The Crack-Up

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Feb 2009 · New Directions Publishing

About this ebook

A self-portrait of a great writer 's rise and fall, intensely personal and etched with Fitzgerald's signature blend of romance and realism. The Crack-Up tells the story of Fitzgerald's sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from glamorous success to empty despair, and his determined recovery. Compiled and edited by Edmund Wilson shortly after F. Scott Fitzgerald's death, this revealing collection of his essays—as well as letters to and from Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos—tells of a man with charm and talent to burn, whose gaiety and genius made him a living symbol of the Jazz Age, and whose recklessness brought him grief and loss. "Fitzgerald's physical and spiritual exhaustion is described brilliantly," noted The New York Review of Books: "the essays are amazing for the candor."

About the author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was educated at Princeton University and served in the United States Army during World War I. His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), was a national bestseller; Fitzgerald followed it with three more complete novels and hundreds of popular short stories. The Great Gatsby (1925), a timeless story of social class, race, and gender in America, remains his best-known work. Fitzgerald was living in Los Angeles, working on movie screenplays and a novel he called The Love of the Last Tycoon, when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1941, at the age of 44.