Magnetism
4/5
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About this ebook
Fitzgerald's work has been adapted into films many times. His short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", was the basis for a 2008 film. "Tender Is the Night" was filmed in 1962, and made into a television miniseries in 1985. "The Beautiful and Damned" was filmed in 1922 and 2010. "The Great Gatsby" has been the basis for numerous films of the same name, spanning nearly 90 years: 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000, and 2013 adaptations. In addition, Fitzgerald's own life from 1937 to 1940 was dramatized in 1958 in "Beloved Infidel".
F Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald 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 for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on 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 Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.
Read more from F Scott Fitzgerald
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Reviews for Magnetism
12 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This collection of short stories is #12 of Penguin's "Great Loves" series. It includes three I have not read before: The Sensible Thing, The Bridal Party, and Magnetism, along with the classic early flapper story, Bernice Bobs Her Hair. Published in 1928, these were the very early days of Hollywood, yet Magnetism captures the celebrity spirit in a way that is all too familiar today. One can imagine, however, the low-tech environment where famous actors still roamed the suburbs, startling elevator boys with their good looks and charm. Although Hemingway chastised Fitzgerald for writing short stories for money, instead of focusing on masterpieces like Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald's short stories are far from commercial ephemera that have lost their meaning in the present. It strikes me that the only difference is, back then, only the wealthy could experience such dramas as being considered dull and trying to project oneself as desirable, witty, and fun, whereas now almost any average consumer strives for the same thing. This is a very quick read, but Fitzgerald's work doesn't disappoint. It is only a shame that his short stories are scattered far and wide - as he would have delivered them to individual magazines in an effort to earn money - that a devoted Fitzgerald fan must constantly search for ever-more Fitzgerald stories to read. Nonetheless, part of the fun is discovering, from time to time, what seems to be an bottomless well of Fitzgerald ephemera still waiting to be discovered.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved this book.
It's F. Scott Fitzgerald, what more would you like me to say? This is an incredibly short collection of his short stories, and while short stories as a general form sometimes lack the power or build-up of a full novel, I still love and appreciate Scott's writing.
The stories are melancholy, sad, wistful. On the back, the blurb only mentions one story, Magnetism, but there are more and they are great too. I love this short story collection because I love Scott's writing style. He has this ability to narrate while weaving in the character's voice and perceptions without disturbing his own, like someone doing voice acting, but maintaining their own wry wit.
If you don't like Fitzgerald's writing style, this book probably isn't for you.
But if you do, then this short, sharp, sweet little quartet awaits you. c:
Book preview
Magnetism - F Scott Fitzgerald
Table Of Contents
I
II
III
IV
Copyright
I
The pleasant, ostentatious boulevard was lined at prosperous intervals with New England Colonial houses--without ship models in the hall. When the inhabitants moved out here the ship models had at last been given to the children. The next street was a complete exhibit of the Spanish-bungalow phase of West Coast architecture; while two streets over, the cylindrical windows and round towers of 1897--melancholy antiques which sheltered swamis, yogis, fortune tellers, dressmakers, dancing teachers, art academies and chiropractors--looked down now upon brisk buses and trolley cars. A little walk around the block could, if you were feeling old that day, be a discouraging affair.
On the green flanks of the modern boulevard children, with their knees marked by the red stains of the mercurochrome era, played with toys with a purpose--beams that taught engineering, soldiers that taught manliness, and dolls that taught motherhood. When the dolls were so banged up that they stopped looking like real babies and began to look like dolls, the children developed affection for them. Everything in the vicinity--even the March sunlight--was new, fresh, hopeful and thin, as you would expect in a city that had tripled its population in fifteen years.
Among the very few domestics in sight that morning was a handsome young maid sweeping the steps of the biggest house on the street. She was a large, simple Mexican girl with the large, simple ambitions of the time and the locality, and she was already conscious of being a luxury--she received one hundred dollars a month in return for her personal liberty. Sweeping, Dolores kept an eye on the stairs inside, for Mr Hannaford's car was waiting and he would soon be coming down to breakfast. The problem came first this morning, however--the problem as to whether it was a duty or a favour when she helped the English nurse down the steps with the perambulator. The English nurse always said 'Please', and 'Thanks very much', but Dolores hated her and would have liked, without any special excitement, to beat her insensible. Like most Latins under the stimulus of American life, she had irresistible impulses towards violence.
The nurse escaped, however. Her blue cape faded haughtily into the distance just as Mr Hannaford, who had come quietly downstairs, stepped into the space of the front door.
'Good morning.' He smiled at Dolores; he