08/11/2006 - Essay (Part 1)
I am a slow writer. This is what I’ve been working on for the past few days. I’ll be honest, if I had known how poorly written my first essay was I probably wouldn’t have even thought of doing this project. Man did it suck. Hopefully this one is better, although it is only a beginning.
“The story, when examined closely, reveals in the young Fitzgerald a sophisticated and highly controlled writer. It is a moving expression of order struggling against approaching violence.”
Anthony J. Mazella, The Critics
May Day: A History
I am obsessive sometimes to the point of confrontation. That being said I love this story because, like me, it is obsessive. When I think of May Day, I think of grade school, evoking memories of school fairs that signified the beginning of the end for the school year. The holiday of May Day means nothing to most Americans, or as in my case, a veritable non-sequtir from its original intentions. May Day is most famous for falling on the same day as International Workers Day, a holiday that has close ties with the Communist party. Wanting to separate themselves from the Communist associated holiday, the United States gave its workers the first Monday of September instead, baptizing the holiday Labor Day.
“It is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union officials, and the media would want to hide the true history of May Day. In its attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, the United States government declared May 1st to be "Law Day", and gave the workers instead Labor Day, the first Monday of September - a holiday devoid of any historical significance” (Anarchy).
May Day’s United States origins can be traced back to 1886 on the first of May when over 800,000 workers went on strike throughout the United States in support of the eight-hour workday. The support for the eight-hour workday was especially prevalent in Chicago where “300,000 workers struck and marched through the city streets in a huge display of proletarian power” (May Day, New Haven). On May 3rd, two days after the march in Chicago, during a disagreement over compensation for work rendered outside of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company fighting broke out between protesters and police when picket lines tried to prevent a scab workforce from entering the plant. Once the riot was under control, the Chicago police had killed four protestors and wounded several others. Workers and anarchists throughout Chicago decided to march in protest of “the bloodthirsty Chicago police” (May Day, New Haven) and on May 4th the protest at Haymarket Square began peaceful enough. In fact, the protestor’s were so well behaved “that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. who had stopped by to watch, walked home early” (Wikipedia, Haymarket Riot). As the events to the day came to a close and police were dispersing the crowd when a bomb was thrown at the police line, killing one and injuring several others. Thus, a substantial riot followed. The next day following the riot,
“under the direction of State's Attorney Julius Grinnel, police began a fierce roundup of radicals, agitators and labor leaders, seizing (sic) records and closing socialist and labor press offices. Eight men were finally brought to trial for conspiracy” (Chicago Public Library).
The riots of May Day 1886 weren’t an enigma. This culture of violence would return later when the first Red Scare came to a head in 1919. Soldiers were coming home to a drastically changed United States at the end of World War One. Soldiers were returning home to find out that they could no longer drink. World War One had helped strengthen the argument for prohibition in regards to saving the grain used for making alcohol for food for soldiers. The first nationwide prohibition law to go into effect was the law banning the sale of liquor to soldiers (Drug Library). Inflation was rampant and the job market, too, was awful. Finding a job after the war was an arduous task. Factories were letting a substantial amount of workers go with the war ending and strikes were occurring across the country. Fear of communism was rampant. The end of World War One ushered in the first Red Scare. Seeing what happened in Russia, Americans feared that foreigners were going to try and topple their revered institutions (government, ideals, etc.).
“In the U.S., anarchist activities helped fuel fears and animosity toward all radicals and labor unionists - with many Americans failing to see a distinction between Marxists, anarchists and organized labor” (Unrest in 1919).
Americans weren’t completely unfounded in their distrust of communism. On April 28th 1919, almost thirty-three years after the Haymarket Square riots, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson was sent a bomb. It was defused. However, a servant of Senator Thomas Hardwick wasn’t as fortunate. She lost both hands. Later, on May 1st “thirty-four bombs were intercepted before reaching their intended targets which included, among others, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, North Carolina Senator Lee S. Overman, Utah Senator William H. King, Postmaster General Albert Berlson, and John D. Rockefeller” (Intellectual Conservative).
On May 1, 1919 riots broke out across the United States. In particular, riots broke out in Cleveland Ohio when marchers protesting the jailer of Eugene Debs were stopped by a group of Victory Loan Workers insisting that the protesters lower their flags. When the protesters refused the request fighting broke out and quickly spread across the city (Wikipedia, May Day Riots of 1919). Cleveland wasn’t the only city plagued with hysteria, riots broke out in Paris and New York too (New York Times).
