Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

About Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

In 1929 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Ernest Hemingway that because his short stories now earned $4000 a pop he was "an old whore" who had "mastered the 40 positions" when "in her youth one was enough." But were the upwards of 180 stories he cranked out when not writing The Great Gatsby really the work of a literary prostitute selling out his talent for a fast buck? Kirk Curnutt and Robert Trogdon don't think so. Each episode they draw a random title from a hat and explore its place in Fitzgerald's career, in the magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post or Esquire where it may have appeared, and in the overall development of the American short story. Along the way, they talk literary politics, history, and gossip from the 1920s and 1930s, rediscovering the lively personalities and rivalries that tried to define the porous boundaries between commercial and artistic fiction, between the popular and the avant-garde, between the forgotten and the canonized.

Publisher

Kirk Curnutt and Robert Trogdon

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 Aug 2020

Latest episode

21 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

29 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Aug 2026

   "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

   Send us Fan Mail F. Scott Fitzgerald's fantasy about a man born at seventy who ages backwards has become one of his most famous short stories, thanks in no small part to a certain 2008 movie starring Brad Pitt that was, honestly, kind of wishy-washy. The story has more recently been adapted into opera and is about to debut as a New York musical, although the plot bears only a superficial resemblance to Fitzgerald's. (Same for the movie). The question for Fitzgerald fans is whether the premise...

2. 

   3 Jul 2026

   "The Long Way Out"

   Send us Fan Mail Published in Esquire in September 1937, "The Long Way Out" could possibly be the best F. Scott Fitzgerald short story nobody has ever paid attention to---not even seasoned scholars. Set in a sanitarium, the plot involves a traumatized woman who every day gets ready for a visit from her husband, who never arrives because, as the hospital staff has decided they won't tell her, he has died in a car wreck. Clearly based on Zelda's long and torturous institutionalization for ...

3. 

   3 Jun 2026

   Special episode: The Racial Uncanny in "The Dance"

   Send us Fan Mail While we're editing our next episode (out before the end of the month!), we're very excited to share this adaptation of Fitzgerald's "The Dance," which first appeared in Red Book exactly 100 years ago. Although not widely known, "The Dance" is important for two reasons: it's Fitzgerald's most overt attempt at a murder mystery and his most direct confrontation of race, including the lynching crisis of the era. In this episode, students at the Bentley School in California ...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

31 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

17 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 26 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

31

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

Contact Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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