The Enchanting Redhead and a Talk about Life and Writing

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

I only began to connect things when some familiar resemblance gradually emerged—an extension of the battlefield, a candle burning at both ends, a desperate need for physical energy over which I no longer had control, like a man withdrawing money from an empty account. In its effect, this blow was more violent than the previous two, but of the same kind—a feeling that I was standing at twilight in a deserted firing range, holding an empty rifle in my hand, all the prey hit. Nothing particularly problematic—only silence, punctuated by the sound of my breathing, and that's it.... This is how Fitzgerald sees himself facing the blank page, unable to write, unable to live. In these selected essays on life and writing, and through two novels, The Enchanting Redhead and A Journey Abroad, we delve into the intimacy of the thoughts of one of the most prominent writers in contemporary American literature, a creative person whose life and writings were not always clearly separated.