''Babylon Revisited and Other Stories'' is a collection of ten
short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
written between 1920 and 1937 by
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
. It was published in 1960 by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawli ...
.
Selection
''Babylon Revisited'' collects ten of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-known short stories. In an afterword to the 1996 edition, Fitzgerald scholar
Matthew Bruccoli
Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (August 21, 1931 – June 4, 2008)Lee Higgins,", ''The State'', June 5, 2008. Retrieved on June 5, 2008William Grim"Matthew J. Bruccoli, 76, Scholar, Dies; Academia’s Fitzgerald Record Keeper, New York Times, June 6, 2008. ...
describes the period leading up to the selection, "F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. The obituaries were condescending, and he seemed destined for literary obscurity. The first phase of the Fitzgerald resurrection—'revival' does not properly describe the process—occurred between 1945 and 1950. By 1960 he had achieved a secure place among America's enduring writers." In an afterword to the 2000 edition, James L. W. West III of
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
explains of the ''Babylon Revisited'' stories, "His writings embody lessons of ambition and disappointment, idealism and disenchantment, success and failure and redemption, that are central to the American experience...His romantic readiness for life and his gift for hope have come to embody important aspects of the American experience."
Contents
The ten stories included are
# "
The Ice Palace"
# "
May Day
May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Festivities may also be held the night before, known as May Eve. T ...
"
# "
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
''The Diamond as Big as the Ritz'' is a novella by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in the June 1922 issue of ''The Smart Set'' magazine, and was included in Fitzgerald's 1922 short story collection ''Tales of the Jazz Age''. ...
"
# "
Winter Dreams
"Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in '' Metropolitan'' magazine in December 1922 and later collected in '' All the Sad Young Men'' in 1926. The plot concerns the attempts by a young man to win the a ...
"
# "
Absolution
Absolution is a traditional theological term for the forgiveness imparted by ordained Christian priests and experienced by Christian penitents. It is a universal feature of the historic churches of Christendom, although the theology and the pra ...
"
# "
The Rich Boy
"The Rich Boy" is a short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was included in his 1926 collection ''All the Sad Young Men''. "The Rich Boy" originally appeared in two parts, in the January and February 1926 issues of ''Redbook''. In t ...
"
# "
The Freshest Boy"
# "
Babylon Revisited"
# "
Crazy Sunday
"Crazy Sunday" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in the October 1932 issue of ''American Mercury''.
Fitzgerald's story is set in the brutal life of the great studios of 1930s Hollywood, with their flocks of actors, writ ...
"
# "The Long Way Out"
Reception
When the title story appeared in Fitzgerald's final collection, 1935's ''
Taps at Reveille
''Taps at Reveille'' (1935) is a collection of 18 short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was the fourth and final collection of short stories Fitzgerald published in his lifetime. All were timed to appear a few months to a year after each o ...
'', ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote, "'Babylon Revisited,' which seems oddly linked in spirit to Mr. Fitzgerald's latest novel, '
Tender is the Night
''Tender Is the Night'' is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young ps ...
,' is probably the most mature and substantial story in the book. A rueful, though incompleted, farewell to the
Jazz Age, its setting is Paris and its tone one of anguish for past follies." In a January 2011 essay to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the
Penguin's Modern Classics series,
University of East Anglia's Sarah Churchwell
Sarah Bartlett Churchwell (born May 27, 1970) is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century American literature ...
wrote,
"Babylon Revisited" is at once timeless and startlingly modern in its evocation of a single father struggling with alcoholism and trying to care for his daughter, and coming to terms with the costs of extravagance...Nine years after the publication, less than a year before he would die at 44, Fitzgerald wrote his daughter Scottie a letter about the story: "You have earned some money for me this week because I sold 'Babylon Revisited,' in which you are a character, to the pictures (the sum received wasn’t worthy of the magnificent story—neither of you nor of me—however, I am accepting it)." Like he story's hero Fitzgerald learnt the hard way that loss is remorseless, absolute; what has been wasted is irrecoverable. But as "Babylon Revisited" also shows, even out of the wreckage some things can be salvaged, if not everything: what Fitzgerald retrieved he bequeathed to us, the hard-won lessons of his life transformed into heartbreaking art.
Churchwell called the story—as of 2011—"a perfect tale for the times we live in".
[Sarah Churchwell, "Babylon Revisited: When the money runs out", '']The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'', 28 January 2011. (Churchwell draws an implicit economic connection between the early twenty-first century slowdown and 1930s Paris and America: "'Babylon Revisited' clearly chimes with Fitzgerald’s own life in late 1930: the extravagant dissipation of life in Paris during the boom years; the wife lost to illness; a fortune frittered away in the confidence that 'even when you were broke, you didn’t worry about money,' as Fitzgerald later wrote about the rampant spending in the Twenties, 'because it was in such profusion around you.'”)
Betty Draper
Elizabeth "Betty" Hofstadt Francis (formerly Draper) is a fictional character on AMC's television series ''Mad Men'', wife of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and mother of his three children. Blonde and beautiful but emotionally distant and immature, she sp ...
can be seen reading the collection in the second season of ''
Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its fict ...
''.
References
External links
''The New York Times'' on ''Taps at Reveille'', in which "Babylon Revisited" first appeared
{{DEFAULTSORT:Babylon Revisited And Other Stories
1960 short story collections
Short story collections by F. Scott Fitzgerald