FitzFirst@Four discusses Fitzgerald’s short story “The Rich Boy”

FitzFirst@Four is a monthly discussion group, focused on the short stories of F Scott Fitzgerald. It meets at 4:00pm on the first Sunday of every month at Common Good Books. Events are free and open to the public.

This month’s guest is Laura Iandola, a regular contributor to the FitzFirst program, and board member of Fitzgerald in Saint Paul. Iandola is currently a doctoral candidate at Northern Illinois University.  She has regularly used Fitzgerald’s works in teaching classes on history and gender studies. Building on earlier discussions she has led on Fitzgerald, money, and “emotional bankruptcy,” Iandola will examine Fitzgerald’s perceptions of the wealthy and the enduring connection in his work between love and money.  

We’ll be discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Rich Boy,” which can be found in The Short Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald, available now at Common Good Books.

The Rich Boy.  The story is recognized by many as “Fitzgerald’s most important novelette.”   Fitzgerald himself described the story to Ludlow Fowler--his Princeton classmate on whom he modeled the protagonist--as “one of the best things I have ever done.”  This edition of FitzFirst@Four takes place at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 3, 2016, at Common Good Books in Saint Paul.

The Rich Boy originally appeared in two installments in Red Book magazine, in early 1926.  It was written in Europe, as Fitzgerald awaited final publication of his manuscript for The Great Gatsby. Readers will discover many parallel themes in these two works. As Fitzgerald famously wrote in the story, “Let me tell you about the very rich.  They are different from you and me.” These lines later became embroiled in Fitzgerald's troubled relationship with Ernest Hemingway, who circulated a maliciously false version of the quotation that bloomed into the literary stereotype of “poor” Scott Fitzgerald, as the “envious wannabe and hanger-on to the very rich.”  Yet as The Rich Boy demonstrates, Fitzgerald wrote astutely about the impact of wealth on both culture and character.  He invites the reader to think carefully about whether other authors have “made the country of the rich as unreal as fairy-land.”

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For more information, contact Fitzgerald in Saint Paul at info@fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org, or visit www.fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org. Fitzgerald in Saint Paul is dedicated to celebrating the life and literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the revered American author and cultural icon, in his hometown of Saint Paul.