The Great Gatsby, as we all know, is a classic novel about a “beautiful, intense” 11-year-old Catholic boy, set in the Midwest in the 1880s. Oh, wait. You don’t remember that part?
That’s because after two years of uninspired drafting, F. Scott Fitzgerald set aside the slow start and some of the religious themes, embracing an altogether different timeline and setting, shrouding Gatsby’s childhood in mystery. Gatsby is now so synonymous with the Roaring ’20s and Long Island that it’s hard to imagine Fitzgerald once thought to root the reader in a different time and place.
That’s the problem with reading published novels to learn how to write them. We see only the final, polished draft
We happen to know part of Gatsby’s possible origin because it remains in the form of a short story called “Absolution,” even if the main character is a mostly unfamiliar proto-Gatsby. But not every flawed early draft is preserved so publicly.
Andre Dubus III is prolific, with seven books to his name and another two on the way. “I’ve had the same habits forever. I write mornings, five days a week. Do that, and every few years, you have enough for a book. But sometimes,” he laughs, “you throw it all out.”
One of these novels, he tried to write three separate times, for three years each. To make sure you’ve
