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We can also recognize that this new confessional voice is as much evasion as revelation. In Fitzgerald’s self-disclosure, there was much literary art, and a heavy dose of self-deception. At times, as writers or readers, are we all not guilty of such self-deception? As T.S. Eliot reminds us, “our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves”{{sfn|Eliot|1933|p=155}}{{efn|“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves”{{sfn|Eliot|1933|p=155}} }}It is interesting, therefore, that the opening sentences of the first essay are actually in second-person, not the supposed “greater authenticity provided by the first-person voice with all its limitations.”{{sfn|Hampl|2002|p=108|}}{{efn|“Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big, sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another kind of blow that comes from within—that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again”}}Fitzgerald begins with the provocative claim, “Of course all life is a process of breaking down . . .”{{sfn|Crack-up|1993|p=69}}Following these introductory sentences, there comes the oft-quoted apho- rism of Fitzgerald, “[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise”{{sfn|Crack-up|1993|p=69}}.There are, of course, many precedents for a first-person voice—confessional or otherwise.{{efn|As first-person precedents to Fitzgerald voice in “The Crack-Up,” Hampl mentions Whitman’s “Song of Myself ” (1855), Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (1925), Hemingway’s Nick Adams, and “before that the narrators of Huckleberry Finn and Moby-Dick”(118).}}It is also true that while something is being revealed, “often in a wry, self-deprecating style”{{sfn|Hampl|2002|p=104|}},much more is being concealed. Fitzgerald makes no mention of his own alcoholism, his affair with a married woman, or of Zelda’s schizophrenia.{{efn|“Though he describes his psychological and spiritual breakdown, his utter collapse, often in a wry, self-deprecating style, he doesn’t spill many autobiographical beans. We don’t learn of his despair over his wife’s mental illness. He doesn’t divulge his bouts with drinking, his imprudent affair with a married woman, his money worries, his literary woes. Mother, father, those stock figures of personal narrative—never mentioned”}}Rather telling omissions, one might say. In his 1981 article, Donaldson says, “As it stands, ‘The Crack-Up’ tells its truth only between the lines”{{sfn|Donaldson|1980|p=182}} Indeed it does. But that is true of much of Modernist fiction and poetry, is it not?
I said earlier that there was much literary art in Fitzgerald’s apparent self- disclosure in these essays. The “Crack-Up” confessions, while obviously related to a genuine experience of angst and breakdown at the time, possess a complex relationship to his literary creations to characters such as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1925) or Dick Diver in Tender is the Night (1934). As with Mailer, the line between his fiction and nonfiction is a complex, con- tested border. In an interesting  article in The Mailer Review, comparing Fitzgerald, Mailer, and Dylan, Bob Batchelor writes,
{{quote|Fitzgerald’s insight into Jay Gatsby revealed, according to critic Alfred Kazin, the author’s “tragic moodiness” and “a burst of self- understanding” that set the book apart from those of his s contemporaries and writers ever since {{sfn|Kazin|Solotaroff|p=122}} It took a special comprehension of the lives of the wealthy and the lives of ordinary people to create such a broad swath. . . . Kazin’s idea captures the strength and beauty of the novel and may actually reveal why it has such staying power. Fitzgerald, despite his claims of not really understanding Gatsby as he created him, desperately identified with the dreams the character espoused. He knew the pain of losing the girl and the joy in attaining her.

Revision as of 19:51, 26 February 2021

I said earlier that there was much literary art in Fitzgerald’s apparent self- disclosure in these essays. The “Crack-Up” confessions, while obviously related to a genuine experience of angst and breakdown at the time, possess a complex relationship to his literary creations to characters such as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1925) or Dick Diver in Tender is the Night (1934). As with Mailer, the line between his fiction and nonfiction is a complex, con- tested border. In an interesting  article in The Mailer Review, comparing Fitzgerald, Mailer, and Dylan, Bob Batchelor writes, {{quote|Fitzgerald’s insight into Jay Gatsby revealed, according to critic Alfred Kazin, the author’s “tragic moodiness” and “a burst of self- understanding” that set the book apart from those of his s contemporaries and writers ever since [1] It took a special comprehension of the lives of the wealthy and the lives of ordinary people to create such a broad swath. . . . Kazin’s idea captures the strength and beauty of the novel and may actually reveal why it has such staying power. Fitzgerald, despite his claims of not really understanding Gatsby as he created him, desperately identified with the dreams the character espoused. He knew the pain of losing the girl and the joy in attaining her.

  1. ↑ Kazin & Solotaroff, p. 122.
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