When this essay was first published, in Esquire magazine in three installments (February, March, and April 1936), it was not generally well-received among critics, who objected to its candid personal revelations. (Later readers have come to admire the essay for precisely the same reasons.) Fitzgerald was one of the most gifted, famous, and successful young novelists of his generation. He made an international name for himself with The Great Gatsby in 1925, but his wife Zelda's very public struggles with mental illness (she was permanently placed in a hospital in 1936, the year of this essay) and his own extreme abuse of alcohol led to the "crack-up" that he so candidly describes here. Fitzgerald would die at the age of forty-five, four years after this essay was written.
William Ernest Henley “Invictus” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182194
William Wordsworth, “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ode-intimations-immortality-recollections-early-childhood
“Nerves” in 1936 referred more generally to mental health and psychology (as in "nervous breakdown" or "neurosis").
Cave Canem: “Beware of the dog”
Prompt for Today:
Think of a time in the past when you did something that you weren't embarrassed or regretful about at the time, but now feel embarrassed or regretful about looking back. What changed? Reflect on this. (If you want, you can finish your "a time you were embarrassed and shouldn't have been" writing from earlier this week instead of starting on this new prompt.)
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