FITZGERALD, F. Scott.

£85,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

"I Didn't Get Over": two draft typescripts, with holograph corrections, for the short story. Two original drafts, the first draft and the second and final draft, for Fitzgerald's short story "I Didn't Get Over", written in summer 1936 and published in Esquire magazine that October. The most noticeable differences between the two drafts are at the beginning and end of the piece. The title is slightly changed: in the first draft, it is "I Never Got Over"; in the second, it is amended in manuscript to "I Didn't Get Over". In the story, a former army captain who failed to make it to the front in the First World War confesses his responsibility for a training-camp accident that claimed the lives of several soldiers. At the end, the second draft, Fitzgerald adds in pencil the coda that makes the identity of the army captain clear: "I was that captain, and when I rode up to join my company he acted as if he'd never seen me before. It kind of threw me off - because I used to love this place. Well - good night."The summer of 1936 was a difficult one for Fitzgerald. From February to April 1936, he had published the essays in Esquire magazine that are now well known as The Crack-Up, the articles that helped invent confessional journalism, in which he revealed the collapse of his life and his hopes, and his determination to save himself with his art. A year or so later, he would begin work on his last, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon.The two drafts were given by Fitzgerald to James B.

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