Taps at Reveille

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First edition

Taps at Reveille (1935) is a collection of 18 short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was the fourth and final collection of short stories Fitzgerald published in his lifetime. All were timed to appear a few months to a year after each of his four completed novels were published.

Contents[]

The eighteen stories collected in Taps at Reveille are:

Basil:

  • "The Scandal Detectives"
  • "The Freshest Boy"
  • "He Thinks He's Wonderful"
  • "The Captured Shadow"
  • "The Perfect Life"

Josephine:

  • "First Blood"
  • "A Nice Quiet Place"
  • "A Woman with a Past"

Other

  • "Crazy Sunday"
  • "Two Wrongs"
  • "The Night of Chancellorsville"
  • "The Last of the Belles"
  • "Majesty"
  • "Family in the Wind"
  • "A Short Trip Home"
  • "One Interne"
  • "The Fiend"
  • "Babylon Revisited"

Publication[]

Taps at Reveille was published on March 10, 1935. The collection was dedicated to Fitzgerald's agent Harold Ober.

Reception[]

In The New York Times, critic Edith Walton gave Fitzgerald's final collection a mixed reception. "The characteristic seal of his brilliance stamps the entire book, but it is a brilliance which splutters off too frequently into mere razzle-dazzle." Citing the Basil Duke Lee stories as "small masterpieces," Walton called Babylon Revisited "probably the most mature and substantial story in the book. A rueful, though incompleted, farewell to the Jazz Age, its setting is Paris and its tone one of anguish for past follies." Walton continues, "It has become a dreadful commonplace to say that Mr. Fitzgerald's material is rarely worthy of his talents. Unfortunately, however, the platitude represents truth. Scott Fitzgerald's mastery of style — swift, sure, polished, firm — is so complete that even his most trivial efforts are dignified by his technical competence. All his writing has a glamorous gloss upon it; it is always entertaining; it is always beautifully executed."[1]

References[]

  1. ^ Edith Walton, "Scott Fitzgerald's Tales," The New York Times, March 31, 1935.

External links[]

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