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.
Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Rough Crossing"
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
An underappreciated story that is sometimes overshadowed by 1930's "One Trip Abroad," "The Rough Crossing" first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on June 8, 1929. It was based on the Fitzgeralds' own experiences on a transatlantic voyage a few months earlier when their vessel hit bad weather and passengers soothed their oceanic anxieties by hitting the bar. In this case, the crossing serves as a correlative for the troubled marriage between playwright Adrian Smith and his wife Eva, both of whom are tempted by infidelity as they ride of the waves of modern change. As with many modernist stories based upon the experience of a passenger voyage, the Atlantic crossing becomes a space for loosening up one's identity and moral inhibitions and exploring suppressed indulgences---something that comes at a great price, as Adrian and Eva learn. "The Rough Crossing" was essential to the eventual development of Tender Is the Night, which is another reason it hasn't received the attention it deserves. Yet it's a surprisingly racy story for the Post, and one that deserves attention.