Sometimes failure turns into success only many years after a person's death. This was the case for the story of famous, rebellious, trail-blazing author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story had been rejected for publication in 1939, but 76 years later, it finally got published by The Strand Magazine.
The author himself might not be alive to rejoice over this belated victory over narrow-minded publishers, but fans of his powerful, raw prose surely can. The story "Temperature" can be found in the current print version of The Strand Magazine and will reportedly be available online in three months.
Fitzgerald had hit rock-bottom career-wise when he wrote this particular story. Trying to break into the scriptwriting market in Hollywood, he didn't make any headway, funds were running dangerously low, and The Saturday Evening Post had no interest in publishing "Temperature."
The 8,000-word highly autobiographical story then languished away in dusty drawers for 76 years and was widely believed to be lost; until the managing editor of The Strand Andrew F. Gulli came across it among some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's papers that are kept at Princeton University.
The story itself centers around a writer named Emmet Monsen, an alcoholic like Fitzgerald himself and struggling with failure in Los Angeles. As Fitzgerald personally added in a note: "No reference to any living character is intended - no use even trying that." This of course makes the story particularly juicy as it can give us greater insight into this troubled mastermind's inner workings and his life at the time. Truly a blast from the past.
Another unpublished story of Fitzgerald's, "Thank You for the Light," was rediscovered a few years ago and, in a particularly satisfying twist, published by the very same magazine, The New Yorker, that had originally rejected it in 1936.
"Temperature" might not be the next "Great Gatsby" but we can't wait to do some time traveling and delve right into it and the raw, witty reality it possesses, bringing its author to live again in the mind of all us readers out here in the year 2015.
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