34. Crack-Up I
What better could follow on HEALTH (our two-part treatment) than CRACK-UP 1 (also in two parts), our session on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1936 essay "The Crack-Up" in which he writes with aching candor on his psychological collapse and fragmentary, absent spirit, psychic reconstitution? To note: This session includes reference to the Cave Canem Foundation, dedicated to African-American poetry and poetics. Fitzgerald concludes his essay with reference to that Latin phrase (trans., "Beware of dog"). The Foundation's name came from a sign the poet Toi Derricotte spotted while visiting the House of the Tragic Poet in the volcanic ash-covered city of Pompeii. Here's a link to Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up":\n\nhttps://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a4310/the-crack-up/