Fitzgerald's second collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), includes two masterpieces - 'May Day' and 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz' - as well as other stories from his earlier career. Tales of the Jazz Age reproduces the original collection in full, along with several uncollected stories from the early 1920s, including 'Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar', a 1923 narrative which closely anticipates the themes and characters of The Great Gatsby. In his introduction James L. W. West, III offers an account of the textual history of the stories, reconstructs Fitzgerald's decisions about which stories to include and exclude, and examines reproductions of surviving manuscripts and typescripts. He supplies a full record of variants, tracing Fitzgerald's extensive revisions to the stories, and he provides detailed historical notes, references and glosses.
Over the last 10 minutes I must have switched between 3 and 4 stars about 20 times - but I did really like most of the short stories.
Fitzgerald has a way of creating the not always endearing but nevertheless interesting characters in his short stories that are sadly missing in his novels (The Great Gatsby excepted).
