Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates and analyzes the ways in which Fitzgerald integrated music with literature through his entire writing career, from his early Triangle Club lyrics to his later Hollywood screenplays, but most significantly in the novels and short stories for which he is most famous. Growing up during the first resonating outbursts of popular music-the ragtime era and the jazz age-Fitzgerald filled his fiction with popular songs to express the topics, mores, and energy of his times. As the years passed from World War I to the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, these songs brought to his work the varying effects that they had on a mass society: stimulation, romance, nostalgia, and consolation. The songs also contributed to the modernist traits of his style by creating a mixed-media texture and allusive openings to shows or movies in which the songs appeared. Although popular culture seemed appealing, Fitzgerald constantly worried about how it affected the stature of his works. He carefully distinguished between his popular short stories and his classic novels. But just as songs incorporated popular culture into his works, so other musical qualities, which came to him from classical music by means of poetry, furnished imagery, and structure that enhanced the classic value of his novels. Even from his later work on screenplays, which he considered a low type of writing, Fitzgerald learned to transform the art and industry of film into fitting material for what could have been his last classic novel, and music provided both popular and classical elements to advance this effort. Fitzgerald experienced and appreciated the lively new music of his time. In his writing he preserved, organized, and interpreted it for future generations.

About the Author
Anthony J. Berret, SJ, teaches English and American literature at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

Reviews
Berret's engaging book shows just how rewarding such musical excavation can be when combined with a cultural studies approach. It functions as a highly worthwhile entry point for new scholars of Fitzgerald, and rewards existing scholars' attention. It is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the multifaceted, modernist traits of Fitzgerald's style, and his personal struggles between his identity as a Post author and his novel-writing career. Berret seeks to enable Fitzgerald's music to be heard, and 'to have a distinct and meaningful voice in the literary text.' In this endeavor, he has certainly succeeded. * Resources for American Literary Study *



Book Information
ISBN 9781611478327
Author Anthony J. Berret
Format Paperback
Page Count 292
Imprint Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Publisher Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Weight(grams) 435g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 151mm * 22mm