The Crack-Up
{{short description|Essay collection by F. Scott Fitzgerald}}
{{more citations needed|date=January 2010}}
{{infobox book
| name = The Crack-Up
| title_orig =
| translator =
| image = Image:FScottFitzgerald TheCrackUp.jpg
| caption = First edition cover
| author = F. Scott Fitzgerald
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = United States
| language = English
| series =
| genre = Essays, letters and notes
| publisher = New Directions
| release_date = 1945
| english_release_date =
| media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
| pages = 347 pp
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}
The Crack-Up is a 1945 posthumous collection of essays by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It includes three essays Fitzgerald originally wrote for Esquire which were first published in 1936, including the title essay, along with previously unpublished letters and notes. After Fitzgerald's death in 1940, Edmund Wilson compiled and edited them into an anthology that was subsequently published by New Directions in 1945.
Essays
- "The Crack-Up" (originally Esquire magazine, February 1936)
- "Handle with Care" (originally Esquire magazine, March 1936)
- "Pasting It Together" (originally Esquire magazine, April 1936)
:collected together under the title The Crack-Up in the book
The book also includes other essays by Fitzgerald and positive evaluations of his work by Glenway Wescott, John Dos Passos, and John Peale Bishop, plus letters from Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Wharton in 1925 praising Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.
Legacy
Upon initial publication, the essays were poorly received and many reviewers were openly critical, particularly of Fitzgerald's personal revelations and his admission of his pessimistic outlook. Critics have since referred to the collection as "a compelling psychological portrait and an illustration of an important Fitzgerald[ian] theme".{{cite web | title=The Crack-Up | last=Bitonti | first=Tracy Simmons | work=Facts about Fitzgerald | url=http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/facts/facts5.html | date=12 May 2005 | access-date=15 June 2007 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512153554/http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/facts/facts5.html | archive-date=12 May 2008 }}
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze adopted and further conceptualized the term crack from "The Crack-Up" in The Logic of Sense.{{cite book
|last1=Tynan
|first1=Aidan
|date=2012
|title=Deleuze's Literary Clinic: Criticism and the Politics of Symptoms
|publisher=Edinburgh University Press
|page=42
|isbn=9780748650576}}
In popular culture
The title of the 2017 Fleet Foxes album Crack-Up was inspired by these essays.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADHeeDttv9s Fleet Foxes - Robin Pecknold Interview with Zach Cowie]
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.esquire.com/features/the-crack-up The Crack-Up By F. Scott Fitzgerald], Esquire. Originally published in Esquire{{'}}s February, March, and April 1936 issues.
{{Fitzgerald}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crack-Up, The}}
Category:Books by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Category:Works originally published in Esquire (magazine)
Category:Literature about alcohol abuse
Category:Books published posthumously
Category:New Directions Publishing books
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