May Day: Based on True Events
“This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the “Smart Set” in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern---a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation” (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII).
Fitzgerald, like Sterrett, succumbed to the pressures of New York City. Discharged from the army around the same time as Sterrett on February 21st, 1919 (Bruccoli, 110), Fitzgerald went to New York City to find a job that would allow him to marry Zelda Sayre as soon as possible (Bruccoli, 110). Unfortunatley, it wouldn’t be as easy as Fitzgerald had hoped. Unable to secure a position at a newspaper Fitzgerald settled for a job at Baron Collier (Bruccoli, 110), an advertising firm. He abhored his work. He spent most of his time writing for magaazines and collecting their rejection slips. The money, too, was not as easily obtainable he expected and as a result, Zelda was becoming impatient.
“She was not prepared for a long engagement and apparently assumed that it would be a matter of a month or two before Fitzgerald could provide for her” (Bruccoli, 111).
In a desperate attempt to win his beloved back after receiving a photo of Zelda intended for another man, Fitzgerald made three trips to visit her in Alabama trying, unsuccessfully, to convince her to wait. Eventually, out of frusteration, Zelda broke off the engagment sending Fitzgerald over the edge. For the next month he would find solace only at the bottom of a bottle, only ending when prohibition became law in early July 1920. Fitzgerald would eventually quit his job and return home to St. Paul to work on his first novel This Side of Paradise.
While the parallels between starving artist Fitzgerald and struggling artist Gordon Sterrett are obvious in nature, the connection isn’t as easy to decypher with the other events that occur in the pages of “May Day”. Sterrett’s story can be viewed as allegory, while the other two events are jumping off points, so to speak. They provide a comfertable environment, one that Fitzgerald is fimliar with, allowing him to examine the broader themes of the story. The second of the three events “that made a great impression” on Fitzgerald wasn’t as transparent in nature as the previous. It is obvious that Fitzgerald took some libirties recreating the story, however the result is a deeper, funnier story that is far more enjoyable than the abriged version it is based on. Mentioned almost in passing, Bruccoli describes one wild night in his definitive biography of Fitzgerald, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“In May he [Fitzgerald] went on an alcoholic party during which he and Yale undergraduate Porter Gillespie rolled empty champagne bottles along Fifth Avenue on Sunday Morning” (Bruccoli, 113).
These events, of course, would later become the basis for Peter and Dean’s intoxicated expedition during the second half of “May Day”.
Of the three events “that made a great impression” (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII) on Fitzgerald, only one actually occurred during the actual May Day of 1919. Fitzgerald uses it as inspiration for the riot that occurs at the office of the Trumpet (Tales From the Jazz Age, 108). Nestled in between stories about riots in Paris and Cleveland in the New York Times from May 2nd, 1919 is a short piece about a disturbance at a “socialist daily” (New York Times). Coming because they heard there was a meeting of Bolshevist sympathizers, roughly 400 soldiers and sailors marched to the new offices of the communist newspaper the Call on Fourth Avenue in New York City. The soldiers, led by a Canadian, told the 700 men, women, and children to take down posters of a “Bolshevik nature” (New York Times). A partygoer refused their demand and as a result the soldiers, armed with clubs and sticks, forced their way into the celebration and tore the posters from the wall. Driving them into the streets, the soldiers formed a semi-circle around the frightened celebrants and beat them with blunt objects.
This wasn’t the only story Fitzgerald lifted from the events at the Call, he also based the death of Key on a Call stockholder, who took a tumble from a window twenty five feet above ground.
“One of The Call stockholders, who was threatened by soldiers, ran to the rear of the building and jumped from a window twenty-five feet above the ground” (New York Times).
Eventually the police did show up and fortunately they had little trouble in disarming what had become a full-scale riot. As a result of the events at the Call’s new offices on Fourth Avenue, police were dispatched to their old location on Pearl Street, however nothing would end up happening (New York Times).
May Day: Criticism
“May Day” is generally regarded as one of Fitzgerald’s better short stories. Unlike his light and often-funny flapper stories, “May Day” is an all too brief experimentation with naturalism. Fitzgerald suffered as a result. While the flapper stories, like “Head and Shoulders” were easily sold to Saturday Evening Post, “May Day” had a difficult time finding publication. Fitzgerald’s agent, Harold Ober, eventually sold the story for a paltry two hundred dollars to Smart Set (Mangum). The story was then later collected in Tales of the Jazz Age as a companion piece for his second novel The Beautiful and Damned in 1922.
“May Day” never appeared to have any special significance to Fitzgerald calling it an unsuccessful attempt at weaving together three unrelated stories to illustrate the hysteria of the inauguration of the Jazz Age (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII). In a letter to Edmund Wilson he mentions it in passing, saying that he had “sold three or four cheap stories to American magazines” (The Crack Up, 254). As far as earlier criticism goes, “May Day” wasn’t exactly the focal point of Fitzgerald’s canon. Not surprisingly, most of the work done in this era focuses on his novels. In His Own Time provides two short critiques illustrating the early reception of “May Day” when it was republished in Tales of the Jazz Age. Woodward Boyd mentions “May Day” only in passing,
“Other stories in the volume include “May Day,” “Tarquin of Cheapside,” an imaginative and exciting description of the circumstances in which Shakespeare might have written the “Rape of Lucrece,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”” (page 341)
instead focusing on the other stories contained in the volume; “The Jelly Bean” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” (page 341). The second mention of “May Day” is from the Minneapolis Journal in an essay entitled “The Future of Fitzgerald”. The essayist commenting on the brief story prefaces in Tales From the Jazz Age says “May Day” is “a tragic story of the bitter sort” (page 414).
Modern criticism, in particular, has been considerably favorable towards “May Day” especially in regards to Fitzgerald’s unique workings of structure. John Khuel commented “structurally [“May Day” is] the most innovative piece Fitzgerald ever wrote. It eliminates the idea of a central character thus distributing the protaginal energy of many characters and what we end up with is a decentralized novella which becomes an effective way to render disjointed life” (F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of the Short Fiction) and as a result “May Day” is perhaps the most unique story Fitzgerald ever wrote.
However, there are opponents. Some find the structure of “May Day” less than innovative. Henry Dan Piper claims the story is essentially “three episodes tied together by an unconvincing plot probably imposed at the last minute” (Piper, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of the Short Fiction). However, Piper’s comments quite interesting because he raises an extremely good point; “May Day” is complex and can be hard to follow at points. Fitzgerald has put so much information in his novella that most of it goes directly over our heads. Though, what Piper doesn’t appear to grasp is the unique narrative structure of the novella. By focusing strictly on the “story” he, in turn, neglects the use of time, description, and location. “May Day” cannot be looked at just in terms of “story”; one must immerse themselves completely in the narrative to fully appreciate the complexities of the story.
That said, “May Day” in spite of its complexity, has never garnered serious attention from the critics. Some try to connect “May Day” with other Fitzgerald short stories, examining a broader idea: Khuel in “One Trip Abroad” (New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Neglected Stories) hypothesizes that Sterrett is emotionally bankrupt like those in “One Trip Abroad” and Roulston, in his essay “The Swimmers”, tries to defend Fitzgerald’s story of the same name by arguing that the story has just as much material to be discussed as “May Day” (New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Neglected Stories). Others have a completely different interpretation of what “May Day” means. Ronald Berman champions his idea of “May Day” as a market place, twice in two separate pieces, a scant seven years apart. First in The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s World of Ideas (1996) saying, “Edith knows her sexuality the dance floor is her market place.” Berman goes on to reiterate his idea in 2003, “ Throughout his stories Fitzgerald is able to illustrate what America is by applying different themes to his stories: “May Day” as a market place…” (Fitzgerald-Wilson-Hemingway: Language and Experience). Granted, Berman’s idea of a “market place” is indeed original, one could very easily make an argument that a lot of Fitzgerald’s short stories are metaphors for a “market place”. For instance, take the “Camel’s Back”. Fitzgerald, more or less lampoons the whole idea debutantes, and formal dances. The girl falls for a man dressed as a camel.
Of all these pieces, none try to truly examine “May Day”. The majority use “May Day” as support for a greater argument. But what is “May Day” really about? It is obvious that the critics feel “May Day” is an important story that needs to be recognized, however its reception has been mostly lip service.
Other essays suggest, as I did earlier, the connections between “May Day” and the birth of the Jazz Age. “Fitzgerald’s “May Day”: The Uses of Irresponsibility” From Midterm Fiction Studies suggests that “May Day” is “like a film run at high speed that becomes a frenzied film clip of the birth of the Jazz Age” (Roulston). Herbie Butterfield, too, notes that “May Day” is the birth of the Jazz Age while Babylon Revisited is its requiem (F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Promises of Life) and Aiping Zhang also takes note of the decentralized plot and theorizes that this novella’s subject is social history. Rather than give us a centralized plot of the trials and tribulations of Gordon Sterrett we have a snapshot of the birth of the Jazz Age, May 1919 (Enchanted Places: The Use of Setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fiction). But what brings about the Jazz Age? If we know that “May Day” was the birth of the Jazz Age, how was it conceived?
May Day: Conception
“As far back as 1915 the unchaperoned young people of the smaller cities had discovered the mobile privacy of that automobile given to young Bill at sixteen to make him “self-reliant”. At first petting was a desperate adventure even under such favorable conditions, but presently confidences were exchanged and the old commandment broke down. As early as 1917 there were references to such sweet and casual dalliance in any number of the Yale Record or the Princeton Tiger” (The Crack Up, 14 - 15).
As Fitzgerald notes in The Crack Up, generational change was felt as early as 1915. The patriotism, confusion over inflation and job security, and excessive apprehension over communism that marked the earlier generation was becoming less of a concern for the newer, “wildest generation” (The Crack Up, 15) that “brusquely shouldered my [Fitzgerald] contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight” (The Crack Up, 15). “May Day” is Fitzgerald’s fictional manifestation of this change. The structure and narration is unlike anything else Fitzgerald ever wrote. By decentralizing the story, Fitzgerald allows the story complexities unseen in his other works. The story becomes an idea, a thought, a snapshot of the death of one generation and birth the birth of another. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” is the conception of the flapper, “May Day” the conception of the Jazz Age. The three events that made a such a great impression upon” (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII) Fitzgerald are studies in excess, each illustrating how excess can be the catalyst in both death and life. “May Day” is a uncommonly truthful narration, depicting both the birth and death of generations knee deep in excess.
“The story, when examined closely, reveals in the young Fitzgerald a sophisticated and highly controlled writer. It is a moving expression of order struggling against approaching violence.”
Anthony J. Mazella, The Critics
May Day: A History
I am obsessive sometimes to the point of confrontation. That being said I love this story because, like me, it is obsessive. When I think of May Day, I think of grade school, evoking memories of school fairs that signified the beginning of the end for the school year. The holiday of May Day means nothing to most Americans, or as in my case, a veritable non-sequtir from its original intentions. May Day is most famous for falling on the same day as International Workers Day, a holiday that has close ties with the Communist party. Wanting to separate themselves from the Communist associated holiday, the United States gave its workers the first Monday of September instead, baptizing the holiday Labor Day.
“It is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union officials, and the media would want to hide the true history of May Day. In its attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, the United States government declared May 1st to be "Law Day", and gave the workers instead Labor Day, the first Monday of September - a holiday devoid of any historical significance” (Anarchy).
May Day’s United States origins can be traced back to 1886 on the first of May when over 800,000 workers went on strike throughout the United States in support of the eight-hour workday. The support for the eight-hour workday was especially prevalent in Chicago where “300,000 workers struck and marched through the city streets in a huge display of proletarian power” (May Day, New Haven). On May 3rd, two days after the march in Chicago, during a disagreement over compensation for work rendered outside of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company fighting broke out between protesters and police when picket lines tried to prevent a scab workforce from entering the plant. Once the riot was under control, the Chicago police had killed four protestors and wounded several others. Workers and anarchists throughout Chicago decided to march in protest of “the bloodthirsty Chicago police” (May Day, New Haven) and on May 4th the protest at Haymarket Square began peaceful enough. In fact, the protestor’s were so well behaved “that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. who had stopped by to watch, walked home early” (Wikipedia, Haymarket Riot). As the events to the day came to a close and police were dispersing the crowd when a bomb was thrown at the police line, killing one and injuring several others. Thus, a substantial riot followed. The next day following the riot,
“under the direction of State's Attorney Julius Grinnel, police began a fierce roundup of radicals, agitators and labor leaders, seizing (sic) records and closing socialist and labor press offices. Eight men were finally brought to trial for conspiracy” (Chicago Public Library).
The riots of May Day 1886 weren’t an enigma. This culture of violence would return later when the first Red Scare came to a head in 1919. Soldiers were coming home to a drastically changed United States at the end of World War One. Soldiers were returning home to find out that they could no longer drink. World War One had helped strengthen the argument for prohibition in regards to saving the grain used for making alcohol for food for soldiers. The first nationwide prohibition law to go into effect was the law banning the sale of liquor to soldiers (Drug Library). Inflation was rampant and the job market, too, was awful. Finding a job after the war was an arduous task. Factories were letting a substantial amount of workers go with the war ending and strikes were occurring across the country. Fear of communism was rampant. The end of World War One ushered in the first Red Scare. Seeing what happened in Russia, Americans feared that foreigners were going to try and topple their revered institutions (government, ideals, etc.).
“In the U.S., anarchist activities helped fuel fears and animosity toward all radicals and labor unionists - with many Americans failing to see a distinction between Marxists, anarchists and organized labor” (Unrest in 1919).
Americans weren’t completely unfounded in their distrust of communism. On April 28th 1919, almost thirty-three years after the Haymarket Square riots, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson was sent a bomb. It was defused. However, a servant of Senator Thomas Hardwick wasn’t as fortunate. She lost both hands. Later, on May 1st “thirty-four bombs were intercepted before reaching their intended targets which included, among others, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, North Carolina Senator Lee S. Overman, Utah Senator William H. King, Postmaster General Albert Berlson, and John D. Rockefeller” (Intellectual Conservative).
On May 1, 1919 riots broke out across the United States. In particular, riots broke out in Cleveland Ohio when marchers protesting the jailer of Eugene Debs were stopped by a group of Victory Loan Workers insisting that the protesters lower their flags. When the protesters refused the request fighting broke out and quickly spread across the city (Wikipedia, May Day Riots of 1919). Cleveland wasn’t the only city plagued with hysteria, riots broke out in Paris and New York too (New York Times).
May Day: Based on True Events
“This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the “Smart Set” in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern---a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation” (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII).
Fitzgerald, like Sterrett, succumbed to the pressures of New York City. Discharged from the army around the same time as Sterrett on February 21st, 1919 (Bruccoli, 110), Fitzgerald went to New York City to find a job that would allow him to marry Zelda Sayre as soon as possible (Bruccoli, 110). Unfortunatley, it wouldn’t be as easy as Fitzgerald had hoped. Unable to secure a position at a newspaper Fitzgerald settled for a job at Baron Collier (Bruccoli, 110), an advertising firm. He abhored his work. He spent most of his time writing for magaazines and collecting their rejection slips. The money, too, was not as easily obtainable he expected and as a result, Zelda was becoming impatient.
“She was not prepared for a long engagement and apparently assumed that it would be a matter of a month or two before Fitzgerald could provide for her” (Bruccoli, 111).
In a desperate attempt to win his beloved back after receiving a photo of Zelda intended for another man, Fitzgerald made three trips to visit her in Alabama trying, unsuccessfully, to convince her to wait. Eventually, out of frusteration, Zelda broke off the engagment sending Fitzgerald over the edge. For the next month he would find solace only at the bottom of a bottle, only ending when prohibition became law in early July 1920. Fitzgerald would eventually quit his job and return home to St. Paul to work on his first novel This Side of Paradise.
While the parallels between starving artist Fitzgerald and struggling artist Gordon Sterrett are obvious in nature, the connection isn’t as easy to decypher with the other events that occur in the pages of “May Day”. Sterrett’s story can be viewed as allegory, while the other two events are jumping off points, so to speak. They provide a comfertable environment, one that Fitzgerald is fimliar with, allowing him to examine the broader themes of the story. The second of the three events “that made a great impression” on Fitzgerald wasn’t as transparent in nature as the previous. It is obvious that Fitzgerald took some libirties recreating the story, however the result is a deeper, funnier story that is far more enjoyable than the abriged version it is based on. Mentioned almost in passing, Bruccoli describes one wild night in his definitive biography of Fitzgerald, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“In May he [Fitzgerald] went on an alcoholic party during which he and Yale undergraduate Porter Gillespie rolled empty champagne bottles along Fifth Avenue on Sunday Morning” (Bruccoli, 113).
