

The Crack-Up By F. Scott Fitzgerald - gabriel
http://www.esquire.com/features/the-crack-up

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gruseom
I had heard of this but not read it before. I'm glad I did, yet IMHO the piece
does not deliver on its premise of self-confrontation. It's mostly a series of
pirouettes.

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.

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mynameishere
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.

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larryfreeman
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.

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psbp
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.

~~~
larryfreeman
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?

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maxwell
Better if read aloud.

