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.