SOURCE: Bruccoli, Matthew J. Introduction to Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, pp. xv-xxxii. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Bruccoli enumerates the reasons for the popularity of Fitzgerald's early short stories.

The proper assessment of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short-story achievements has been impeded by allegations that he squandered or damaged his genius by selling out to the high-paying mass-circulation magazines: that he deliberately wrote bad commercial stories to satisfy the requirements of the market. Their popularity was cited as evidence of their triviality. Fitzgerald wrote stories in order to sell them, but that is not the same thing as selling out. The commercial writer Samuel Johnson stated that “Nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” The admission that Fitzgerald wrote them for money does not diminish the quality of writing in his stories. He was not...