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pliego29's review against another edition
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
niceonesherlock's review against another edition
3.0
Insightful, but not in a good way. A good way to learn things about Fitzgerald that you’ll later wish you hadn’t. The main takeaway is that Zelda deserves (infinitely) more credit.
notafraidofvirginiawoolf's review against another edition
4.0
Read this because I really wanted to re-read "This Side of Paradise," but I left it in my dorm over the holidays so I made do with this. Not half bad, I guess; I like Fitzgerald every so often in decent doses. His essays are, however, rather vastly inferior to his fiction, and he's still a bit of a stuck up, sad little twerp who needs to settle down. Also, his humor is--not humorous. It's got a sort of forced gaiety to it like some kind of vaudeville show or something. I dunno. He's not very funny; he shouldn't try.
Anyway, very enjoyable read.
Get bent, Fitzgerald.
Anyway, very enjoyable read.
Get bent, Fitzgerald.
jordanwaterwash's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
michaelstearns's review against another edition
2.0
Mostly worthless.
A bit of a Fitzgerald yard sale, this loosely thematic collection gathers together 19 ostensibly autobiographical pieces. I say "loosely" because most were written for a quick buck when FSF needed to pay the bills, so that the lion's share of the pieces ("essays" is too lofty a term for these sketches) read like throwaway of-the-moment glosses on, say, modern "girls" (tellingly not "women"). Thick with name checks and given to a self-indulgently chatty tone that has worn very badly, a reader would be hard pressed to see the real writer in this collection.
If not, that is, for a few glimmers of greatness in the dross. In the first hundred pages are the amusing (though also faintly appalling) "How to Live on $36,000 a Year" and its follow-up, "How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year," written in FSF's youth and both of which are worthwhile. But it is in the last fifty or so pages, when FSF is older and a bit disillusioned, that the best pieces lie. These final half-dozen pieces are more carefully written and perhaps as a result, touching. "An Author's Mother" is a deftly empathetic imagining of his mother's last hours that, by never directly addressing his grief, captures it all the better; and "Author's House," "Afternoon of an Author," and "A Hundred False Starts" all show us a writer prematurely in his twilight years, struggling to find something to say. The melancholy of these later pieces, like that in FSF's "The Crack-Up," are a sharp reminder of just how good he was. A pity he didn't live past forty-four, didn't get through these dark years to a place where he could write from a wiser perspective.
A bit of a Fitzgerald yard sale, this loosely thematic collection gathers together 19 ostensibly autobiographical pieces. I say "loosely" because most were written for a quick buck when FSF needed to pay the bills, so that the lion's share of the pieces ("essays" is too lofty a term for these sketches) read like throwaway of-the-moment glosses on, say, modern "girls" (tellingly not "women"). Thick with name checks and given to a self-indulgently chatty tone that has worn very badly, a reader would be hard pressed to see the real writer in this collection.
If not, that is, for a few glimmers of greatness in the dross. In the first hundred pages are the amusing (though also faintly appalling) "How to Live on $36,000 a Year" and its follow-up, "How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year," written in FSF's youth and both of which are worthwhile. But it is in the last fifty or so pages, when FSF is older and a bit disillusioned, that the best pieces lie. These final half-dozen pieces are more carefully written and perhaps as a result, touching. "An Author's Mother" is a deftly empathetic imagining of his mother's last hours that, by never directly addressing his grief, captures it all the better; and "Author's House," "Afternoon of an Author," and "A Hundred False Starts" all show us a writer prematurely in his twilight years, struggling to find something to say. The melancholy of these later pieces, like that in FSF's "The Crack-Up," are a sharp reminder of just how good he was. A pity he didn't live past forty-four, didn't get through these dark years to a place where he could write from a wiser perspective.
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