Sofa Spotlight - The Pat Hobby Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the spirit of giving writers that I’m not sure about another chance, I decided to crack on and read these short stories. The Great Gatsby didn’t do much for me, but I had better success with Babylon Revisited, so maybe the Pat Hobby Stories would work out. And they sort of did but by the end I was glad to say goodbye to Pat Hobby and move on.

So who is Pat Hobby? He is a failed screen writer, loitering around Hollywood (I assume it was Hollywood) looking for a job, or more accurately, hoping that a job will fall into his lap. There is a feel of Bertie Wooster to him, in that he gets caught up in quite a few scrapes and, when he does get out of them, resolve themselves in remarkable ways.

A bit of research seemed to imply that Fitzgerald based Pat Hobby on himself. Which made me quite sad because Pat isn’t the kind of character you would want to have based on yourself, comedic as he is.

My main problem with the stories is the 1920’s style of writing. It’s ok if you can get into it, but I found it particularly difficult to navigate in some of these stories. But if that isn’t something that bothers you then I’m sure you will enjoy this collection.