This book gathers personal essays, notebook entries, letters and tributes by Fitzgerald, edited and published after his death, though its title essays first appeared in a magazine in 1936. In them he looks frankly at his own exhaustion, loss of confidence and sense of failure in his late thirties.
The collection also includes reflections on writing, friends and the Jazz Age. Honest and often moving, it is valued as a self-portrait of a gifted writer facing hard years without self-pity.
Quotes
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking.
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.