"The Sensible Thing"

Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Published on July 5, 1924 as F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, this Liberty short story has always been seen as a key rehearsal for his magnum opus. In the story of George Rollins (or George O'Kelly in the version that appeared in 1926 in All the Sad Young Men) as he pursues the Tennessee belle Jonquil Cary we have yet another variation on Fitzgerald's quintessential "golden girl" theme. The story's reputation has been somewhat inflated by its compositional proximity to Gatsby. We explore the theme of first love, focusing on the oft-reprinted closing lines that have become endlessly meme-able in recent years ("April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice"); we also look at the biographical background and some of the structural "short cuts" the author took to neatly wrap up the business success that allows George to prove himself. We also wonder how the story gained a pesky pair of quotation marks around the title that have become a Fitzgerald copyeditor's nightmare.