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.

All Episodes

Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

"A Short Trip Home"

May 25, 2026 • Kirk Curnutt and Robert Trogdon • Season 4 • Episode 1

0:00 | 49:04

Send us Fan Mail

Published December 17, 1927 in the Saturday Evening Post, "A Short Trip Home" is most notable as one of a handful of supernatural short stories F. Scott Fitzgerald published throughout his career. Indeed, the Post almost declined the story because they weren't keen on tales of specters, wraiths, or apparitions, but ultimately they couldn't resist his prose. In this tale, a St Paul college boy, Eddie Stinson, takes it upon himself to protect local girl Ellen Baker from a mysterious man named Joe Varland---who appears to be from another dimension. We explore this story in the tradition of spoooky tales from Poe to Henry James while examining Fitzgerald's love of trains and the Midwest. Although not a famous story, "A Short Trip Home" demonstrates how adept Fitzgerald was when he decided to take on a specific genre in popular fiction.