The Crack-Up

Fitzgerald's "The Crack Up" deserves a place among our literary treasures. It's written with such honesty that Hemingway chided him for being too honest. True, this essay, along with "Pasting It Together" is mostly about despair, but then again, so is Ecclesiastes. Both belong in the same book shelf side by side. "The Crack Up" is not only about Fitzgerald, it's about the human condition; though we fail, we must persist. ... Read Full Review

Fragments of Fitgerald here do not really shore up his ruin. The most romantic of American novelists tells the story of why in the lives of American writers there are no second acts. The title essay 'The Crack - Up' is a very moving one. The tale of ' the dark - night in the soul in which it is always three o'clock in the morning ' of his breakdown and loss of a real feeling for life. He struggled back, and he made his efforts,... Read Full Review

F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the dreams and aspirations of so many people when he wrote of the fabulous excesses of the 20's - a time not unlike the recent "get-rich-quick" mania of the Internet bubble, which also crashed, destroying many fortunes and lifestyles. In The Crack-Up Fitzgerald writes equally poignantly of the agony of the aftermath of such excess and unfulfilled desires and social insecurities. He was able to... Read Full Review

If you ever wondered what the down side of the twenties were read this. The excess was all a grand show, an escape from post war realities. A whole generation seemed to refuse to grow up, at least for awhile. Maturity was forced upon Scott and in these short confessions he reveals that all was not well in paradise. He lived in a haze of liquor, that was the dream preserving liquid illusion. But reality was not to be fought... Read Full Review

I came to this collection of autobiographical and other short stories after having read THE GREAT GATSBY for english A level. The contents of this book unlike Gatsby, are a backward look at the Jazz age, from the perspective of one of it's greatest godfathers. I never tire of reading these stories, whereas I found the Great Gatsby a little bit silly, this collection shows the true talents of FSF. It was the short autobiog... Read Full Review