Bits of Fitz
Sir: The peg on which Benny Green hung his 'Talking of Books' article in Your issue of December I was our new publication Bits of Paradise. Mr Green occupied two columns with a discussion of the question where the line shouid be drawn in publishing the minor works of a major writer. He said that the stories in Bits of Paradise were written by Scott Fitzgerald and implied that the compilers of the volume had made unjustified claims
for them.
In tact, ot the twenty-one stories in the volume only eleven are by Scott Fitzgerald. Nine are by Zelda Fitzgerald and one is the only known example of actual collaboration between Scott and Zelda. It is a mystery to me how these other stories could have been missed by the most casual reader.
In the course of her most interesting forward, also apparently missed by Tvl-r Green, the Fitzgerald's daughter,
Scottie, says, alluding to the title, "It's a bit corny, but then so are some of the things in these stories, which have some mightily unbelievable heroes and heroines. The only way you'll get through them all, I think, is to imagine my father and mother as two bright meteors streaking across the starry sky back in the days when wars and moons seemed equally far away, and then these stories as a sort of fall-out."
J. B. Blackley
The Bodley Head, 9 Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2
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