money usually turns up in times of need and that one can always borrow.

What figure from American history would Fitzgerald's learned lesson about borrowing have likely upset?

Benjamin Franklin.

What negative impression of Fitzgerald was created by a 1936 New York Post interview with Michael Mok?

That he was an arrogant egotist.

In contrast to his later reputation, how does the text describe Fitzgerald's nonfiction writing and letters?

Thoughtful, self-deprecating, and hesitant.

According to Fitzgerald, when did the ten-year period he calls the Jazz Age begin?

Around the time of the May Day riots in 1919.

What event in October 1929 does Fitzgerald link to the "spectacular death" of the Jazz Age?

The stock market crash (implied by the reference to October 1929).

What was the initial reaction of "intelligent young men" to the police action during the May Day riots?

Alienation from the prevailing order.

What document did Fitzgerald's generation not remember until Mencken began promoting it?

The Bill of Rights.

What was the primary sentiment of Fitzgerald's generation after the events of 1919, rather than being revolutionary?

Cynicism.

What was a characteristic of the Jazz Age regarding politics, according to Fitzgerald?

It had no interest in politics at all.

What four descriptions does Fitzgerald use to characterize the Jazz Age?

An age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess, and an age of satire.

What international style of men's clothing did American tastes influence during the Jazz Age?

The style of English gentlemen's clothes.

What social revelation, predating the Jazz Age, involved the "mobile privacy" of automobiles?

Unchaperoned young people discovering petting.

Among what social class was audacious petting initially confined?

The wealthier classes.

What year does Fitzgerald suggest the "veil finally fell" and the Jazz Age was in flower regarding social mores?

1920.

Which generation does Fitzgerald say "brusquely shouldered" his contemporaries aside and danced into the limelight?

The generation that had been adolescent during the confusion of the War.

How did the girls of this younger generation dramatize themselves?

As flappers.

What year does Fitzgerald offer as the peak of the younger generation during the Jazz Age?

1922.

What did the elders discover in 1923 that replaced "young blood" in their pursuit of amusement?

Young liquor.

What was the general decision that began with the cocktail parties of 1921?

The decision to be amused.

What were the first three meanings of the word "jazz" in its progress toward respectability?

First sex, then dancing, then music.

What state of mind does Fitzgerald associate with the word "jazz"?

A state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big cities behind the lines of a war.

What did many English people believe was still ongoing, leading to a "eat, drink and be merry" attitude?

The War.

What segment of the American population spent a decade denying the existence of the "nervous stimulation" of the Jazz Age?

People over fifty.

What did the "honest citizens" who supported Prohibition not realize would necessarily serve them?

Criminals and quacks.

What literary work were granddaughters in boarding schools passing around, indicating changing social norms?

Lady Chatterley's Lover.

What was the social attitude of movie producers during the Jazz Age, according to Fitzgerald?

Timid, behind the times, and banal.

What was the first movie mentioned that faintly mirrored the younger generation, and in what year did it appear?

Clara Bow in Flaming Youth, 1923.

What movie character does Fitzgerald mention as representing the superficialities that Hollywood kept up with during the Jazz Age?

Mrs. Jiggs.

What two reasons does Fitzgerald suggest for the timidity of Jazz Age movies?

Censorship and innate conditions in the industry.

What age group joined the "dance" of the Jazz Age after the initial younger generation?

People over thirty, up to fifty.

What dance craze did grandmothers of forty take up in 1912, according to Fitzgerald?

The Tango and the Castle-Walk.

What figure does Fitzgerald ironically compare to someone too busy with self-created problems to notice the changing social landscape?

Savonarola.

How did society in small cities begin to dine during the Jazz Age?

In separate chambers (sober table and gay table).

What intellectual figures did some of the "less sought-after girls" discover, leading them to re-enter social life?

Freud and Jung.

By what year had the "universal preoccupation with sex" become a nuisance?

1926.

What did a "perfectly mated, contented young mother" ask Fitzgerald's wife about?

"Having an affair right away" because she thought it would be undignified to wait much past thirty.

What kind of records with "phallic euphemisms" made everything suggestive?

Bootleg Negro records.

What kind of plays became popular, drawing young girls from finishing schools?

Erotic plays, particularly those about the romance of being a Lesbian.

Who protested against the wave of erotic plays?

George Jean Nathan.

What bizarre act did one young producer commit that landed him in penitentiary?

He drank a beauty's alcoholic bath-water.

How did the tabloids portray Ruth Snyder's impending execution?

As being about "to cook, and sizzle, AND FRY!" in the electric chair.

Into what two main streams had the "gay elements of society" divided?

One flowing towards Palm Beach and Deauville, and the other towards the summer Riviera.

Where could one "get away with more" and have things seem related to art?

The summer Riviera.

What were the "great years" of the Cap d'Antibes?

From 1926 to 1929.

What was notable about swimming at the "most gorgeous paradise for swimmers on the Mediterranean" by 1929?

No one swam anymore, except for a short hang-over dip at noon.

What did the Americans at Antibes primarily do instead of swim?

Discussed each other in the bar.

What trend in the homeland did the Americans' behavior at Antibes indicate?

Americans were getting soft.

What evidence did Fitzgerald provide for Americans "getting soft," despite Olympic wins?

Olympic champions with few vowels in their names (implying foreign blood) and the French dominating the Davis Cup once they became interested.

What was happening to the vacant lots of the Middle-Western cities?

They were being built up.

