Afternoon of an Author: A Selection of Uncollected Stories and Essays

226 pp. "For a writer whose productive career lasted only twenty years and whose energy was prodigally expended on other things than writing, Scott Fitzgerald wrote an astonishing amount. Of the more than one hundred and fifty short stories he wrote during those twenty years, only about a quarter were collected during his lifetime; a few new ones were put together when Malcolm Cowley's selection was published by Scribner's in 1951. Of Fitzgerald's thirty or forty essays, ten were printed in The Crack-Up, edited by Edmund Wilson. Apart from the fact that this state of affairs leaves a considerable part of the important work of a great writer unavailable, there is the further difficulty that it prevents most readers from seeing clearly how Fitzgerald developed as a writer. Now, Arthur Mizener, author of the highly successful biography of Fitzgerald, The Far Side of Paradise, has taken from this body of Fitzgerald's uncollected work a revealing and eminently enjoyable cross-section of Fitzgerald's art. Afternoon of an Author contains fourteen uncollected short stories and six uncollected essays, evenly distributed over the course of his writing career, beginning with the autobiographical essay called 'Who's Who--and Why, ' which he wrote for The Saturday Evening Post in 1920, and ending with 'News of Paris--Fifteen Years Ago, ' a story found among Fitzgerald's papers, apparently written in 1940, and posthumously published in Furioso. Here, clearly, is a book to be read both for the enjoyment of good writing, and for its illumination of an important figure in American letters. To supplement the reader's own insight into Fitzgerald's art, Arthur Mizener provides a revealing introduction and pertinent notes heading each selection."--Jacket.