Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

In 1929 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Ernest Hemingway that because his short stories now earned $4000 a pop he was "an old whore" who had "mastered the 40 positions" when "in her youth one was enough." But were the upwards of 180 stories he cranked out when not writing The Great Gatsby really the work of a literary prostitute selling out his talent for a fast buck? Kirk Curnutt and Robert Trogdon don't think so. Each episode they draw a random title from a hat and explore its place in Fitzgerald's career, in the magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post or Esquire where it may have appeared, and in the overall development of the American short story. Along the way, they talk literary politics, history, and gossip from the 1920s and 1930s, rediscovering the lively personalities and rivalries that tried to define the porous boundaries between commercial and artistic fiction, between the popular and the avant-garde, between the forgotten and the canonized.

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Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The Offshore Pirate"

July 12, 2025 • Kirk Curnutt and Robert Trogdon • Season 3 • Episode 4

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After a year's sabbatical planning the April 2025 Gatsby Centennial and the Fitzgerald Society's June 2025 accompanying conference, Master the 40 is back with a discussion of Fitzgerald's quintessential flapper story "The Offshore Pirate." Originally published in the May 29, 1920 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, this delightful trick-ending tale tells the story of an importunate young girl, Ardita Farnam, who is kidnapped by a self-described jazz musician-turned-pirate, Curtis Carlyle, who embodies Ardita's notion of romance as a daring spectacle or all-out pageantry. Full of snappy patter and vivid illustration, the story conveys all the sass and satire of Fitzgerald's fondness for the so-called "rising generation" in revolt against elders' stuffy Victorianism. Most interesting here, though, is Fitzgerald's complex ambivalence toward jazz and the way the story can be read as a parody of the self-made man tradition. As we celebrate this story, we can only add that it is good to be back! By the way, we created via AI our opening music using Fitzgerald's lyrics from the story. Proof the AI can't replace real musicianship!