What follows is a sample chapter from The Reader's Guide:

"The Adjuster"

Publication History

"The Adjuster" was first published in Red Book in September, 1925. A descriptive note in the magazine's table of contents observed that "The famous author of 'This Side of Paradise' and 'The Great Gatsby' tells the finest story of his career" (4). The story appeared with this headnote: "Following his startling first novel 'This Side of Paradise' Mr. Fitzgerald concerned himself for a few years with short stories of 'the younger generation.' Critics wondered if his youthful genius would survive. Then, recently, was published 'The Great Gatsby,' one of the most important novels of the current year. Now again, in France, Mr. Fitzgerald is writing short stories, stories that may be defined really, as great. This one, for instance" (47). Fitzgerald first sent the story to Ober from Italy on 25 November 1924 "for the Red Book order you wrote me of" (As Ever 70). In late January, 1925 Fitzgerald commented to Ober that the story "may seem too gloomy" (75), suggesting that Ober, order or no order, had not yet sold it. He thanked Ober in an undated letter received 28 May 1925 for "selling those two stories," referring probably to "Not in the Guidebook," "The Adjuster," or "Love in the Night." In his correspondence with Ober during this time Fitzgerald tells him that, if The Great Gatsby is a big success "I'm hoping that my price will go up to $2000 regular. It's a neat sum and while I don't feel my stuff is worth anything like that its as good as a lot that gets much more" (73). When Fitzgerald wrote Ober thanking him for selling "those two stories," Gatsby had been out approximately a month and had, in Fitzgerald's words, commercially "fallen so flat that I'm afraid there'll be no movie rights (78). Nonetheless, Ober had sold "The Adjuster" for $2000, up from Fitzgerald's previous regular price of $1750. Fitzgerald revised the story for inclusion in All the Sad Young Men, changing, for example, Dr. Smith's name to Dr. Moon in the collected version.

Circumstances of Composition, Sources, and Influences

According to Fitzgerald's Ledger he wrote "The Adjuster" in December 1924, during which time he and Zelda were in Rome. The time of composition immediately follows his completion of The Great Gatsby, for which he had excitedly begun preparing Perkins in August, cautioning him not to expect it before the first of October since "Zelda and I are contemplating a careful revision after a weeks complete rest (Dear Scott 75). By 1 December his letters to and from Perkins are filled with discussion of the details of Gatsby and do not contain references to stories in progress. In a September, 1924 letter to Ober he says, "I'm about broke and as soon as the novel gets off I will write a story immediately; either for the Post or for Wheeler [editor of Liberty] who has been dunning me for one violently. That story will be followed within a month by two more" (As Ever 66).Then in late November he writes Ober, "...I am very broke and well have to rehabilitate myself with three or four stories, written one after the other" (69), referring to "Love in the Night," "The Adjuster," and "Not in the Guidebook." As Piper puts it, these are three stories that Fitzgerald "ground out while he was waiting for the galley proofs of his novel" (155). Several critics who have written about the story cite the following passage from the story's mysterious Dr. Moon as the strongest hint as to its source in Fitzgerald's relationship with Zelda: "We make an agrement with children that they can sit in the audience without helping to make the play...but if they still sit in the audience after they're grown, somebody's got to work double time for them, so that they can enjoy the light and glitter of the world" (ASYM 189-190). This, according to Mizener, "is Fitzgerald's view of Zelda, no doubt true as far as it goes, but, for all its sympathy, a partial view (FSOP:1965,96). Mellow concludes virtually the same thing from the "light and glitter" passage: "It seemed to be a lesson Fitzgerald was trying to convey to Zelda" (224). Sklar cites the same passage, noting that Luella's "selfishsness had caused her husband's breakdown and her child's death" (203). Le Vot sees the story as "reflecting [Fitzgerald's] marital troubles" (180), while Hindus goes a step beyond Fitzgerald's marriage and cites the influence of Eliot's The Waste Land-- which Fitzgerald admired very much (32-33)--as inspiration for Luella's boredom. Buell suggests that "Fitzgerald's work [and here particularly his use of the shadowy Dr. Moon] fits into the history of modern anti-realistic fiction" (34), and we know that he was stimulated during his formative years by a number of late nineteenth century and early twentieth-century writers who use anti-realistic devices in ways that anticipate his own practices: ... (34).

