FORTRESS OF FAILURE: READING F. SCOTT FITZGERALD'S FORGOTTEN MEDIEVALIST STORIES
(Quid Plura Books, 2026)

I’ve long been interested in medievalism, the modern obsession with the European Middle Ages, especially when my fellow Americans are doing the obsessing. This little book explores the medievalism of an author whose strange late-in-life turn comes as a real surprise.

From 1934 to 1941, the women’s magazine Redbook published four stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald set in early medieval France, half of an eight-story cycle the author did not live long enough to complete. Deemed by Fitzgerald’s daughter to be unworthy of reprinting, the “Philippe, Count of Darkness” stories remain some of the most obscure work by an otherwise widely read and thoroughly studied American author.

Based on four 2018 blog posts, this 50-page chapbook considers Fitzgerald’s “Philippe” stories through the lens of American medievalism, our ongoing tendency to rework and selectively reimagine the Middle Ages to suit our changing assumptions and agendas. Seen in this light as fascinating failures, these stories hold value as relics of the medievalism of Fitzgerald’s life and times, illuminating from a strange new angle an author we thought we knew.

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Fortress of Failure is now available in paperback from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and will soon be available from other booksellers.