Flappers and Philosophers
The year is 1920. The war is over, and a new generation has emerged from the wreckage with shorter hemlines, sharper wit, and an unquenchable thirst for something real. Fitzgerald captured them in his first collection of short stories, eight tales that announced a major literary voice and defined an era. Flappers and Philosophers roars with the energy of youth rebelling against old money expectations and stuffy convention. Ardita Farnam lounges on yachts, dismissing her uncle's admonitions with razor-edged wit, insisting on Palm Beach over dinner with colonels. Across these stories, Fitzgerald maps a generation caught between postwar disillusionment and the desperate pursuit of pleasure. The ice palace in the collection's most celebrated tale symbolizes something fragile and unattainable, a dream of escape that may only exist in the cold. This is Fitzgerald at his most effervescent, writing with the breathless urgency of someone who knew these people intimately because he was one of them. The prose crackles with cocktails and longing, with the particular sadness of young people who have everything and feel nothing.
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“I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I hate dainty minds,' answered Marjorie. 'But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“You remind me of a smoked cigarette.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“we both fitted. If our corners were not rubbed off they were at least pulled in. But deep in us both was something that made us require more for happiness. I didn't know what I wanted””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“This is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding-- it's got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea--if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“What was it? Why won't you tell me?""I don't want to break down your illusions.""My dear man, I have no illusions about you.""I mean illusions about yourself.””
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Flappers and Philosophers. Lex, lex-books.com/book/flappers-and-philosophers-2cb165ed-a657-485a-99c9-798e08379e4a.Fitzgerald, F. S. (n.d.). Flappers and Philosophers. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/flappers-and-philosophers-2cb165ed-a657-485a-99c9-798e08379e4aFitzgerald, F. Scott. Flappers and Philosophers. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/flappers-and-philosophers-2cb165ed-a657-485a-99c9-798e08379e4a.
