Fitzgerald and the Literary Marketplace: Writing for Love and Money

Abstract

ABSTRACT All eleven essays in Business Is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Writer, by James L. W. West III, contain fascinating, often surprising, material that West encountered in his editing of sixteen of the eighteen volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Six of the essays are related to Fitzgerald’s decision to earn his living as a professional author, a choice whose delights and frustrations West brings alive through letters he has found, details he has unearthed, and connections he has made while establishing biographical context for various works he has edited. The five remaining essays more directly address issues related to the actual texts of the works Fitzgerald created—their composition, their revision by Fitzgerald, their marketing, and their final editing for first and subsequent publication. These five essays provide an excellent—and, though perhaps difficult to believe, entertaining—overview of the field of textual editing. They contain an especially useful discussion of editorial principles one might consider when editing a classic novel such as The Great Gatsby that has gone or, like The Sun Also Rises, is soon to go into the public domain.