Jazz Fractures: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Epochal Representation

Breitwieser, Mitchell Robert

doi:10.1093/alh/12.3.359

Cited by 8 publications

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References 10 publications

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“…3 3 Recent appraisals of Fitzgerald and music acknowledge the absence of song selections that the modern listener might understand to be jazz or even significantly jazz‐inflected in his novels, but none has paid much if any attention to the actual songs he invokes (see Breitwieser, Early, and Jerving). …”

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Fitzgerald's “Riotous Mystery”:This Side of Paradiseas Musical Theater

Graham¹

2008

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review

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confidence: 99%

Fitzgerald's “Riotous Mystery”:This Side of Paradiseas Musical Theater

Graham¹

2008

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review

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The Literary Soundtrack: Or, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Heard and Unheard Melodies

Graham¹

2009

American Literary History

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Anyone who writes about music is likely to have at some point been warned that words are but limited instruments for describing the most evanescent and time-bound of the arts; as the old cliché would have it, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." A less discussed corollary to this problem is that reading about music makes for an oddly mixed experience as well. Consider, for example, the following excerpt from Richard Powers's novel The Time of Our Singing (2003), narrated by a mixed-race pianist whose artistic genealogy is at once classical and popular, traditional and modern, black and white: "'Naw, naw. Play me that pretty one. The one with the string quartet.' He hummed the first three notes of 'Yesterday,' with a schmaltz three years too late or thirty too soon. I'd heard the tune thousands of times. But I'd never played it. . . . The problem with pop tunes was that, in those rare moments when I did recreate them at the piano, as a break from more études, I tended to embellish the chord sequences. 'Yesterday' came out half Baroque figured bass and half ballpark organ" (431). It is hard to think of many betterknown songs than "Yesterday," and upon encountering this scene, readers are quite likely to hear, somewhere in the recesses of their minds, Paul McCartney singing its "first three notes" or the sound of his accompanying "string quartet" as clearly as if a record had been put on. And yet the song has also been radically defamiliarized in Powers's treatment, still recognizable but rendered "half Baroque figured bass and half ballpark organ" by the improvising narrator. It is a counter-version of a pop song that, long before The Time of Our Singing took it up, was already among the most frequently covered in history, with Powers presenting a new "Yesterday" that his readers might be able to imagine but cannot T. Austin Graham is a doctoral candidate at UCLA, where he is completing a dissertation on musical approaches to American literature.

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The Politics of F. Scott Fizgerald

Shiveley

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F. Scott Fitzgerald is valued for his contribution to literary arts, culture and his discussion of the American Dream. I argue that his discussion of the American Dream was a lens through which he gave readers access to political insights and an education about political philosophy, American politics, virtue, and reasoning. The American Dream, at its greatest, for Fitzgerald is a nation building myth but at its lowest is a dull materialistic construct. Throughout his works Fitzgerald connects philosophic ideas to the American Dream in attempts to educate and ennoble his readers. The ability to judge well is a critical piece of self-government that was a focus of Fitzgerald's throughout his body of work. In The Beautiful and Damned, by giving weight to Platonic ideals of beauty and goodness, and Platonic heuristics like the allegory of the cave he attempted to negate the detrimental effects of nihilism in America at his time and after. In The Great Gatsby, by presenting virtue of the contemplative life that could be cultivated by his readers, in his time, and including esoteric teachings on those virtues and values he attempted to negate the detrimental effects of materialism on the American dream. Finally, in The Last Tycoon, by articulating an American alternative to the philosopher-king he put forward a vision of statesmanship that could mitigate the effects of materialism and keep the American Dream alive against a socialist attack.

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Jazz Fractures: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Epochal Representation

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Fitzgerald's “Riotous Mystery”:This Side of Paradiseas Musical Theater

Fitzgerald's “Riotous Mystery”:This Side of Paradiseas Musical Theater

The Literary Soundtrack: Or, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Heard and Unheard Melodies

The Politics of F. Scott Fizgerald

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