Winter Dreams: Fitzgerald Before Gatsby

Most readers come to F. Scott Fitzgerald through The Great Gatsby or a story that became a film, such as “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” “Winter Dreams” is shorter and easier to miss. It is also a way of seeing Fitzgerald work out an idea that later becomes central to Gatsby.

The Story Fitzgerald Wrote Before Gatsby

“Winter Dreams” is a short story and often turns up in Fitzgerald collections. Its title has a plainness that is hard to carry into Korean. In the original review I gave it a slightly more wintry phrasing, closer to “A Dream in the Depth of Winter.”

Dexter Green falls for Judy Jones. He builds a successful business and earns enough to move among the people he once looked up to. Yet the life he imagines with Judy remains just beyond him. They come close enough for him to keep believing in it, and separate often enough for that hope to become its own kind of obsession.

A Young Woman of the Jazz Age

Fitzgerald writes about a society in which new wealth and new habits were becoming visible. Prohibition and women’s suffrage belong to that historical moment, though Judy’s freedom of movement has as much to do with her class and money as it does with a change in manners.

Judy changes her mind and breaks promises. Much of her power in the story comes from the way Dexter sees her. The harder he works to read her choices as signs of what he wants, the less he is able to see her on her own terms.

What Dexter Has Learned to Do

I hear a kind of wordplay in his name. Dexter brings to mind dexterity, and green can suggest inexperience. He is clever at making money and far less sure of himself in love. He has spent years building a life and can still confuse what he imagines with what is there.

Fitzgerald makes the longing vivid enough that a reader can understand why Dexter holds on to it. The story leaves room to ask what the dream cost him and whose life he thought he was pursuing.