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The complete text of the letter is here but the highlighting/spacing of the postscript below is mine.
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My book of stories project collapsed. Which is really a good thing, and no sour grapes.
I’m still tied up with lies and affections, and to see my name on a dust jacket would postpone
any real improvement several more years.
Edmund Wilson published a kind of scrapbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald (a dirty idea), calling it “Crack Up”.
Malcolm Cowley reviewed it for the New Yorker, or reviewed Fitzgerald himself in the damn superior way
critics review dead men. It’s so easy to write a “good” review of Fitzgerald. All his shortcomings
stick out so obviously, and if a few don’t Fitzgerald himself points them out. It seems dull or critics
to lament Fitzgerald’s failure to “develop.”
It seems so apparent that anybody who would write a book like Gatsby could never possibly “develop.”
His craftsmanship, or his beauty, was only applicable to his weakness, don’t you think. I don’t believe,
as critics seems to, that “The Last Tycoon” would have been his best book.
He was getting ready to mess it up. He was getting ready to give it a Gatsby twist.
It’s just as well he didn’t finish it, I think.
Best to you.
J.
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This is the first of NINE SALINGER PAGES created by the Lone Comanche Chief
of the 147th Salinger Freak Society, sometimes known as Paul Oliverio.
The next page will deal with the letter from Jerry to Poppa.
The next Fitzgerald page is here.
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