num_pages: 70
description: May Day, Fitzgerald's first great novelette, mingles autobiographical details with events from contemporary history. In May 1919, after an interfraternity dance at Delmonico's, Fitzgerald was bounced out of the Fifty-ninth-Street Childs for a disturbance similar to the one created by Peter Himmel in the story. At the same time, the assault on the New York Trumpet by a mob of drunken soldiers parallels a raid on the socialist New York Call during the red scare of 1919. Like many of Fitzgerald's stories from Tales of the Jazz Age, May Day includes a "touch of disaster"--in this case the violent despair of down-and-out Yale man Gordon Sterrett--which is contrasted with the oblivious pursuit of pleasure by Gordon's double, his wealthy, man-about-town classmate, Philip Dean. May Day is a masterpiece from one of America's greatest writers. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.
language: English
title: May Day
titlecomplete: May Day
characters: George Key, Gordon Sterrett, Gus Rose, Philip Dean, Edith Bradin, Jewel Hudson, Carrol Key
genres: Classics, College, Fiction, Short Stories, The United States Of America, Novella, 20th Century, Literature, Historical Fiction, American
ratings_count: 1497
publisher: Waking Lion Press