Relationship to Other Works

Johnson, in the most thorough and perceptive study of the story to date, sums up its relationship to other Fitzgerald works: "The story touches on most of the themes dear to the author and foreshadows concerns that he developed in his later work, especially Tender Is the Night (240). Higgins also notes that the story foreshadows Tender Is the Night, but sees it "most closely related to the pre-Gatsby marriage stories" (90-91). The story also belongs, as Buell points out, to that group of stories--among them "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" and "A Short Trip Home"--which employ fantasy. Sklar sees it as important as a turning point in Fitzgerald's career, "significant because it marks Fitzgerald's first explicit exorcising of his flapper creation, the genteel romantic heroine, the beautiful, young, willful girl" (203), a point that Johnson extends convincingly.

Interpretations and Criticism

Most critics have dismissed the story as slight, though there is general agreement that it is near the top of the heap of those stories that Fitzgerald wrote quickly to make money. Bruccoli characterizes it as one of the "five commercial stories" in All the Sad Young Men, Fitzgerald's strongest collection (Epic Grandeur 234). Eble says "The Adjuster" and "The Baby Party" (one of the other commercial stories) come closest to the best stories in the collection, but neither is very close (104). And Mizener sees it as a "fine account of suffering and maturity," spoiled only by Fitzgerald's handling of Dr. Moon (195). Higgins characterizes it as "mediocre," significant mainly in foreshadowing Tender Is the Night (91). Buell, in his original and provocative study of fantasy in Fitzgerald's fiction counters the position first stated by Mizener that, except in a few cases such as "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," Fitzgerald's use of fantasy typically weakens the work that contains it. Buell offers convincing evidence that considering Fitzgerald as the "'fabulist' of his age" (38) allows the reader to see an entirely different dimension of his genius. And finally, in the only essay-length discussion devoted to the story, Johnson challenges the prevailing point of view that the story should be dismissed simply as commercial and contrived. In particular she questions Goldhurst's observation that the last sentence in the story is "a crowning implausibility" (Goldhurst 199). She grants that the story is didactic, but insists that its message is much more complex than is generally acknowledged. Johnson's esay is a carefully constructed argument in which Dr. Moon is shown to be, not as some have argued, a psychoanalyst, but rather an elaborately sustained representation of time itself. What Luella learns from Dr. Moon, "the adjuster," concerns "the ambivalence of time" (235), and "to adjust" means to find a balance in "the search for ethics and the search for happiness" (240). According to Johnson, this balance "is demonstrated in the story, the ending of which suggests that such a balance has been ahieved" (238). It follows, then, that the "light and glitter" passage noted by so many critics as reflecting Fitzgerald's thinly veiled criticism of Zelda is, in the context of Johnson's argument, a much more philosophical reflection on the responsibilities that go with maturity. And though Johnson acknowledges both the lack of focus of the theme and its simplicity, her case is strong that the main interest of "The Adjuster" lies in "all that is suggested" (240), not in the story's obvious lesson, which Fitzgerald handles heavy handedly. Much of Johnson's case rests on her equation of Dr. Moon with "time," a point that she supports with Fitzgerald's use of the name "Dr. Moon" to suggest seasonal motion. She does not mention the fact that Fitzgerald changed the name from Dr. Smith in the Red Book version to Dr. Moon in the collected version, a fact which appears on one level to support Johnson's point because it emphasizes Fitzgerald's desire to make the equation of the doctor and time obvious and uniquivocal. The change, however, is more complex. To the degree that the doctor is simply "time" his role as adjuster is passive, a reading of his character which the name Dr. Moon supports. The name "Smith," on the other hand, is more richly evocative, suggesting both the anonymous, everyman nature of the doctor and also hinting at the active adjustments that a "smith" or craftsman makes. Johnson acknowledges that Dr. Moon's name "might also be intended to give a cosmic dimension to the story, but Dr. Moon falls very short of this function" (232). Fitzgerald's toying with the names "Smith" and "Moon" suggests that he at least may have conceived of the character that became Dr. Moon as more complex and more ambiguous than the flat figure of the collected version of the story that Johnson rightly sees as "too didactic to be an acceptable symbol" (232).