Word: crackups
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Perkins work with Fitzgerald and Wolfe forms the most interesting part of Berg's book. Tales of Fitzgerald's crackup are many, but Berg's picture of Perkins' desparate attempts to save Fitzgerald from his own insecurity is compelling and memorable. And Berg will no doubt find a place for himself among historians of literature for his work on the friendship and eventual estrangement of Perkins and Wolfe--the fiery, romantic writer upon whom Perkins staked much of its reputation...
...years since Yeats announced that "the center cannot hold," the literature of disintegration has hardened like concrete. Hemingway's nada and Fitzgerald's crackup are now preserved in cliché. It takes talent and ingenuity to put a new face on collapse. A touch of satire and the surreal have become requisites...
...adult life, the writer lightly chronicles a series of illnesses and operations: "They got at the bone through my right nostril, which I consider very resourceful, and the morphine was just what I had been needing all along." In the mid-'40s he suffers fron a mental crackup. His prescription for recovery: "Drink dry sherry in small amounts, spend most of your time with hand tools at a bench, and play old records till there is no wax left in the grooves...
...daredevil defiance with which Smith ran his breakaway regime, friends suggest, reflects his personality as much as his politics. As a pilot flying Hawker Hurricanes in North Africa for the Royal Air Force during World War II, Smith barely survived a spectacular crackup on a takeoff. But after five months of plastic surgery in Cairo, during which his face had to be almost totally rebuilt, he was happily back flying fighter missions. Later he was shot down while strafing German positions in Italy, and found himself stranded far behind enemy lines. Eagerly playing guerrilla, Smith fought with a band...
...Gifford is kidnaped by an outfit called the Ecumenical Liberation Army, joins them in a bank robbery, then helps them try to sell a film of the heist to a big TV network, to be shown on its Mao Tse-tung Hour. During the negotiations, which lead to the crackup of a venerable anchorman, played by Peter Finch, Mary Ann cries out, "It's not the money that's important, it's the principle." The principled girl is Kathy Cronkite, Walter's aspiring actress daughter. Cronkite, who was originally offered the anchorman role (CBS said...