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After a year's sabbatical planning the April 2025 Gatsby Centennial and the Fitzgerald Society's June 2025 accompanying conference, Master the 40 is back with a discussion of Fitzgerald's quintessential flapper story "The Offshore Pirate." Originally published in the May 29, 1920 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, this delightful trick-ending tale tells the story of an importunate young girl, Ardita Farnam, who is kidnapped by a self-described jazz musician-turned-pirate, Curtis Carlyle, who embodies Ardita's notion of romance as a daring spectacle or all-out pageantry. Full of snappy patter and vivid illustration, the story conveys all the sass and satire of Fitzgerald's fondness for the so-called "rising generation" in revolt against elders' stuffy Victorianism. Most interesting here, though, is Fitzgerald's complex ambivalence toward jazz and the way the story can be read as a parody of the self-made man tradition. As we celebrate this story, we can only add that it is good to be back! By the way, we created via AI our opening music using Fitzgerald's lyrics from the story. Proof the AI can't replace real musicianship!

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Imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald in the afterlife, some thirty-six years after his premature passing, discovering to his dismay that the cheesiest TV producer ever has copped the title to a little-known short story of his and turned it into a landmark of cultural kitsch. That's the premise of this episode, in which we dissect the creepiest story Fitzgerald ever wrote, called, unfortunately "The Love Boat." Yes, we'll soon be making another run of endless Isaac and Gopher jokes as we explore this tale of a man who consoles his mid-life crisis by crashing not one but two (!) high-school proms. You read that right: creepy! The story actually takes its title from a famous 1920 ballad from the Ziegfeld follies, but why let that stop us from going off on an Aaron Spelling jag. Come aboard! We're expecting you!

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Published in the August 27, 1932, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, "What a Handsome Pair!" clearly reflects F. Scott Fitzgerald's dour view of marital relationships amid the relapse that took Zelda to the Phipps Clinic in Baltimore. The story of two couples, Stuart and Helen Oldhorne and Teddy and Betty Van Beck, "Pair!" insists that for men to enjoy domestic contentment they must pick wives who will not compete with them in their chosen métier. In other words, not exactly a feminist story! Fitzgerald perhaps exposed a little too much anger here that Zelda had completed her novel, Save Me the Waltz, in two months that spring while he was just then kicking Tender Is the Night into gear after seven years of delay. Beyond the gloomy portrait of marriage, the story is notable for weird elements: it is set a generation earlier than the author's own era, and there are some strange intimations of proto-Ice Storm couples' hanky panky---which makes its appearance in the conservative Post even more head-scratching. Not a great story---but a curious one!