You know that line
Bob sings in ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’? “You’ve
been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. You’re very well read, it’s
well-known.” That one. Well, there was a time I thought I could keep up with Mr
Jones, but when Michael Head released his rightly much-loved Dear Scott and
mentioned that the title indirectly came from reading Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories,
I thought: “Funny, I haven’t read those”.
In the Autumn 2023 edition of Detail, “the magazine for modernists”, Rob Massey makes a convincing case for F. Scott Fitzgerald being the greatest mod writer ever. It was partly this piece that reignited my interest in Fitzgerald. I recall reading Fitzgerald a lot as a young man. Perhaps in error I partly put this down to Edwyn Collins in the Postcard era citing an affection for his books. I could be wrong, but it seems to fit when you think of all those old eccentric and romantic Orange Juice songs, and perhaps it was Edwyn wanting to offset labelmates Josef K with their demob suits and their Kafka, Camus, Sartre, and all that: those Penguin Modern Classics paperbacks peeking out of their overcoat pockets.
