F. Scott Fitzgerald may be remembered most often as the author of "The Great Gatsby", but during his lifetime, he earned most of his income by writing short stories for magazines. This compilation includes many of his earlier classics, all dealing with the same wealthy class of people that appear in his novels. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is a delightful tale about the lengths (literally) that girls will go to in order to fit in socially. "The Offshore Pirate" is a compelling and romantic story with an exciting and climactic ending. In addition, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", a longer and quite famous story has a brilliant plot; a boy visits his wealthy friend's home, and while he enjoys himself immensely and even falls in love, he finds out that the visit may come at a hefty price. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a hilarious story about a man born looking like he is 70 years old, and looking progressively younger as he "ages", so that he eventually seems younger than his grandson. All in all, you cannot miss with any of his stories, and they make great evening reads - one a day will surely keep the doctor away!

Nostalgia has an inevitable foreshortening effect upon reputation. For most of us, Fitzgerald is the perenially young, perenially arch chronicler of the 1920s Jazz Age -- of bathtub gin, flappers, rumrunners and boats born ceaselessly back.

This collection of short stories does much to restore an unappreciated side of Fitzgerald the writer, most notably his willingness to experiment with technique, his almost existential grasp of human absurdity and his articulation of unease and pessimism about the possibilities of the American Dream.

The stories range widely in quality from precious parodies from his Princeton years ("Jemina") to profoundly moving glimpses of the human condition ("The Lees of Happiness"). Even the most insubstantial of the stories printed here are worth the read for, if nothing else, they show that even at his youngest and roughest, Fitzgerald had a keen grasp of voice and description and how to use it to breath life into wispy plot lines.

I take issue with some of the critical recommendations contained in Patrick O'Donnell's fine introduction to the collection. I did not, for instance, find "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" particularly impressive. I think the best stories are those that hew to a psychological theme prevalent in Fitzgerald's fiction and his adult life -- the dread of what comes after youth and a nostalgic fixation on youth as the best time in a person's life. The stories I liked most -- "The Lees of Happiness," "The Ice Palace," "The Cut Glass Bowl," "Benediction," "The Four Fists," "'O Russet Witch!'" -- all tackle this theme.

Many of the stories in this volume aren't profound, but are just a delightful read. I defy you, for instance, to read "The Camel's Back" without bursting out loud in laughter over its protagonist's gyrations and setbacks in quest of his true love.

There is a wistfulness at the center of Fitzgerald's prose and his life story that seems to have faded from our collective remembrance of him as a Great American Author. This volume does much to remind us of that winsome note and to remind us that Fitzgerald paid dearly for it in his personal life as it lit up his writing at the same time.