"O my Beauty Boy--reading Plato so divine! O, dark, oh fair . . ."A melodramatic opening for a short, story, but consider the plot: the colored golf champion of Chicago, who reads Plato, loses a leg under a moving train and finally grows it back in Heaven. A magazine fiction editor might reach for a rejection slip were it not for the byline: F. Scott Fitzgerald. The unpublished "Dearly Beloved," a forerunner of the black-is-beautiful genre, was discovered among a collection of Fitzgerald's papers at the Princeton University Library, and is included in the first number of a schol- arly journal known as the Fitzgerald-Hemingway Annual. Written shortly before the novelist's death in 1940, "Dear-ly Beloved" carries the familiar Gatsbyesque message that reality rarely adapts itself to a dreamer's dreams. It ends with the casual, melancholy remark, "So things go.*

Pizzicato passages, stratospheric glissandi, cadenza after cadenza--the balding, blue-eyed violinist tackled each without hesitation and butchered each in turn, always about a quarter-tone off pitch. Eventually, the concertmaster mercifully took the solo play away from the wounded virtuoso. The Aspen, Colo., audience was delighted by the shenanigans. They had, after all, paid as much as $50 to see and hear Jack Benny's violin act which, like his familiar monologues, is a masterpiece of comic tim ing. Benny, 75, and his fiddle have raised well over $5,000,000 at similar benefits, and this one netted $14,000 for the Aspen Music School Scholarship Fund. Unfortunately, Benny lamented, not all patrons are kind enough to suspend their critical faculties. "In Philadelphia, a woman stood up and exclaimed, 'My God, he's lost his ear.' Ever since then, they've called me the Van Gogh of the violin."

One of America's Apollo 11 heroes has doffed his space suit for the last time. Appearing on TV, Mike Collins agreed with Neil Armstrong that Mars is a possibility by 1981, then announced that he would make no more journeys into space. At 38, said Collins, he finds the rugged physical training too demanding, and he dislikes the long absences from his family. But, he added, he hoped to continue in the program in an administrative position of some sort.

The rumors have kept Washington gossips busy for months, and now it seems official. Senator Eugene McCarthy has moved out of his Washington home and has rented an apartment at the Sheraton-Park Hotel. Neither McCarthy nor Abigail, his wife of 24 years, offered any explanation, and the Senator's press secretary insisted that "no divorce is contemplated." The word in Washington, however, was that lawyers for both sides were at work on a legal separation; after one year, that would constitute grounds for divorce in the District of Columbia.

Scoffing at the recent defection of Novelist Anatoly Kuznetsov, the Soviet government pointed to Vladimir Ashkenazy, 32, one of the world's great pianists, as an example of a Soviet artist who travels happily in and out of his homeland. "A travesty of truth," replied Ashkenazy from Greece, where he was vacationing. Indeed, the pianist has not set foot on Russian soil since 1963, when he fled Moscow in fear and disgust. Ashkenazy explained that he had been forbidden to travel for three years after his U.S. tour in 1958, and was later granted an exit visa only on condition that his wife remained in Russia as a "moral hostage." Eventually, Khrushchev gave them permission to travel together, arid once they left home, they never returned. "No sane person would wish to run such a risk again," said Ashkenazy.

If the movie is anything like the cast, it ought to be a winner. With Raquel Welch, Mae West and John Huston already in the fold, 20th Century-Fox has just signed smart-set chronicler and film critic Rex Reed for a "starring role" in Myra Breckinridge. Reed wants everyone to know that he is not --repeat not--playing gay young Myron Breckinridge, who goes under the knife to emerge as Raquel Welch. His part now calls for a young writer who is Myra's "alter ego." Rex thinks the experience will help him as a critic and" is not afraid of fellow critics' brickbats. "What can they do to me?" he asks. "Destroy my acting career?"

He has survived all the crises and name-calling, and received high marks for his composure. So it was only sensible that Columbia University should finally turn for its 15th president to Andrew Cordier, who has been acting in that capacity for the past year. Cordier stepped loyally into the breach--but let the university know of his own desires. At 68, the onetime diplomat and former U.N. undersecretary hopes to return to his old post as dean of the School of International Affairs. He agreed to the presidency with the proviso: "For one year or until a new president is in a position to assume the duties of office."

New York City's embattled Mayor John V. Lindsay was on his way to Charleston, S.C., to speak to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a vice president of drugmaker Bristol-Myers was flying to the same meeting in the company's jet. How about a lift? asked the Bristol-Myers man. Thanks, said the mayor and he climbed aboard. Then the city's Democratic politicians heard about the ride. They remembered that Section 1106 of the City Charter forbids city employees to accept "any valuable gift" in the form of a "service, loan, thing or promise" from anyone doing business with the city. And they were quick to point out that Bristol-Myers had sold New York $859,000 worth of drugs last year. Before long there were editorials in the papers and demands for a Board of Ethics investigation--which is just what John Lindsay does not need with election day approaching.

*A contemporary novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, uses with frequency a similar expression: "So it goes."

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