Y’know That Viral Letter About F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Spanish Flu?
Sorry, folks, it’s a fake—but I took the time to contact Scott about it.
Yeah, I know, it sounded oh-so-wonderful. You opened your email and read this amazing letter, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1920:
You pictured F. Scott huddled in a miserable hut in the South of France. You relished his elegant words as he complained to his dear friend Rosemary about the terrible ravages of the Spanish flu. And you chuckled at his colorful stomach-punching altercation with Ernie Hemingway.
Well, it’s a fake. The whole thing debunked by Esquire.
I’m now going to reveal something quite unusual. In fact, I have a special communications backchannel. Through it, I am able to contact the spirits of long-dead authors. So I rung up F. Scott to get his take on this fakery.
ME: That you, Scotty?
F. SCOTT: Why are you bothering me again?
ME: Have you seen that 1920 letter from you to Rosemary? It’s burning up the Internet.
