I’m intermittently reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) along with several other books in between working on the final edits of The Dance Towards Death (Sept 2020) to help inspire me for my next project for 2021, the next book of The Human Tragedy series, my panoramic portrait of American society in stories, tentatively titled Bad Americans. I decided to start with the critically acclaimed novella May Day, first published almost 100 years ago in the Smart Set. I’m a much bigger fan of Fitzgerald’s short stories (my favorite book of his is Flappers and Philosophers (1920), I’m less a fan of his novels [This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night, love-hate with The Great Gatsby and never read The Beautiful and The Damned)]. But May Day, in addition to being beautifully and intriguingly described as only Fitzgerald can, was a great starting point, as it brings together many of the elements of American society of the day: socialists, WWI war veterans, spoiled (and broke) debutantes from Yale, the anti-Semitic, anti-German and anti-Russian/Bolshevik sentiments, the First Red Scare, and hints of the Palmer Raids. Considering it was nearly 100 years to the day, it’s strangely reminiscent of many of the same issues that we face today, though I imagine it was worse than today: America’s increasing isolationism/nationalism, nativist/anti-immigrant sentiment, fears of socialism/anarchism even as “progressivism” became more and more popular and mainstream, the tiredness of assisting in endless wars, a sense of privilege among the elite and moneyed in terms of entrance into colleges (and let’s not forget “testing” today), the need to return to a sense of “normalcy,” and of course the last major pandemic, the Spanish flu of 1918–1919, among many other things. The next decade brought with it increasing rights and freedom for women due to the vote, prohibition which just led to more drinking and more gangsterism, severe restrictions on immigration, the rise of bogus “race theories,” an enormous increase in American wealth and mobility followed by a disastrous fall. Due to technology and, I would think, a greater openness to multiculturalism and the current socialism we already have and have built over the last 100 years, I think we’re in a far superior place today morality and in terms of consciousness, but we’ll have to see what changes, if any, the new decade brings. Either way, May Day is approaching in a week, it’s also International Workers Day, and Fitzgerald’s story, based on actual incidents that occurred in Cleveland on May Day 1919, but set in New York City (it’s pretty fascinating to trace back old structures like Delmonico’s, Biltmore and the Commodore), is a great windowpane into the issues of that time. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book!