What athletic comparison did Fitzgerald make regarding the American character?

They were not turning out to be an athletic people like the British (the hare and the tortoise).

What happened to golf, once considered effeminate?

An emasculated, less strenuous form appeared and became popular.

By what year did a widespread neurosis begin to be evident?

1927.

What seemingly innocuous activity signaled the faint beginnings of this neurosis?

The popularity of crossword puzzles.

What ironic detail undermined a letter urging an expatriate to return home for revitalization?

It was headed from a nerve sanatorium in Pennsylvania.

What began to happen to Fitzgerald's contemporaries around this time?

They began to disappear into the dark maw of violence.

Name some of the violent fates that befell Fitzgerald's classmates.

Killed his wife and himself on Long Island, fell from a skyscraper in Philadelphia (possibly accidental), jumped from a skyscraper in New York, killed in a Chicago speakeasy, beaten to death in a New York speakeasy and died at the Princeton Club, skull crushed in an insane asylum.

Did these violent events occur during the Depression or the boom?

During the boom.

What "bright and alien" event occurred in the spring of 1927?

A young Minnesotan (Charles Lindbergh) did a heroic thing (the transatlantic flight).

What did people briefly think might be a "way out" due to this heroic event?

Flying, finding frontiers in the air.

What did Fitzgerald say they were "pretty well committed" to by that time?

The Jazz Age.

What were some characteristics of the Jazz Age's "wild youth"?

Necking parties, the Leopold-Loeb murder, and John Held Clothes.

How did phenomena like sex and murder evolve in the second phase of the Jazz Age?

They became more mature, if much more conventional.

What garment came to the beach to conceal "fat thighs and flabby calves"?

Pajamas.

What happened to skirts towards the end of the Jazz Age?

They came down, and everything was concealed.

What event marked the end of the "most expensive orgy in history"?

The enormous jolt to the "utter confidence" that was its essential prop (the stock market crash of 1929, mentioned earlier as ending it two years prior).

How did the Jazz Age seem two years after its end?

As far away as the days before the War.

How did Fitzgerald describe the financial situation of the "upper tenth of a nation" during the Jazz Age?

Living with the insouciance of grand dukes and the casualness of chorus girls on "borrowed time."

What was easy to do looking back at the Jazz Age?

Moralizing.

What was a benefit of being in one's twenties during the Jazz Age, even when broke?

Not worrying about money because it was so plentiful around.

What became more important than money as a social asset towards the end of the Jazz Age?

Charm, notoriety, mere good manners.

How did Fitzgerald describe writers and officers during the later part of the Jazz Age?

Writers were considered geniuses on little merit, and inexperienced officers commanded many men (a parallel to wartime).

What was the state of attracting "good men" to high-level political positions?

Difficult, despite the importance and responsibility exceeding that of business executives, due to lower pay.

What does Fitzgerald say "we" do now when looking back at wasted youth?

Summon the proper expression of horror.

What sensory details evoke a nostalgic feeling for the early twenties for Fitzgerald?

A ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones, drinking wood alcohol, the first abortive shortening of skirts, girls in sweater dresses, and the song "Yes, we have no bananas."

What optimistic view did the young people of the early twenties have about the future?

That older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were.

Why does the early Jazz Age seem "rosy and romantic" to those who were young then?

Because they will never feel quite so intensely about their surroundings again.

According to Fitzgerald, what marked the beginning of the end for the Jazz Age?

When older generations began to participate in the social revolutions.

To what did Fitzgerald compare the popularization of the Jazz Age's excesses by older generations?

A "children's party taken over by the elders."

What does Fitzgerald suggest was a primary aspect of the Jazz Age?

Taste.

How did the disapproval of older cultural gatekeepers affect the enjoyment of new styles and customs for people like Fitzgerald?

It amplified their enjoyment.

What happened when the older gatekeepers began to like jazz, experimental literature, and freer dance?

The initial thrill was lost.

What term does Fitzgerald use to describe the simplification and mass marketing of previously unique ideas and practices?

The commodification of the period's "blatant superficialities."

What happened once the actual freedoms of the Jazz Age were transformed into easily bought and sold symbols?

They became just another set of cheap goods hardly worth caring about.

Besides the thrill of novelty, what else did the Jazz Age produce, according to Fitzgerald?

Important works of art and a new set of aesthetic attitudes and interests.

How did the break from traditional customs and mores affect artists?

It allowed them to push the boundaries of artistic forms.

What kind of literature did Fitzgerald believe Jazz Age writers had developed?

A "living" literature.

What aspects of human experience did this new literature frankly explore?

Human sensuality and social interactions.

What feelings of postwar American life did this literature deeply tap into?

Feelings of longing and alienation.

What did Fitzgerald believe this new literature inaugurated?

A radical form of American culture that would endure beyond a given time period.

What did Fitzgerald admit was always a bit absurd about the styles and attitudes of the Jazz Age?

There was always something a bit absurd about them.

What fueled the period's excesses?

Unsustainable amounts of economic growth and speculation.

How did many people live during this time, according to Fitzgerald's honest assessment?

On "borrowed time" on top of a "flimsy structure."

Despite its flaws, what did Fitzgerald believe the Jazz Age was not entirely?

Not all for nothing.

What historical events followed the Jazz Age, potentially making its excesses seem embarrassing?

The Great Depression and the spread of fascist violence in Europe.

What did Fitzgerald attempt to do at the end of his essay regarding the mythology of the Jazz Age?

Redeem at least part of it.