The Pat Hobby Stories

Of all Fitzgerald's works, these stories are most accessible, especially for those who saw the golden age of television. Of course, my approach to these short stories was from the height of "Gatsby," and the knowledge of the great film,"The Bad and the Beautiful," so I was taken by surprise with the charm, humor and the creative inspiration found in these Hollywood toss-offs. Not only are they insider truths but hung-over fantasies all at once. Groucho and Robert Cummings came to mind as I laughed out loud. Mel Brooks and Woody Allen should pay him dividends,as well as the TV studios who borrowed from his charming, off-beat take on the Hollywood system.

Most people know F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of the deans of the lost generation and an icon of the jazz-age. But toward the end of his life, in the late 1930's, Fitzgerald was also a writer for MGM studios, and these stories represent brilliantly and tragically this period of his life. Through the eyes of Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby, Hollywood hack writer, we see a different side of golden age tinseltown, where an extraordinary number of talented writers and artists migrated to in the 1930's and 40's, only to butt their heads against militant mediocrity and the "studio system." As an archetype, Pat Hobby stands in for them brilliantly.Also recommended: What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg, The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, and The Player by Michael Tolkin.

The Brilliant Pat Hobby Stories are just as the title says, brillliant. I have never red a collection of stories as this. The wit of Mr. Fitzgerald is astonishing as he captures ones attention and then ends the story with a dramatic twist that will leave one rolling on the floor. I have read nothing like these stories and I know that I will never read anything like them again. When my brother convinced me to read these stories I was, at first, a little skeptical about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I had heard my brother rant and rave about him before but now I understand why he was ranting and raving about him so. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection of Pat Hobby Short stories. I am now excited to pick up the next F. Scott Fitzgerald Book that my brother will let me borrow.

Pat Hobby, once a successful Hollywood screenwriter, is nothing more than a pathetic has been. Broke, tired, and scrambling to find work, Pat takes on some unconventional methods to fill his pockets and put his name back on the big screen. But things don't turn out as smooth as Pat hopes. After all, as Pat himself repeatedly states, "I'm just a writer," and, "it's a dog's life." Pat's antics backfire and in almost every story he is left with nothing but humiliation.The Pat Hobby stories were written between 1939 and 1940, when Fitzgerald himself was struggling to keep afloat in Hollywood. Fitzgerald paints the Hollywood scene as cold, calculating, and manipulative. A place where kissing up is more important than the quality of your talents, a place where the writer gets no respect, and a place that most likely today harbors the same attitude that Fitzgerald so deftly described in his final days.In reading the Pat Hobby Stories, one can feel Fitzgerald's own sense of poor self-worth, despair, and hopelessness. Yet ironically, a twist of dark humor is thrown into the stories, evoking in the reader an ambiguous response of laughing at Pat Hobby while pitying him at the same time. This collection is not only entertaining and easy to read, but is one that will give you broader insight into the late great F. Scott Fitzgerald.

If you read "The Great Gatsby" because you were required to in school, you may want to refresh your memory on reading Fitzgerald for enjoyment. By reading "The Pat Hobby Stories," not only will you reintroduce yourself to the world as Fitzgerald saw it, but you will see the many parallels there are between the past and present in entertainment. Fitzgerald follows an aging screenwriter, Pat Hobby, through his few successes and his several rejections by the Hollywood community. This is a "Death of a Salesman" in showbiz!