Podcast #34 - F.Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, a distant cousin of the author of the National Anthem. He graduated from Princeton University in 1917. In 1920, the publication of his first novel This Side of Paradise made the 24 year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. He and his wife Zelda became symbols of the Jazz Age, a term coined by Fitzgerald.

His most enduring novel The Great Gatsby was published in April of 1925. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. In 1948, Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire at Highland Hospital where she had been institutionalized.

For more on Fitzgerald, check out these links:

http://www.pbs.org/kteh/amstorytellers/bios.html

http://www.fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org/biography/index.html

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post (1 May 1920) and was later published as part of the short story collection Flappers and Philosophers. It shares a theme with many of his novels: the drive for social status and acceptance by young people during the Jazz Age. The story was based on a letter Fitzgerald wrote to his younger sister, Annabel, advising her how to achieve popularity with boys: "Cultivate deliberate physical grace."

Fitzgerald cut three thousand words from the original version of the story and rewrote it to: "inject a snappy climax."

Podcast # 34 - "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" features Special Guest Speaker Professor Christopher Johnston of Broward College. Professor Johnston received his PhD. in American Studies from Bowling Green University in Ohio.








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