Flappers and Philosophers

Zusatztext “Fitzgerald is a master of the American short story.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.” —Ernest Hemingway Informationen zum Autor F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby , was born in 1896 and died in 1940. Klappentext Flappers and Philosophers was published in 1920 on the heels of Fitzgerald's sensational debut, This Side of Paradise, and anticipated themes in The Great Gatsby. This iconic collection marks the writer's entry into short fiction, and contains some of his most famous early stories, including "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," "The Ice Palace," "Head and Shoulders," and "The Offshore Pirate." In these pages we meet Fitzgerald's trademark characters: the beautiful, headstrong young women and the dissolute, wandering young men who comprised what came to be called the Lost Generation. With their bobbed hair and dangling cigarettes, his characters are sophisticated, witty, and, above all, modern: the spoiled heiress who falls for her kidnapper, the intellectual student whose life is turned upside-down by a chorus girl, the feuding debutantes whose weapons are cutting words and a pair of scissors. An instant classic in its time, a confirmed part of the canon today, this collection evokes 1920s America through the eyes of a writer indelibly linked to that singular era. The Offshore Pirate 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. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France. She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide. The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair and clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of the companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval. If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages, turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned. "Ardita!" said the gray-haired man sternly. Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing. "Ardita!" he repeated. "Ardita!" Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip out before it reached her tongue. "Oh, shut up." "Ardita!" "What?" "Will you listen to me—or will I have to get a servant to hold you while I talk to you?" The lemon descended slowly and scornfully. "Put it in writing." "Will you have the decency to close that abominable book and discard that damn l...

Product details

• Authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 08.09.2009
• EAN: 9780307474520
• ISBN: 978-0-307-47452-0
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 205 mm x 18 mm
• Series: Vintage Classics; VINTAGE CLASSICS
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature