The holidays are upon us, and we’ve packed this issue with lots of cheery, festive stories that reflect the season. From the newest ornaments (page 28) to holiday-decked homes (page 74) to that office party bête noire, the dreaded Yankee Swap (page 118), we’ve got it covered. But to balance out all that seasonal cheer, we’re also including a piece on acclaimed author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had many ties to Baltimore, including a five-year stretch as a city resident in the 1930s.

My first exposure to this quintessential American writer came, as I suppose it does to most, via a mandatory assignment in junior high school: reading his Jazz Age novel, “The Great Gatsby.” I recall not being all that impressed. The remote main character, Jay Gatsby, was an enigma to me. Why was he so unhappy? And the dithering, flirtatious Daisy was also a complete mystery. Frankly, to this day, I’m somewhat perplexed as to what children at such an immature age are to make of such a sophisticated and sad novel.

By the time I was just out of college I’d consumed “This Side of Paradise” and “The Beautiful and Damned.” I read them in a self-imposed period of playing “classics catch-up,” reading books (including most of Ernest Hemingway’s and Somerset Maugham’s works) that I’d avoided, up to that point. These two Fitzgerald books to this day remain my favorites of his, and are high on my list of all-time favorite books in general. I can’t say the same for “Tender Is the Night,” the one full-length novel that he completed while in Baltimore. I’ve owned it forever and have attempted to read it at least three times, giving up each time by page 150 or so. It’s a pretty bleak tale, and reflects Fitzgerald’s own turbulent mood at that point. Indeed, almost all of his writerly output in this period (including “The Crack-Up” and “Afternoon of an Author”) are dark and somber tales.

In this issue, writer Deborah Rudacille examines the years that Fitzgerald spent in Charm City, tracing his trail of residences, his travails in dealing with his wife’s increasing mental
illness and subsequent hospital and sanitarium stays, and the works that he produced while he was a resident here. (You may recall that a year ago, Deborah tracked the Baltimore years of another icon of 20th-century arts, Gertrude Stein.) For those unfamiliar with Fitzgerald’s time spent here, it’s an enlightening journey.

Today, you can retrace the steps of the writer all over town, from Bolton Hill to Charles Village to Johns Hopkins and Sheppard Pratt. But my favorite haunt to explore the Fitzgerald legacy is Mount Vernon. Even now, this aristocratic neighborhood appears mostly unchanged from what it would have been in the days of the 1930s. It’s easy to imagine the gay society parties, balls and cotillions that went on in the swank Stafford Hotel and the Belvedere, and the beery, boisterous nights spent drinking with the likes of H.L. Mencken in the Owl Bar, which to this day, remains pretty much unchanged. That’s reason enough to raise a glass!   
 
Brian Michael Lawrence
editor-in-chief
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