SOME STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN GATSBY. I have posted on GATSBY a large number of times. Sarah Graham had a review in the TLS (August 17, 2018) of a new edition of the manuscript, edited by James West III and Don Skemer. It shows that the final text had some major changees made by Fitzgerald—or perhaps by his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Here are some of the structural changes which I have discussed with Mary Jane. We agree that the changes were important and right.
* The novel was initially in the third person. I love Nick Carraway’s voice.
* The story of Gatsby’s life was initially in the next to last chapter. The final version distributes the story throughout the book. Graham points out that disclosing the information a little at a time “emphasizes his mystery and heightens his seductive quality”.
* The sentence “I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” comes at the end of the book and comments on all that went before. In the draft, the sentence comes at the end of the first chapter.