These events, of course, would later become the basis for Peter and Dean’s intoxicated expedition during the second half of “May Day”.
Of the three events “that made a great impression” (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII) on Fitzgerald, only one actually occurred during the actual May Day of 1919. Fitzgerald uses it as inspiration for the riot that occurs at the office of the Trumpet (Tales From the Jazz Age, 108). Nestled in between stories about riots in Paris and Cleveland in the New York Times from May 2nd, 1919 is a short piece about a disturbance at a “socialist daily” (New York Times). Coming because they heard there was a meeting of Bolshevist sympathizers, roughly 400 soldiers and sailors marched to the new offices of the communist newspaper the Call on Fourth Avenue in New York City. The soldiers, led by a Canadian, told the 700 men, women, and children to take down posters of a “Bolshevik nature” (New York Times). A partygoer refused their demand and as a result the soldiers, armed with clubs and sticks, forced their way into the celebration and tore the posters from the wall. Driving them into the streets, the soldiers formed a semi-circle around the frightened celebrants and beat them with blunt objects.
This wasn’t the only story Fitzgerald lifted from the events at the Call, he also based the death of Key on a Call stockholder, who took a tumble from a window twenty five feet above ground.
“One of The Call stockholders, who was threatened by soldiers, ran to the rear of the building and jumped from a window twenty-five feet above the ground” (New York Times).
Eventually the police did show up and fortunately they had little trouble in disarming what had become a full-scale riot. As a result of the events at the Call’s new offices on Fourth Avenue, police were dispatched to their old location on Pearl Street, however nothing would end up happening (New York Times).
May Day: Criticism
“May Day” is generally regarded as one of Fitzgerald’s better short stories. Unlike his light and often-funny flapper stories, “May Day” is an all too brief experimentation with naturalism. Fitzgerald suffered as a result. While the flapper stories, like “Head and Shoulders” were easily sold to Saturday Evening Post, “May Day” had a difficult time finding publication. Fitzgerald’s agent, Harold Ober, eventually sold the story for a paltry two hundred dollars to Smart Set (Mangum). The story was then later collected in Tales of the Jazz Age as a companion piece for his second novel The Beautiful and Damned in 1922.
“May Day” never appeared to have any special significance to Fitzgerald calling it an unsuccessful attempt at weaving together three unrelated stories to illustrate the hysteria of the inauguration of the Jazz Age (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII). In a letter to Edmund Wilson he mentions it in passing, saying that he had “sold three or four cheap stories to American magazines” (The Crack Up, 254). As far as earlier criticism goes, “May Day” wasn’t exactly the focal point of Fitzgerald’s canon. Not surprisingly, most of the work done in this era focuses on his novels. In His Own Time provides two short critiques illustrating the early reception of “May Day” when it was republished in Tales of the Jazz Age. Woodward Boyd mentions “May Day” only in passing,
“Other stories in the volume include “May Day,” “Tarquin of Cheapside,” an imaginative and exciting description of the circumstances in which Shakespeare might have written the “Rape of Lucrece,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”” (page 341)
instead focusing on the other stories contained in the volume; “The Jelly Bean” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” (page 341). The second mention of “May Day” is from the Minneapolis Journal in an essay entitled “The Future of Fitzgerald”. The essayist commenting on the brief story prefaces in Tales From the Jazz Age says “May Day” is “a tragic story of the bitter sort” (page 414).
Modern criticism, in particular, has been considerably favorable towards “May Day” especially in regards to Fitzgerald’s unique workings of structure. John Khuel commented “structurally [“May Day” is] the most innovative piece Fitzgerald ever wrote. It eliminates the idea of a central character thus distributing the protaginal energy of many characters and what we end up with is a decentralized novella which becomes an effective way to render disjointed life” (F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of the Short Fiction) and as a result “May Day” is perhaps the most unique story Fitzgerald ever wrote.
