Taps at Reveille
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[]
- ^ Edith Walton, "Scott Fitzgerald's Tales," The New York Times, March 31, 1935.
External links[]
- 1935 short story collections
- Short story collections by F. Scott Fitzgerald