TLS signed “Scott,” one page, 8.5 x 11, June 19, 1936. Letter to his literary agent Harold Ober, in full: "Do you think this is any good? I thought it might amuse the New Yorker and pick up a few dollars. It's an old idea I had hanging around in my head for a long time and didn't do justice to it when I came to write it, but it seems to me too good to go back in the file. Do what you can with it. I'm sorry but I would not like to sell 'Travel Together' or 'What to Do About It' or 'On Your Own.' I've destroyed them here and while I still have 'Nightmare' I've stripped the latter and used almost all of the best lines from it in 'Tender is the Night' and I scarcely remember the plots of two of the stories now. All in all I think you'd better drop the idea." Pencil notations in another hand read, "'Thank You for the Light,'" the subject of Fitzgerald's initial inquiry ("Do you think this is any good?") and, "Noted C. S.," with the latter in response to Fitzgerald's second paragraph. In very good condition, with wrinkling and creasing, toning and soiling, a stain to the lower left corner, and three edge tears.
The initial subject of this letter, a 1,500-word Chekhovian vignette entitled 'Thank You for the Light,' was rejected by the New Yorker, who replied to Ober a couple weeks after receiving the manuscript with the following message: 'We're afraid that this Fitzgerald story is altogether out of the question. It seems to us so curious and so unlike the kind of thing we associate with him and really too fantastic. We would give a lot, of course, to have a Scott Fitzgerald story and we hope that you will send us something that seems more suitable. Thank you, anyhow, for letting us see this.' In the weeks that followed, Ober unsuccessfully marketed it to at least four other magazines—College Humor, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Vogue—and it ended up shunted away in an 'unsold' file. The story was later rediscovered and finally published in the New Yorker in 2012.
Of the other short stories mentioned here, 'On Your Own' was first published in Esquire in 1979 (where it was billed as Fitzgerald's 'last remaining unpublished short story'), while 'Travel Together,' 'What to Do About It,' and 'Nightmare (Fantasy in Black)' went unpublished until 2017, when they were released as part of I’d Die For You: And Other Lost Stories (a compilation of Fitzgerald's unpublished work). Tender Is the Night—Fitzgerald's fourth and final novel—was published in 1934, and is widely considered to be his masterpiece. A fantastic literary letter from the iconic Jazz Age writer.
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