However, there are opponents. Some find the structure of “May Day” less than innovative. Henry Dan Piper claims the story is essentially “three episodes tied together by an unconvincing plot probably imposed at the last minute” (Piper, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of the Short Fiction). However, Piper’s comments quite interesting because he raises an extremely good point; “May Day” is complex and can be hard to follow at points. Fitzgerald has put so much information in his novella that most of it goes directly over our heads. Though, what Piper doesn’t appear to grasp is the unique narrative structure of the novella. By focusing strictly on the “story” he, in turn, neglects the use of time, description, and location. “May Day” cannot be looked at just in terms of “story”; one must immerse themselves completely in the narrative to fully appreciate the complexities of the story.
That said, “May Day” in spite of its complexity, has never garnered serious attention from the critics. Some try to connect “May Day” with other Fitzgerald short stories, examining a broader idea: Khuel in “One Trip Abroad” (New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Neglected Stories) hypothesizes that Sterrett is emotionally bankrupt like those in “One Trip Abroad” and Roulston, in his essay “The Swimmers”, tries to defend Fitzgerald’s story of the same name by arguing that the story has just as much material to be discussed as “May Day” (New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Neglected Stories). Others have a completely different interpretation of what “May Day” means. Ronald Berman champions his idea of “May Day” as a market place, twice in two separate pieces, a scant seven years apart. First in The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s World of Ideas (1996) saying, “Edith knows her sexuality the dance floor is her market place.” Berman goes on to reiterate his idea in 2003, “ Throughout his stories Fitzgerald is able to illustrate what America is by applying different themes to his stories: “May Day” as a market place…” (Fitzgerald-Wilson-Hemingway: Language and Experience). Granted, Berman’s idea of a “market place” is indeed original, one could very easily make an argument that a lot of Fitzgerald’s short stories are metaphors for a “market place”. For instance, take the “Camel’s Back”. Fitzgerald, more or less lampoons the whole idea debutantes, and formal dances. The girl falls for a man dressed as a camel.
Of all these pieces, none try to truly examine “May Day”. The majority use “May Day” as support for a greater argument. But what is “May Day” really about? It is obvious that the critics feel “May Day” is an important story that needs to be recognized, however its reception has been mostly lip service.
Other essays suggest, as I did earlier, the connections between “May Day” and the birth of the Jazz Age. “Fitzgerald’s “May Day”: The Uses of Irresponsibility” From Midterm Fiction Studies suggests that “May Day” is “like a film run at high speed that becomes a frenzied film clip of the birth of the Jazz Age” (Roulston). Herbie Butterfield, too, notes that “May Day” is the birth of the Jazz Age while Babylon Revisited is its requiem (F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Promises of Life) and Aiping Zhang also takes note of the decentralized plot and theorizes that this novella’s subject is social history. Rather than give us a centralized plot of the trials and tribulations of Gordon Sterrett we have a snapshot of the birth of the Jazz Age, May 1919 (Enchanted Places: The Use of Setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fiction). But what brings about the Jazz Age? If we know that “May Day” was the birth of the Jazz Age, how was it conceived?
May Day: Conception
“As far back as 1915 the unchaperoned young people of the smaller cities had discovered the mobile privacy of that automobile given to young Bill at sixteen to make him “self-reliant”. At first petting was a desperate adventure even under such favorable conditions, but presently confidences were exchanged and the old commandment broke down. As early as 1917 there were references to such sweet and casual dalliance in any number of the Yale Record or the Princeton Tiger” (The Crack Up, 14 - 15).
As Fitzgerald notes in The Crack Up, generational change was felt as early as 1915. The patriotism, confusion over inflation and job security, and excessive apprehension over communism that marked the earlier generation was becoming less of a concern for the newer, “wildest generation” (The Crack Up, 15) that “brusquely shouldered my [Fitzgerald] contemporaries out of the way and danced into the limelight” (The Crack Up, 15). “May Day” is Fitzgerald’s fictional manifestation of this change. The structure and narration is unlike anything else Fitzgerald ever wrote. By decentralizing the story, Fitzgerald allows the story complexities unseen in his other works. The story becomes an idea, a thought, a snapshot of the death of one generation and birth the birth of another. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” is the conception of the flapper, “May Day” the conception of the Jazz Age. The three events that made a such a great impression upon” (Tales of the Jazz Age, VIII) Fitzgerald are studies in excess, each illustrating how excess can be the catalyst in both death and life. “May Day” is a uncommonly truthful narration, depicting both the birth and death of generations knee deep in excess.
posted by May Day at 10:13 PM
0 comments
