In his late thirties, F. Scott Fitzgerald experienced a series of emotional and mental breakdowns, many of which he wrote about in a series of random essays and observations collected under the title, The Crack-Up.
At the beginning of the self-titled essay, he writes:
“Of course, all of life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work — the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside — the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once.
There is another sort of blow that comes from within — that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.”
His words are severe and unforgiving but I find them comforting, expressing, as they do, a nakedness of the soul which only the truly damned can pull off.
Elsewhere in this collection, in an essay about insomnia, he says something to the effect of: “In the long dark night of the soul, it is always three in the morning.” If you’ve ever woken in the dead of an industrial-smelling night and reached for the warm haunches of someone who will never be there again, you might know what he’s talking about. Loneliness is rooted in the blood and guts. You can out-think it, but the muscles remember what’s missing.
Or, if you’re not lonely, you might get insomnia just from thinking too much about sex and failure and cancer. There’s plenty of reasons not to sleep soundly. I read The Crack-Up too early in my life during an innocuous lull when real dread and pain could simply be written about or read about without any visceral investment. But I just picked it up recently, or rather found it in the storage unit of my ancestral home, and was bitten raw by his words.
They were the words that I needed to hear. They were in sync with exactly what was happening inside of me.
Now, I’m about a foot deep into my early thirties, and I just moved for the eighth time in seven years. My relationship of two and a half years recently ended and I think I have an undiagnosed stomach problem. Money has come and gone but mostly the latter. My friends have intervened with saintly actions. Liquor has flowed more liberally than I would have liked. I’m happy to say though that I now occupy a cozy, third story room with a pleasant view of warehouse windows and with space enough for a desk and a bed.
In fact, I can roll right out of bed and start writing — or looking at porn which, when recently single, is more depressing than I ever realized.
A friend of mine worked through the process of a terrible break-up by reading The End Of The Affair by Graham Greene. A long time ago when all I did was stay up all night and walk the streets of my city, I read a book called Mt. Analogue which changed my despondent heart for the better. Any book by Jean Rhys captures that dizzying sense of loss, almost as a rarefied kind of boredom that animates the tiny rooms her characters live in.
Terrific life changes, of course, require sad music best imbibed with alcohol. But what of the books we must read, or accidentally did read at dark nights in our life?
What are they for you?
6 responses
Perhaps the title is too obvious, but Celine’s Journey to the End of Night is a good one. I’m not sure if any writer since has captured just how absurd, how funny, hypocrisy, war, selfishness, and plain bad luck can be. Kerouac’s Big Sur seemed to hit all the right notes, conveyed a sadness that I couldn’t express to anyone–that feeling that the whole world is cheerily marching forward, but you’re still just right here, in the same place, stewing over the same memories, deaths, your own missed chances. Just can’t peel yourself off the floor no matter what.
“The End Of The Affair” did it for me when I was feeling guilty about sleeping with a married woman. “Hunger” does it for me when I can barely pay rent and decide to go back on food stamps instead of getting a real job. “Slaughter-House Five” always heals existential-based depression for me. Um…lets see…I used to read “A Confederacy of Dunces” when I was living with my mother and felt I was too old to be doing so. “On The Road” gave me the courage to leave my hometown for SF when I felt I couldn’t. “Lucky Jim,” I believe, stopped me from dropping out of college when it all seemed pointless. It goes on and on. Great piece. If Twain was the grandfather of American Literature, then Fitzgerald was the cousin everyone was and should have be jealous of.
Actually truth be told Celine’s Journey To The End Of The Night in the original New Directions edition was the first book I read that made me realize that life could be and would be and might actually just be a brutal farce, if only once in a while. Not that Bardamu’s brand of nihilism is any responsible way to deal with life’s cruelties but it makes for comforting reading.
I was reading ‘The Street’ by Ann Petry, sipping Glen Livet in the early afternoon after my alcohol assessment course when a young woman sat next to me at the bar and asked me what my story was and I told her, “I’m all out.” I’m young still, naive, so read at your own detriment, but the book that haunts me, gropes me, fucks me when the lights are out and the night terror’s set in is ‘The Zoo Where You Are Fed to God’ by Michael Ventura.
Though, “In fact, I can roll right out of bed and start writing — or looking at porn which, when recently single, is more depressing than I ever realized.” is another night terror in itself.
Anything by Michael Ondaatje fixes me right up, especially Coming Through Slaughter (a must-read for jazzbos and lovers of New Orleans).
I loved this article. As you said, the words came to me right when I needed them. I am reading De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, and every word is hitting me with profound force, weighing heavily on my heart. Yet, the more I read about his suffering, the more I find it to be a beautiful experience. It helps me see my own suffering as something worthwhile.
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