In both his essay "The Crack-Up," and the book The Crack-Up, published after his death, F. Scott Fitzgerald ponders his various forms of "cracking up" in the 1930s. He and his wife Zelda went from being famous and beloved Jazz Age figures in the 1920s to experiencing various forms of break down and failure in the 1930s. Zelda suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized in a mental hospital. Fitzgerald himself suffered from alcoholism, writer's block, and an inability to adapt to the more political writing of the Great Depression. He also experienced a sense of depression and disintegration in his personal life. The essay "The Crack-Up" is deeply introspective. In it Fitzgerald examines his feelings and sensations about outward career failure. He also explores an inward "cracking" that can start to occur "when things are going well." These cracks, he says, may not become visible until later.
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