Tales of the Jazz Age

"The Jelly-Bean" is a story set in the southern United States, in the city of Tarleton, Georgia. Fitzgerald wrote that he had "a profound affection for Tarleton, but somehow whenever I write a story about it I receive letters from all over the South denouncing me in no uncertain terms." Written shortly after his first novel was published, the author also collaborated with his wife on certain scenes.

The story follows the life of a "jelly-bean", or idler, named Jim Powell. An invitation to a dance with the old crowd revives his dreams of social advancement and love, until the consequences of drink and the power of money come through and ruin them.

In the short introduction to this story, Fitzgerald writes that "I suppose that of all the stories I have ever written this one cost me the least travail and perhaps gave me the most amusement." The story was written "with the express purpose of buying a platinum and diamond wrist watch which cost six hundred dollars", and it took from seven o'clock one morning to two o'clock the next morning to write it. Fitzgerald also states in the introduction that, of all the stories in this volume, this was the one he himself liked least, but it was included in the O. Henry Memorial Collection (of the O. Henry Award) of 1920.

Fitzgerald claimed that the story was based on an incident that occurred in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1919.[1] "Three friends called up during the evening to tell me I had missed some rare doings," Fitzgerald later recalled, "a well-known man-about-town had disguised himself as a camel and, with a taxi-driver as the rear half, managed to attend the wrong party. Aghast with myself for not being there, I spent the next day trying to collect the fragments of the story."[1]

Published as a novelette in The Smart Set in July, 1920, "May Day" relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year, during the "general hysteria" which inaugurated the Jazz Age.

A play, published in The Smart Set in January, 1920.