A self-portrait of a great writer's rise and fall, intensely personal and etched with F. Scott Fitzgerald's signature blend of romance and realism, The Crack-Up tells the story of his sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from glamorous success to empty despair, and his determined recovery. This revealing collection of Fitzgerald's most visceral essays – and of letters to and from his friends Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, and Edmund Wilson (who compiled this volume shortly after Fitzgerald's death) – tells of a man with charm and talent to burn, whose gaiety and genius made him a living symbol of the Jazz Age, and whose recklessness took him down.