Book 56. Nocturnes by Kazou Ishiguro

As much as I like Fitzgerald's short stories, I was reluctant to read this collection.  And I should not have been, it is a great collection of stories that read more like a book.  All of the stories seem to weave together and play off each other.  When I finally saw the pattern I went -ohhh.

At this time it is no secret I am falling in love with the writing of Ishiguro.  I still want to read "When we were Orphans" before his new book comes out.

Short story 110: Last of the Belles by F Scott Fitzgerald

Yay! with this story I have completed my quest to read all I can by my favorite author.  As with all my Fitzgerald reading you can get more at the blog- Fitzgerald Musings.  Over there you will see what I thought of Last of the Belles.

Short Stories 26-32: More late Fitzgerald stories

I finally finished the cluster of stories published after Fitzgerald's death.  Some of these were not his best and others showed that he was coming back.  I wrote in more detail over at Fitzgerald Musings and will link to the stories over there.

The stories I really enjoyed included:
Lo, The Poor Peacock
Dearly Beloved
On Your Own

I don't think I hated any of them but the others did not rise to the top.
Discard
The Woman from Twenty-One
Last Kiss
On An Ocean Wave

In Lo, The Poor Peacock, the daughter character reminded me of Audrey which may have swung the story to my favor.

and 

Dearly Beloved is very poetic, but very short

For short stories, the next cluster I will be tackling are from 1920-22.

Short Stories 24 & 25: "Death of My Father and "My Generation" by FS Fitzgerald

I have written an much more detailed post on these short stories over on the Fitzgerald Musing Blog.  You can check it out here.

I really enjoyed "My Generation".  It is this kind of essay that I enjoy from him.  He has an insight and a way of getting to the heart of a topic.  It makes me sad that he died so young and that we were not able to see how he would have seen the world as he aged.  It think it would have been interesting on how he would have dealt with aging and how society treats you.  Also how he saw the younger generations. What would he have thought of the hippies and free love?  Oh well.

"The Death of my Father" was good, but ultimately an unfinished piece.  I find it interesting more in the context of the lack of talk from him regarding his family.  He seems to keep that part out of his fiction, where everything else seems to be free game for his stories.  I wish there was more.  I am sure the death of his sisters (even if he never knew them) had to play a role in his young life.  I mean his mother had to be a wreck and I am sure that effected how he was raised.


So, shifting gears...  My plan is to finish all the works of Fitzgerald.  I am so slow on getting through these, and I don't want to kid myself that I can race right through them, although if I had a month or two of isolation I am sure it would be done.  I have created some clusters of stories that I will be tackling.  I broke them down by year published and then on cluster of Scott and Zelda works (which I will read last).  Right now I am finishing the post 1940 published work.  I think this will be the most difficult as they were not published during his life for various reasons, like being unfinished or not very good.  They can range from a any period in his life, so there is not a lot of continuity to them.  The ones I have left are:

After 1940
The Woman From Twenty One
The Kingdom in the Dark
On an Ocean Wave
Discard
Last Kiss
Dearly Beloved
Lo, the Poor Peacock
On Your Own

I have about 100 left- Wow that seems high, but that' s what the numbers say.

Short Stories 20-23: A Full Life, The World's Fair, Three Hours Between Planes, News of Paris-Fifteen Years Ago

My plan is to read all of Fitzgeralds short stories and essays.  It seems to come and go in spurts, which is fine.  Currently I have divided the remaining stories into the years published and trying to read through them that way.  Currently I am reading the stories published after his death in 1940.

A Full Life was published in 1988
The World's Fair was published in 1948
Three Hours Between Planes was published in 1941
News of Paris- Fifteen Years ago was published in 1947

A Full Life:
A strange little story of a daring woman who appears in papers for crazy acts and then disappears, but there is one man who follows her escapades and wonders what she is all about.  I didn't feel like this was a complete story, but more like FSF was working out his feelings of helplessness and futility.  So I don't feel like this is a strong piece, but it does feel like he is searching for something, some meaning, and then just when it is within reach it withers away and is never recoverable.

The World's Fair:
Although published after his death, it fits chronologically between Gatsby and Tender, which is good to know while reading it, as it feels like it is just a partial story within a large context.  This story belongs to Tender is the Night, when it was in the Matricide story line, which was completely abandoned before taking a different tack to the story.  There are some wonderful descriptions in this little piece.  I wrote more about it here.

Three Hours Between Planes:
I believe this is one of the stories he had been working on at the end of his life while he was getting his confidence back and writing well once again.  It is a great little story about a man who has a layover and looks up his long lost crush of his youth.  The meet and have a little tryst.  It is soon discovered that Nancy who thought this Donald was the Donald of her memories, was wrong, and discovers too late that he is someone who she barley remembers.  I love this one.

Oh and it looks like someone made a short film about it... Three Hours Between Planes

News of Paris-Fifteen Years Ago: (Collected in Afternoon of an Author)
This is another story he was working on in the last years of his life.  It was found in his among his papers, but was unfinished, and it reads as such.  But it does have promise, although I thought the story line was a tad confusing and had to read it twice.