Artwork: (l) F. Scott Fitzgerald. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. (r) The Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammett.
“There are no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald fatalistically proclaimed. The celebrated novelist and short story writer, who had been an alcoholic since college, was a study in decadence and despair, privilege and passion, success and self-sabotage.
