"A Good Man for Structure": Autobiographical Dimensions in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby Stories

In the Pat Hobby stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald crafts a comic rendition of what the public came to take him for: a washed-up drunk. Scholars have not recognized the autobiographical dimensions in both the character and the stories, or, more significantly, Fitzgerald's own feelings of guilt and self-recrimination in framing a richly comic, if bitter, portrayal of the movie industry. This article details how Fitzgerald drew from his own experiences and other writings to cover the same emotional terrain as his 1936 "Crack-Up" series of confessional essays, first published in Esquire, replacing their self-pity and bombastic language with the redemption of humor.