The New Yorker recently released an unpublished short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (read it here). The author, best known for The Great Gatsby, wrote the story in 1936—somewhere between 75 to 76 years ago. Titled “Thank You For The Light,” The New Yorker actually rejected the piece, stating at the time in an internal memo:
“altogether out of the question. It seems to us so curious and so unlike the kind of thing we associate with him and really too fantastic.”
The piece is a quick and enjoyable read. All of about five sips of coffee, and I was left wanting more Fitz. The story depicts a “pretty, somewhat faded woman of forty” (Fitzgerald, himself, 40 at the time) and her fondness for smoking, which is frowned upon in the locations of the story. Yet, as the reader finds, she will resort to just about anything to experience that peaceful drag.
Fitzergald and his wife had been the image of the “roaring 1920s” America—top hats, jazz, champagne, the works. By the 1930s, though, the confetti-strewn images of high society life had begun to quickly fade for the couple. Fitz’s health declined throughout the decade with bouts of tuberculosis (some say was a coverup of his alcoholism). At only 44-years-old, Fitz suffered two heart attacks, and shortly thereafter in 1940, he suddenly collapsed. For Zelda, the 1930s up until her death in 1948, was marked by frequent stays in sanatoriums. Between her in-and-outs of madness that doctors diagnosed as schizophrenia, she spent the remainder of life attempting to capture the fame (through writing and painting), which came to Fitz easily, yet, had always stayed just out of her own grasp.
Knowing more about the state-of-affairs that the Fitzgeralds were experiencing through the 1930s, “Thank You For The Light” doesn’t really seem very “fantastic” as the staff described it. By today’s standards, the story isn’t at all fantastical or shocking in what the character does.
I’d say the story sheds a light into the inner workings of the Fitz of 1936, which is not the Fitz that America and its elite literature clubs wanted to see. It must have been difficult to live in a world where people expected something out of you that had long died off or evolved into something else.
*possible spoiler*
In this short story, the character’s seemingly, only relief from the day-to-day struggle of life is a cigarette. Her vice (For Fitz, his love of drink and smokes) , however, is frowned upon and can even affect her sales performance (For Fitz, his style of stories) with clients (For Fitz, his readers and judgmental peers).
Maybe, what were are told is that whatever it is that gives happiness and peace to many individuals will often breed disgust and scorn from others. We walk a thin line as we seek peace in our own lives, while at the same time, trying not to step on the toes of fellow human beings. But in the end, we are often faced with questions of wether or not it matters what other people will think or say, and, if the toes we dread stepping on, are just metaphors of our own self-conscious impediments that prevent us from living the way we want and being happy in the moment by putting everyone else first.
To me, “Thank You For The Light” was Fitz’s way of saying, “I’m OK with being who I am now. I just wish the rest of you could be OK with it. But, even if you’re not, I’m going to continue going my own direction without Gatsby tagging along.”