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.
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