爵士时代的故事 (1922)

《爵士时代的故事》（英语：Tales of the Jazz Age），出版于1922年，是美国作家弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的短篇小说集。分为“最近的回忆”（My Last Flappers），“幻想作品”（Fantasies），“未分类的杰作”（Unclassified Masterpieces）三部分。共包涵十一个短篇，其中包括最知名的短篇故事《班杰明的奇幻旅程》。所有故事曾出版于《Metropolitan Magazine》、《星期六晚邮报》、《The Smart Set》、《Collier's》、《芝加哥论坛报》及《名利场》中。

内容简介

这十一篇风格迥异的故事主要讲述一战后到二十世纪十二年代左右美国爵士时代的生活与年轻人的故事。反映了当时一部分人，尤其是年轻人内心感受。

最近的回忆

《橡皮糖》（The Jelly-Bean）

《骆驼的后背》（The Camel's Back）

《五一节》（May Day）

《瓷浴盆与粉红色》（Porcelain and Pink）

幻想作品

《一颗像里兹饭店那么大的钻石》（The Diamond as Big as the Ritz）

《班杰明的奇幻旅程》（The Curious Case of Benjamin Button）

《齐普赛街的塔昆》（Tarquin of Cheapside）

《啊，赤褐色的女巫！》（Oh Russet Witch!）

未分类的杰作

《幸福的辛酸》（The Lees of Happiness）

《黏糊先生》（Mr. Icky）

《山里姑娘杰米娜》（Jemina）

Tales of the Jazz Age is a 1922 collection of 11 short stories by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". All of the stories had first appeared, independently, in either Metropolitan Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier's, the Chicago Sunday Tribune, or Vanity Fair.

Due to its adult theme, Fitzgerald did not consider the short story "May Day" to be suitable for the family-oriented readership favored by the Saturday Evening Post. He offered this "masterpiece" to H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, editors at The Smart Set, where it appeared in the July 1920 issue. Fitzgerald termed the story "this somewhat unpleasant tale".

Contents

Fitzgerald provided his own annotated table of contents for the collection, providing commentary on each story. The works are presented in three categories: My Last Flappers, Fantasies, and Unclassified Masterpieces. The original periodical publication and date are indicated below.

My Last Flappers

"The Jelly-Bean" (Metropolitan Magazine, October 1920)

"The Camel's Back" (Saturday Evening Post, April 24, 1920)

"May Day" (The Smart Set, July 1920)

"Porcelain and Pink" (The Smart Set, January 1920)

Fantasies

"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (The Smart Set, June 1922)

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Collier's, May 27, 1922)

"Tarquin of Cheapside" (The Smart Set, February 1921)

"O Russet Witch!" (Metropolitan Magazine, February 1921)

Unclassified Masterpieces

"The Lees of Happiness" (Chicago Sunday Tribune, December 12, 1920)

"Mr. Icky" (The Smart Set, March 1920)

"Jemina" (Vanity Fair, January 1921)

Reception

Critic Hildegarde Hawthorne in The New York Times, October 29, 1922, commented on Fitzgerald's contemporary identification as a writer for slick magazines, in particular The Saturday Evening Post. Hawthorne wrote that stories "give too much of the effect of samples... The book is more like a magazine than a collection of stories by one man, arranged by an editor to suit all tastes and meant to be thrown away after reading."

Hawthorne closes with an upbeat assessment of Fitzgerald's potential as a fiction writer: "These stories are announced as beginning in the writer's second manner. They certainly show a development in his art, a new turn... this 'second manner' is surely the outcropping of a rich vein that may hold much wealth."

Critical appraisal

According to biographer Kenneth Eble, Fitzgerald characterized some of the short fiction as "cheap and without the spontaneity of my first work." Eble adds that "Tales of the Jazz Age suffers badly from the inclusion of some early writing which might better have remained in The Nassau Literary Review, where it first appeared."

Several stories in Tales of the Jazz Age are notable for their "authorial self-consciousness" registered through Fitzgerald's editorial remarks directed towards the reader. Literary Critic John Kuehl writes:

[T]he author's voice tends to intrude upon and dominate the stories, whether narrated in the third-person or in the no less omniscient first-person. The characters tell neither their own stories nor other people's tales; with few exceptions, they are objects viewed through authorial eyes instead of filters through whom the action unfolds.

Kuehl argues that this "egotistical foregrounding" tends to squander Fitzgerald's literary talents in favor of an intrusive approach that fails to adequately dramatize his narrative.

Theme

Fitzgerald's earliest professional stories largely concerned inherited wealth and the "indolent rich." These preoccupations transitioned, however, toward narratives involving a broader spectrum of social classes, including "businessmen, writers, performers, priests and white-collar workers." Critic John Kuehl reports that this emerging focus on essentially democratic concerns "reaches its apotheosis in 'May Day,' where various socioeconomic classes meet."