FitzFirst@Four, with Mary Jane LaVigne

Please note June's unusual location: This meeting will be held at the St Paul Central Library.

One of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous stories, “Winter Dreams,” will be the topic of this month’s FitzFirst@Four program, presented by Fitzgerald in Saint Paul. Mary Jane LaVigne will present on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s connections to White Bear Lake, which were fictionalized in “Winter Dreams.” The presentation will conclude with a discussion of the story, led by Laura Iandola. The event takes place at 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 7, at Saint Paul’s George Latimer Central Library, in the Bremer Community Room, near the entrance to the Library on the first floor. It is free and open to the public.

The setting of Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” is White Bear Lake, once a fashionable resort community for the well-to-do of Saint Paul. Written in 1922, Fitzgerald later described the story as “a sort of 1st draft of the Gatsby idea.” In the story, instead of White Bear Lake Yacht Club, the lead character, Dexter Green, caddies at the Sherry Island Golf Club on Black Bear Lake. “Bothered by his scanty funds,” Dexter dreams of a future life that differs from his present circumstances. “He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people--he wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it--and sometimes he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in which life indulges. It is with one of those denials … that this story deals.”

Mary Jane LaVigne grew up in the Macalester neighborhood of Saint Paul. Her interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald goes back to stories her father told while they were driving down Summit Avenue in his Model T Ford. Her research on Fitzgerald’s White Bear Lake connections began thirty years ago in Lloyd Hackl’s English class at Lakewood Community College. An award winning essayist, her work has been in Water-Stone Review and The Sun Magazine. She teaches writing at the White Bear Center for the Arts and helps run the House of Balls in Minneapolis.

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This event is cosponsored by Common Good Books and The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library.

For more information about all of Fitzgerald in Saint Paul's programming, visit www.fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org.