Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald… by Anthony J. Berret (2013)

The similarities in the plots of many 1920s Broadway shows and Fitzgerald’s short fiction of the time gives way to Anthony Berret’s main thesis of the book at hand: music (jazz, ragtime, musicals and show tunes) played an important role in the works of this great American author.
Long before Fitzgerald published his famous second novel The Great Gatsby in 1925, he had incorporated music as well as the lightheaded plot typical of Broadway shows and musicals into his short fiction.

With music often acting as an outlet for emotions and hit tunes as stand-ins for stereotypes and central messages, he tried to smoothen scenes of conflict and, according to Berret, used certain aspects of popular culture to present strong contrasts.
One principal feature of contemporary shows was the contrast of high art vs. low art, meaning, for example, the liaison of a gilded society woman and a composer of popular tunes or the difficulties faced by a couple consisting of a literary critic/intellectual and a show girl.  These predominant motifs were usually accompanied by a musical theme, which was repeated, served as main dancing tune, and was picked up by various characters in the show again and again.

So in a way reproducing the plots of theater and shows, Fitzgerald finally used a combination of music, women, youth and rebellious attitudes in contrast to the rather sober and inactive environment of upper class American values. He also made use of other unwished-for realities “feared” by the upper class such as minstrelsy, vaudeville, race in general, alcoholism and the nature of entertainment shows and their agents.
Fitzgerald visited very many shows in New York (and learned all about these plots) while he was living in Hackensack and Princeton to start and continue his studies and for three years wrote the songs to shows for Princeton’s Triangle Club theater.

As it seems, he was always in conflict with either devoting too much time to music and popular culture or his studies and serious literature. In his days, however, there was a solid divide between the two disciplines; nevertheless, Fitzgerald satisfied both his desires.
In a way, he wrote short fiction (then still a young genre, not taken too seriously by the critics; at best, it was on the level with a popular tune) to have the financial means to devote time to his novels after leaving Princeton. At the same time, they served as something of a playground for him to develop ideas, which returned later in more elaborate fashion in his long fiction. Many of his themes and much of the music of his short stories would subsequently find their way into the pages of  The Great Gatsby (like ideas from “Dice,” “Brassknuckles and Guitar,” Diamond Dick and the first law of Women,” and “Absolution.”)

Anthony Berret finds lots of evidence, showing not only Fitzgerald’s fascination with the popular music of his time, but also of incorporating it into his fiction. And quite convincingly he presents a detailed analysis of some of Fitzgerald’s better known short fiction like “The Offshore Pirate” and “Head and Shoulders” (both included in Flappers and Philosophers).
However, not only the characters from the “lower” class are branded by their connection to American music. At times, music, or rather the lyrics, seem to act in certain ways, when they are not just virtual advisors but are positioned close to an ancient Greek chorus.
This inclusion of music and popular tunes was only possible at this time, when Broadway shows, their melodies and their lyrics quickly found their way into everyday language, proverbs and were part of popular culture. Distributed further as sheet music, these tunes reached thousands of people and a short number of verses described and judged entire lives, charters, attitudes and perspectives. So if Fitzgerald used popular songs like “The Smile That You Gave Me,” “Dixie,” and “Poor Butterfly,” the contemporary reader would recognize their meaning immediately. Needless to say that the ordinary reader of today will have difficulties even identifying the many puns, allusions, phrases and choruses in his fiction.

While introducing all the different sources and musical origins of Fitzgerald’s writing so far in first-rate detail, Berret in the central chapter devotes his musical analysis to The Great Gatsby where all of Fitzgerald’s training in musical allusion and skills of storytelling find a new peak in 1925.
While the famous (and purely fictional) melodic centerpiece of the novel is “Vladimir Tostoff’s Jazz History of the World,” there are many other sources of music in the novel. As Berret reads it “… its “Jazz History’” in chapter 3 begins a series of chapters, each at least containing one musical piece, mostly a popular song. In none of his other works does Fitzgerald distribute songs in this manner. Mostly he cites them irregularly or groups them into lists. His technique here makes the songs resemble those in a musical play that comment at regular intervals on various phases of the action …” (p. 127).

To the scholar of Fitzgerald, this information about the musical content of his work may not be news at all, but in Berret’s study, we are encountered by the sheer mass of information of almost every Broadway show Fitzgerald may have attended, including musical themes, storyline and reflection in either his songs for the Triangle Club or one of his short stories. While many publications on Fitzgerald focus on his ability to incorporate jazz, popular tunes and musical allusion into his second novel, all the requirements and blueprints for it were already present. They were located in his early show tunes, his short stories and most of all in his permanent struggle with having to devote time to both serious fiction and the publication of stories for magazines to have an income.

Music – American music such as show tunes and lots of jazz with its many faces – was very instrumental (so to speak) in combining the plain narrative with literary genius at a time when music had a greater impact on popular culture than today.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2014

Anthony J. Berret. Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Unheard Melodies. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, 283 p.