"The Long Way Out"

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Published in Esquire in September 1937, "The Long Way Out" could possibly be the best F. Scott Fitzgerald short story nobody has ever paid attention to---not even seasoned scholars. Set in a sanitarium, the plot involves a traumatized woman who every day gets ready for a visit from her husband, who never arrives because, as the hospital staff has decided they won't tell her, he has died in a car wreck. Clearly based on Zelda's long and torturous institutionalization for schizophrenia, this story is indicative of the late style the writer developed to meet the grittier, more condensed demands of Esquire, the new men's magazine that paid him a paltry $250 per vignette but kept his name in print. Even though Robert and Kirk didn't recognize the story when they drew it from the slush pile, "The Long Way Out" has quickly become one of their favorite Fitzgerald stories.