FitzFirst@Four discusses Fitzgerald’s short story “Financing Finnegan”

FitzFirst@Four is a monthly discussion group, focused on the short stories of F Scott Fitzgerald. It meets at 4:00pm on the first Sunday of every month at Common Good Books. Events are free and open to the public.

This month’s guest is Deborah Schlacks. She is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where she also serves as the Director of the Writing Center.  A native of Texas, she taught at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas for 10 years before coming to UW-Superior in 1996.  Her past publications include American Dream Visions: Chaucer's Surprising Influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Her chapter on the influence of Saint Paul on Fitzgerald appeared in the 2013 book, F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context, published by Cambridge University Press.

Schlacks’ presentation will highlight the autobiographical elements of Fitzgerald’s story and help separate fact from fable by contrasting the fictional Finnegan with the real Fitzgerald. She will draw insights from several key letters exchanged by Fitzgerald and his friend, Edmund Wilson; his literary agent, Harold Ober; and his editor, Max Perkins.  Readers may be surprised to find that Fitzgerald was actually a savvy negotiator who knew how to survive financially. This view is often at odds with the perception of Fitzgerald, who once skewered his own lavish spending habits in a short article called, “How to live on 36,000 dollars a year”--considered an enormous sum of money in the 1920s.

We’ll be discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Financing Finnegan,” which is set in the office of Mr. Cannon, a beleaguered literary agent who must cope with Finnegan, the famous author whose “career had started brilliantly … or at least it started brilliantly all over again every few years.”  The story provides a humorous and highly insightful view of the suffering Fitzgerald may have inflicted on his own editors and publisher. “Financing Finnegan” can be found in The Short Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald, available now at Common Good Books.

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For more information, contact Fitzgerald in Saint Paul at info@fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org, or visit www.fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org. Fitzgerald in Saint Paul is dedicated to celebrating the life and literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the revered American author and cultural icon, in his hometown of Saint Paul.