From The New Yorker:
There’s a doomed, romantic quality to the relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and The New Yorker; they were perfect for each other but never quite got together. By the time The New Yorker’s first issue hit newsstands, in February, 1925, Fitzgerald—who had published “This Side of Paradise” in 1920, and “The Beautiful and the Damned” in 1922—was a little too famous to appear often in its upstart pages. (Collier’s and The Smart Set were more appealing.)
. . . .
Like Fitzgerald, the magazine was determined to capture the fretful, sad-sack glamour of the nineteen-twenties; it also wrote about the rich young men who drove their naiadic girlfriends to speakeasies in long, low cars. The New Yorker wasn’t sure whether to treat Fitzgerald as a creation of the period or a chronicler of it. (He was, of course, both.)
. . . .
Fitzgerald died in 1940, at the age of forty-four. Five years later, the New Yorker book critic Edmund Wilson published “The Crack-Up,” a collection of Fitzgerald’s nonfiction, which created renewed interest in the novelist’s work.
. . . .
On Monday, we’ll be publishing a long lost and darkly hilarious short story by Fitzgerald, “The I.O.U.”
Link to the rest at The New Yorker and thanks to Lucy for the tip.
There is no such word as “naiadic” (Naiad is a noun only) and even if there were it should never be used by a writer who doesn’t wish to appear a snob. Also “it” (the New Yorker) does not “write” stories, it published them.
The English language regularly forms adjectives from classical nouns by adding the suffix -ic. Naiadic is exceptionally rare but has been used occasionally, and as a neologism it is perfectly valid. The only real objection to it in this instance is that it doesn’t mean anything, as the only point of resemblance between a Naiad and the fashionable mistress of a rich young man in the 1920s is that both are female.
Yeah, pretty much me too. I didn’t understand the word, and when I searched for it nothing popped. Now reading this comment, I understand that it’s a take off from a Greek term for ancient nymphs. OK, me not so smart I guess. However, if writing is meant to communicate, shouldn’t the words used at least have a clear meaning? I’m not afraid to admit my vocabulary ignorance- but this seems like a ‘fake word’.
Collier’s was a magazine that paid more per word. Duh.
Another ‘long lost’ story by a well-known author found in the back of the agent’s desk drawer.