A fascinating study in self-satire that brings to life the Hollywood years of F. Scott Fitzgerald
The setting: Hollywood: the character: Pat Hobby, a down-and-out screenwriter trying to break back into show business, but having better luck getting into bars. Written between 1939 and 1940, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was working for Universal Studios, the seventeen Pat Hobby stories were first published in Esquire magazine and present a bitterly humorous portrait of a once-successful writer who becomes a forgotten hack on a Hollywood lot. "This was not art" Pat Hobby often said, "this was an industry" where whom "you sat with at lunch was more important than what you dictated in your office."
The Pat Hobby sequence, as Arnold Gingrich writes in his introduction, is Fitzgerald's "last word from his last home, for much of what he felt about Hollywood and about himself permeated these stories."

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Product details

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (Dec 6 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0684804425
ISBN-13: 978-0684804422
Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 1 x 20.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 181 g
Average Customer Review: 11 customer reviews
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #562,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5463 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies > Anthologies
- #7532 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies > Short Stories
- #11407 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

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Product description

About the Author

F. Scott Fitgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and the couple divided their time among New York, Paris, and the Riviera. Fitzgerald's masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four, while working on The Love of the Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald stands out as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.

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Dr. DNA

Fitzgerald modern

September 23, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

There's an urgency to the writing, where the story and only the story matters, as if delivered between drinks in some Hollywood bar. Obviously there's a 'pictorial' influence, a screenwriter's sense of scene, an oral sense of brevity rather than pretty verbal exposition. As an expose of life on the studio lot in the 1930s there is nothing to match these stories. As a 'writer', Hobby is a Falstaffian hustler who was 'big' in the silent era, and now struggles to get any screen credits at all in the talkies. Forty-nine years old and living from fantasy to fantasy -- often ripped off from some other wannabe sucker -- he lurches around the studio lot like a bit player from the silents trying to keep up to the relentless future. In fact, in one story he blunders into the middle of a live scene while trying to graft a loan from a producer and is then forced to wear a iron stunt vest and allow himself to be driven over by the star. Desperate for money, he agrees but the scene goes awry and he's left in a ditch all night trapped by his iron vest until rescued by a studio cop at dawn.

Many screenwriters no doubt felt as if they were wearing an iron straight jacket as they laboured cruelly, tricked by easy promises and their own desperate optimism. Fitzgerald was definitely writing under such pressure in the three years before his death, recovering from his 'Crack-Up' period, struggling to find the cash to pay for his wife's medical quarantine, their daughter's school, and whatever it takes to pay for food and lodging.
[quoted from my article, "F. Scott Fitzgerald: the last chapter", posted at culturecourt.com]

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Dave Roe

Layout makes it unreadable.

December 9, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Layout makes it unreadable. It should be released in such a state. Shameful. Everything is a sentence fragment hip hip hurrah!

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ElijahKazlauskas

Five Stars

November 3, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Good writing and a lot of laughs.

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C Jones

Hollywood Without The Glamour and Glitz

October 17, 2001

Format: Paperback

Pat Hobby, once a successful Hollywood screenwriter, is nothing more than a pathetic has been. Broke, tired, and scrambling to find work, Pat takes on some unconventional methods to fill his pockets and put his name back on the big screen. But things don't turn out as smooth as Pat hopes. After all, as Pat himself repeatedly states, "I'm just a writer," and, "it's a dog's life." Pat's antics backfire and in almost every story he is left with nothing but humiliation.
The Pat Hobby stories were written between 1939 and 1940, when Fitzgerald himself was struggling to keep afloat in Hollywood. Fitzgerald paints the Hollywood scene as cold, calculating, and manipulative. A place where kissing up is more important than the quality of your talents, a place where the writer gets no respect, and a place that most likely today harbors the same attitude that Fitzgerald so deftly described in his final days.
In reading the Pat Hobby Stories, one can feel Fitzgerald's own sense of poor self-worth, despair, and hopelessness. Yet ironically, a twist of dark humor is thrown into the stories, evoking in the reader an ambiguous response of laughing at Pat Hobby while pitying him at the same time. This collection is not only entertaining and easy to read, but is one that will give you broader insight into the late great F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Amazon Customer

I could listen to this over and over

April 13, 2001

Format: Audio Cassette

I was delighted to find out that not only were F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories being narrated on audio cassette, but that one of the performers was none other than Robert Sean Leonard. Scottie is by far one of my favorite American authors. It takes an incredible talent to condemn the life you live in your literature, and when I think how he strived for excellence but fell victim to society, I can't help but pity him. His writing is so delicious to read as well. He has such wonderful similies and metaphors, and is so descriptive I can taste the wine, feel the rain and see the stars. The Jazz Age is one of my favorite time periods and F. Scott Fitzgerald captures it perfectly. You see the glittering side but then the glitter gets tarnished as it must. What is even better about this audio is that one of the narrators is none other than my favorite actor, Robert Sean Leonard (better known as Neal in Dead Poets Society and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing among other films). His voice is wonderful to listen to, even if you're not a fan of his acting. It's perfectly clear and flowing and it reminds you of listening to your parents reading you a bedtime story. The tape itself leaves you feeling as if you've been on an emotional rollercoaster. There's a nice beginning, then it peaks with conflict, the resolution, and then the end finishes as calmly as it started. Yet you've gained something from it. Fitzgerald has some incredibly phenomenal themes in his work. The odd part is that I usually don't like getting audio books, but I certainly reccomend this audio of The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald" It's worth every penny.

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Jerry Walker

I'm smart

April 8, 2000

Format: Paperback

I got a chance to read this book before I read his work in school. It was referred to me by someone I know who said it was funny. I read it and liked it very much. I'm a student and I'm glad I got a chance to read this book before reading the Great Gatsby in school. The Great Gatsby is a good book too but they force it upon us and it's more like punishment than enjoyment. He's also got a great way of writing. It's easier to understand and not as tiresome as some older books like A Tale of Two Cities. In closing, I would like to say one thing, If you don't read this book then you're a stupid loser.

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Carla M.Golden

I love this man's work!

August 16, 2001

Format: Audio Cassette

I first became acquainted and fell in love with the work of F.Scott Fitzgerald when I read a hardback copy of The Great Gatsby in my early 20s. Since then, I have read Tender Is The Night and This Side of Paradise, so when I discovered this collection of stories by my literary hero, I floated up to the cieling. My favorites include The Diamond As Big As The Ritz and Bernice Bobs Her Hair, and anyone who has not already been introduced to Fitzgerald, either in English class at school or while browsing in a local bookstore, it's not too late to change your mind, and it is my sincere hope that you will love this man's work as much as I do!

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Most recent customer reviews

Jeffrey K. Tyzzer

More Heartbreak from the Dream Dump

Most people know F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of the deans of the lost generation and an icon of the jazz-age.Read more

Published on August 14, 2003

Bret Nicolaysen

The Brilliant Pat Hobby Stories

The Brilliant Pat Hobby Stories are just as the title says, brillliant. I have never red a collection of stories as this. The wit of Mr.Read more

Published on November 10, 2002

Debbie

Try Fitzgerald once again

Don't give up on an author because you had a traumatic experience in high school when you were forced to read books without any say! Try F.Read more

Published on December 24, 1999

A customer

Fabulous assessment of growing old in showbiz!

If you read "The Great Gatsby" because you were required to in school, you may want to refresh your memory on reading Fitzgerald for enjoyment.Read more

Published on February 28, 1997

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The Pat Hobby Stories Paperback – Dec 6 1995

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