The Crack-Up By F. Scott Fitzgerald(esquire.com)
esquire.com
The Crack-Up By F. Scott Fitzgerald
http://www.esquire.com/features/the-crack-up
6 comments
His style annoys me, and I have the same annoyed feeling when I read Gatsby. He gives the sense that...something is about to be said...but isn't. He's always almost saying something, and three essays later, I've learned nothing but that he's in apparent denial over his drinking problem. Compare Hemingway who wrote similar choppy sentences, but always conveyed information.
I can't defend the Esquire piece but the Great Gatsby is my personal favorite American novel.
It's a story that seeks to describe the great divide between the middle and the upper classes.
I'm really not clear what you mean by "something is about to be said...but isn't."
It's a novel. Do you mean that you didn't understand the purpose of certain story events or do you literally mean that nothing is revealed in the story.
It's a story that seeks to describe the great divide between the middle and the upper classes.
I'm really not clear what you mean by "something is about to be said...but isn't."
It's a novel. Do you mean that you didn't understand the purpose of certain story events or do you literally mean that nothing is revealed in the story.
He's saying that there is never that "Ah-Ha!" moment in Fitzgerald's writings which deliver a clear message to the reader. I kind of agree, whenever he gets close to a statement which appeals to me personally or begins to develop an interesting idea, he moves on.
Interesting. There's so many 'Ah-Ha!' moments for me that I still think about the novel over 25 years after I first read it.
I guess it's just a matter of life experience and perspective.
What's an example of a book that gave you an 'Ah-Ha' moment?
I guess it's just a matter of life experience and perspective.
What's an example of a book that gave you an 'Ah-Ha' moment?
Better if read aloud.
It is hard to face such things (e.g. the realization that you no longer value the things you'd built a self around) and harder to write about them, especially if you're a talented writer and a celebrity and people are eagerly eating up whatever you say.
One place that seemed more compelling to me is the second half of part two, in which he dissects his attitudes to life and figures out whom he got them from. But nothing comes of it.