There's news from the Washington Post that a 2500 word manuscript of an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald has been found by Andrew Gulli among the Fitzgerald archives at Princeton. Though only 2500 words, Gulli is convinced that Fitzgerald intended "Ballet School – Chicago" to be a novel, not a short story, because he found along with the manuscript an outline of subsequent chapters.
Gulli says. “It’s romantic. There’s a ballerina trying to make her way in Chicago. She has an attraction to a wealthy neighbor because he can get her out of this tough existence . . . and she can have a happy life with him. The story goes into the very hard training for ballet dancers. But then something quirky and unsuspected happens that changes her impression of him.”
Quirky, eh?
The WP notes:
The story may be informed by Fitzgerald’s experience with his wife, Zelda, who developed a passion for ballet as a child and pursued it throughout much of her life.
Maybe someone will look at these 2500 words and the chapter outlines to see if they can be adapted as a theatrical drama. We know that the terms ballet and quirky have become strange bedfellows, or so it seems.
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