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Babylon Revisited | Introduction

When ‘‘Babylon Revisited’’ was first published in the Saturday Evening Post in February, 1931 F. Scott Fitzgerald had already written three of his major novels—This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, and The Great Gatsby—and he was finally making a good living as an author. The story of a recovering alcoholic's return to Paris after the start of the Depression and his attempt to win back custody of his daughter, "Babylon Revisited'' is a portrait of a man trying to get his life back in order after having made several bad mistakes in the years following his rise to riches during the heyday of the stock market in the 1920s. Fitzgerald came to regard "Babylon Revisited'' as one of his most important stories. He gave it pride of place as the last story in his 1935 collection Taps at Reveille; he called it a ‘‘magnificent story’’ in a 1940 letter to his daughter; and to another correspondent he described it as one of the benchmarks in his evolution as a writer: "You see, I not only announced the birth of my young illusions in This Side of Paradise, but pretty much the death of them in some of my last Post stories like 'Babylon Revisited'."

Babylon Revisited Summary

‘‘Babylon Revisited’’ is the story of a father's attempt to regain the custody of his daughter after recovering from the death of his wife and his own battle with alcoholism. After having built a fortune in stock investments during the great bull market of the 1920s, American businessman Charlie Wales had quit his job and moved to Paris with his wife, Helen, to enjoy his newfound wealth. Friction within their marriage, his own weakness for alcohol, and the couple's wild lifestyle, however, led to Helen's death and Charlie's admission to a sanitarium to recover from his alcohol dependence. During this time, the couple's young daughter was sent to live with Helen's sister and her husband in Paris. After Charlie was released from the sanitarium, he moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he reestablished himself as a businessman. As the story begins, Charlie sits at his old haunt, the bar at the Ritz Hotel, asking the bartender, Alix, about the whereabouts of some of the people he knew when he was last in Paris a year and a half before. When Alix offers him a drink, Charlie declines, telling him ‘‘I'm going slow these days.’’

Out on the Paris streets, Charlie passes places that remind him of his three pre-crash years in Paris and reflects on how his formerly debauched lifestyle has spoiled Paris for him. His cab ride takes him past such Paris landmarks as the Place de la Concorde, the river Seine, and the Left Bank. Charlie arrives at his brother-in-law's apartment and is greeted by his daughter, Honoria. He tells her guardians, Lincoln and Marion Peters, about his newfound success in Prague. When the conversation shifts, Charlie comments nostalgically on the days before the crash, when Paris was overrun by prosperous Americans like himself: ‘‘It was nice while it lasted.... We were a sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us.’’ During dinner he feels a great protectiveness toward Honoria, but having decided to let the Peters's bring up the subject of his regaining... » Complete Babylon Revisited Summary