Taking Things Hard

“Taking Things Hard is one of the best treatments of Fitzgerald’s life and career that I’ve read. Robert R. Garnett’s writing is excellent, clear, and accessible, free of jargon and with nice turns of phrase throughout.” ~James L. W. West III, general editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“With Fitzgerald the temptation has too often been to connect glibly the world and the work, at the expense of the latter. One of the impressive virtues of Garnett’s book is to keep a firm balance that allows him to reassess overlooked material while offering a compelling and scrupulous analysis of the literary art of a true American original.” ~Sara Antonelli, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

“In this biographical study of Fitzgerald, Garnett addresses the reasons for what he calls Fitzgerald’s ‘fatal mistake of slacking off after Gatsby.’. . . Fitzgerald’s early embrace of the ‘imaginative, poetic, highly colored, sensuous, erotic, rapturous’ aspects of life powered his greatest writing. Unfortunately, by sheer dint of living or, to use Fitzgerald’s words, ‘taking things hard,’ his later writing suffered. Garnett relies heavily on Fitzgerald’s short stories and a journal kept by Laura Guthrie, a confidant during the time of the author’s well-known crack-up. The attention given to these sources suggests the thoroughness of Garnett’s research, and the endnotes provide supporting documentation.” ~CHOICE