English 490: Fitzgerald and Hemingway
Description of Critical Reception Oral Presentations and the Written Reports that Follow
Fall 2010
Professor Bryant Mangum
Below is an example of what the turned-in Critical Reception paper might look like. In your oral presentation you will probably want to also give the class more extensive samples of selected reviews. But remember, the oral report is short: approximately five minutes. I would like you to lead off your critical reception report by telling what is contained in the volume (if it is a collection) and placing it in the context of the writer's other works (e.g., it is the first collection, etc.). Anything that you can do to give brief background information in the oral presentation will be helpful. You will find virtually everything you need to put together these reports by going to the reference shelf I've set up in the Media Resource Center on the third floor of the library. For Fitzgerald the two books are these: The Critical Reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception (these titles may not be exact), both by Jackson R. Bryer. For Hemingway the book is Ernest Hemingway: The Critical Reception. I'll grade your oral reports based on the thoroughness with which you have examined and characterized the reviews and on the clarity of your presentation of the overall contemporary critical reception (which is to say on the clarity with which you present the shadings of the reviews from favorable to unfavorable to mixed). Please contact me if you have questions about this.Sample:
Flappers and Philosophers: Critical Reception
Flappers and Philosophers was published in September of 1920 and was Fitzgerald’s first collection of short stories. He had been writing for the audiences of the Saturday Evening Post and Smart Set, so for his first collection, he brought together four Post stories, two from Smart Set, and two Scribner’s stories. These selections show the capabilities of Fitzgerald as a writer—capable of writing not only lighthearted stories about his flapper, but also serious and symbolic tales such as “The Cut-Glass Bowl.” Because Fitzgerald chose to include both the popular and the artistically good selections he had written, over half of the reviewers had a favorable reaction to his first collection. The Galveston Daily News complemented Fitzgerald on his “amazing analysis of feminine emotions.” The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Flappers and Philosophers “marks the conversion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s undisciplined and turbid genius…into a bridled and clarified talent.” It is “a collection of well-made short stories in which the author is careful to avoid threadbare solutions, and in which the interest depends altogether on the skill with which the game plot is played.” And Charles Shinn of the Fresno Republican proposed that the collection “cannot fail to be read everywhere.” Though many of the reviewers were in high praise of Flappers and Philosophers, Fitzgerald did receive some mixed and poor reviews as well. Oftentimes, these reviews were from those mesmerized by This Side of Paradise. The Republican out of Massachusetts believed the collection “inferior” to TSOP. William Huse of the Chicago Evening Post wrote, the collection is “scarcely as satisfying as This Side of Paradise.” Sybil Vane of Publisher’s Weekly revealed those “who know anything about either philosophy or youth will not be so impressed.” But he is an “excellent” writer still.Good Reviews: 18
Negative reviews: 5
Mixed reviews: 7
Tamara L. Harris
Former Seminar Student