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A review by michaelstearns
A Short Autobiography by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L.W. West III
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.