In response to: How Princetonians Saved ‘The Great Gatsby’
Current issue
July 2025
On the cover: Wilton Virgo ’00 and his classmates celebrate during the P-rade.
On the cover: Wilton Virgo ’00 and his classmates celebrate during the P-rade.
One more Princetonian biographer of Fitzgerald, Andrew Turnbull ’42, well understood “the pathos of the irretrievableness of oneself” identified in the article by Arthur Mizener ’30 *34.
At 10 years of age, Andy met the Fitzgeralds when they rented a house on the Turnbulls’ property in Maryland and so began an association between them, largely by mail after the Fitzgeralds moved on. Andy’s choice of Princeton enjoyed a personal element.
Following graduation, Andy’s World War II service was aboard the USS Palmer along with Chief Engineer James “Smokey” Stack ’43. The ship was sunk in January 1945 by a lone Japanese aircraft. Andy survived the event; Jim did not.
Fitzgerald remained integral to Andy’s “Proustian minuteness of reflection of … feelings and attitudes” (Mizener), and so he began to publish articles about the author in the 1950s and then a Fitzgerald biography described as “remarkably straightforward and suspenseful” by the New York Times Book Review in 1962, followed in 1963 by his volume of collected letters arranged to shed light on Fitzgerald’s personal life.
Upon the 25th anniversary of the sinking of the Palmer, Andy took his life.