GUEST ESSAY: REVISIONING "THE GREAT GATSBY" (III)

Herewith, Part Three of Susan Bell's essay "Revisioning The Great Gatsby," which can be found in The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, and is reprinted here courtest of Bell and Tin House.  Bell is the author of The Artful Edit.

Fitzgerald edited his way out of this clump once Perkins pointed it out to him. He broke up the thick block of data into smaller pieces he judiciously distributed throughout the text and enmeshed in the dialogue and drama. The improvement can be seen in the