Head And Shoulders by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920
The magic trick:
A light, comical plot laced with serious human insight
I remember reading this in college – for fun, not a class – and thinking it was great.
Revisiting now, it strikes me as pretty silly; essentially a P.G. Wodehouse story overlaid with the themes Fitzgerald would explore in far more depth during the coming decade.
I still like it, though. It’s fun.
The key thing, I think, is there is just enough serious human insight tossed in amid the silliness.
I mean, the premise to be clear is that a college prodigy falls in love with a chorus girl and over time she winds up making a living as a successful writer and he winds up making a living as an acrobat. It’s absurd.
But even more absurd is the level of psychological analysis of these characters that occasionally bubbles up. For instance:
“Their minds moved in different spheres. Marcia acted as practical factotum, and Horace lived either in his old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of triumphantly earthy worship and adoration of his wife. She was a continual source of astonishment to him –the freshness and originality of her mind, her dynamic, clear-headed energy, and her unfailing good humor.”
A fun story written by a 23-year-old with true greatness on the horizon.
And that’s quite a trick on Fitzgerald’s part.
The selection:
On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row and witnessed “Home James.” Oddly enough he found that he was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the Hammerstein tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.
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