F. Scott Fitzgerald Rejection Letter, New Yorker Spoof

Dear F:

Thank you for submitting “The Great Gatsby” to our editorial director, Charlotte Pelker. Charlotte is in the South of France and will be checking e-mails, but only to see if she’s been fired. Our associate editorial director, Bob Tarp, left the company last week to head the new literary department at Groupon. So allow me to introduce myself. My name is Andy Borowitz. I am a rising sophomore at SUNY New Paltz and am the company’s unpaid summer intern. In that capacity I am in charge of the slush pile. Which brings me to you, F! LOL.

Let me begin by saying that “The Great Gatsby” is not the worst novel I have ever read. It is also not the best novel I have ever read. It is, however, the first novel I have ever read. And there are, like, many, many things in the book I found confusing. Like W.T.F. was that green light? Is that supposed to give him superpowers, like the Green Lantern? Also, I really did not get this part at the end: “So we beat on, boats against the current.” So, like, everybody turns into boats? Like Transformers? If so, that was the first interesting thing that happened in the entire book, and it was in the last sentence.

For these reasons, F., I am afraid “The Great Gatsby” does not meet our needs at the present time. What would meet our needs at the present time would be a young-adult trilogy with movie potential. Right before she left for Cote d’Azur, Charlotte said to me, “Pandora, find me the next ‘Twilight’ or ‘Hunger Games.’ ” Charlotte has never forgiven herself for passing on both “Twilight” and “Hunger Games” while paying two million dollars for a book of poetry by Todd Palin. LMAO.

Now I’ve got to get back to that slush pile. The next manuscript I have to read is called “Moby-Dick.” Fingers crossed, but based on that title, I think it could be the next “Fifty Shades of Grey”!

XOXO, 
Andy Borowitz

Note: This rejection letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald appeared on the New Yorker website in an article dated October 4, 2012. Find the article at this link. Andy Borowitz wrote the piece for the Author’s Guild Centennial Benefit, June 4, 2012.

Painting: Maralyn Wilson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy? Free ebook (thru 10/1/12) by Andrea Olmstead

Earlier today, author Andrea Olmstead contacted the Silver Birch Press blog to offer our readers a FREE ebook of her scholarly work Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy? The book will be available THROUGH OCTOBER 1, 2012 as a free download at Smashwords.com. Click this link and enter COUPON CODE EZ47B.

Olmstead describes her 24,000-word book this way: “Daisy, as the reading world knows, is the name Fitzgerald assigned the leading lady in The Great Gatsby. Thoroughly annotated, this eBook investigates for the first time Daisy’s long life, her relationship with Fitzgerald, and her influence on three other characters in This Side of Paradise and an early version of Tender is the Night.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Musicologist Andrea Olmstead is the author of four books about the modernist American composer Roger Sessions, published by Routledge, Northeastern University Press, and UMI Research Press, as well as of Juilliard: A History (University of Illinois Press). Olmstead has taught Music History at The Juilliard School and The New England Conservatory of Music. She is also a librettist and CD producer. For more information, contact her here.

Final Lines of The Great Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s Handwriting

…the final lines of The Great Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s handwriting. 

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 

Happy Belated Birthday to You, F. Scott Fitzgerald

In one of the most famous passages from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy Buchanan states: “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year…Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”

Well, we’ve celebrated many authors’ birthdays in the Silver Birch Press blog, but the writer whose birthday we wanted to celebrate most of all is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Rereading The Great Gatsby a couple of months ago inspired the birth of the Silver Birch Press blog — and, during the past few months, we’ve written frequent posts about Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and even the author’s hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.

So I could only think of Daisy missing the longest day of the year when I woke up this morning and realized that I’d missed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 116th birthday! Yes, yesterday was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday!

I blame it on the hot, dry weather in Los Angeles that makes it hard to string two thoughts together. But there’s really no excuse for this blatant oversight. Je suis désolée…