Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald Unheard Melodies [Paperback]

Berrets engaging book shows just how rewarding such musical excavation can be when combined with a cultural studies approach. It functions as a highly worthwhile entry point for new scholars of Fitzgerald, and rewards existing scholars attention. It is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the multifaceted, modernist traits of Fitzgeralds style, and his personal struggles between his identity as a Post author and his novel-writing career. Berret seeks to enable Fitzgeralds music to be heard, and to have a distinct and meaningful voice in the literary text.' In this endeavor, he has certainly succeeded.Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates and analyzes the ways in which Fitzgerald integrated music with literature through his entire writing career, from his early Triangle Club lyrics to his later Hollywood screenplays, but most significantly in the novels and short stories for which he is most famous.Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates and analyzes the ways in which Fitzgerald integrated music with literature through his entire writing career, from his early Triangle Club lyrics to his later Hollywood screenplays, but most significantly in the novels and short stories for which he is most famous.Growing up during the first resonating outbursts of popular musicthe ragtime era and the jazz ageFitzgerald filled his fiction with popular songs to express the topics, mores, and energy of his times. As the years passed from World War I to the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, these songs brought to his work the varying effects that they had on a mass society: stimulation, romance, nostalgia, and consolation. The songs also contributed to the modernist traits of his style by creating a mixed-media texture and allusive openings to shows or movies in which the songs appeared.Although popular culture seemed appealing, Fitzgerald constantly worried about how it affected the stature of his works. He carefully distinguisl#6