Even theAmerican Heritage Dictionary acknowledges that F. Scott
Fitzgerald "epitomized the Jazz Age." And nowhere among his writings are
the gin, pith, and morning-after squint of that era better illuminated
than in these short essays. Selected in celebration of the 100th
anniversary of Fitzgerald's birth, these candid personal memoirs--one
written with his wife, Zelda--furnish nothing less than the
autobiography of the lost generation of the 1920s. He lacked armor, EL.
Doctorow, author of The Waterworks, Ragtime, and Billy Bathgates,
notes in his introduction. "He did not live in protective seclusion, as
Faulkner. He was not carapaced in self-presentation, as Hemingway. He
jumped right into the foolish heart of everything, as he had into the
Plaza fountain. The Jazz Age is a celebration of one of the twentieth
century's most vital writers.