A short autobiography is another misleading publication, by an unscrupulous editor, and / or publisher who wants to make a gain out of thin air, either instant financial gratification for not much work done, or another title to their name. Similar to the publication of On booze, which can best be described as a ripped version of The Crack-Up (see my review here, A short autobiography is a gutted version of Fitzgerald: My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940 (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald).

F. Scott Fitzgerald never published an autobiography, although he had wanted to, and made several suggestions thereto to his publishers. His publishers, however, were not interested. Fitzgerald wrote many autobiographical pieces, but the were never collected and published during his life-time.

Perhaps this volume, edited by James L. W. West III would not be so misleading if the title had been "F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Autobiography", but the current title is downright misleading. Of course, it is the buyer who is at the butt end of the deception. Equally misleading is the careful phrasing of the Preface and the Textual Notes. In the Preface the editor explains that "This book presents a selection of F. Scott Fitzgerald personal writings from 1920 to 1940," while the Textual Notes state that "The texts for fifteen of the nineteen items in this collection are taken from My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940", and that "these texts have been newly established from original manuscripts," etc., while four items, namely "An Interview with Mr. Fitzgerald," "Three Cities," "Salesmanship in the Champs-Elysees," and "The Death of My Father" were taken from the magazines they were originally published in. However, it would have been a great deal more straightforward if the editor would have told us that the first 15 items are a selection from 25 essays in My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940. Some of the additional essays contained in the Cambridge edition, which was published in 2005, come from The Crack-Up, but then again, not all essays from The Crack-Up are included in My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940. James L. W. West III does not tell readers what his selection criteria were or why A short autobiography is such a meagre sub-set of the Cambridge book. The title may derive from on of the essays with the same title, "A short autobiography."

Besides the broader scope of the Cambridge edition, My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940 is not just quantitatively a better choice for readers who are interested in the autobiographical non-fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. While the essays are organized in a supposedly random manner in A short autobiography, the Cambridge edition groups the essays in two sections; Fitzgerald's selection of 1936, and Additional essays, 1936 - 1940. The selection made by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1936, is probably the book that he proposed to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Charles Scribner's Sons. Incidentally, the editor of the Cambridge edition of Fitzgerald: My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940 is ... James L. W. West III.

Readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald fiction will admit that he had a very fluent, and easy-reading style of writing. The essays collected in A short autobiography largely echo that light style of unconcernedness and frivolity, because, as the editor points out, despite the fact that Fitzgerald often complained that he did not have or make enough money, the scarcely 160 pages of autobiographical essays collected in this volume earned him the equivalent of $100,000 US dollars (p. xi). (The Cambridge edition contains a more extensive "Appendix 2 about Fitzgerald's "Publications and earnings.") However, such feelings probably stemmed from the extravagant life-style of the Fitzgeralds, F. Scott and Zelda. That life-style id also extensively portrayed in the essays, it is the life of "the Flappers". This is reflected in the essays "How to waste material - A note on my generation" and "Princeton", while their struggles to make ends meet, that is to say, from one glass of Champaign to the next, is vividly described in the twin essays "How to live on &36,000 a year" and "How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year".

Thus, the style of the essays in A short autobiography is light and optimistics, forming an altogether much more pleasant read than the sombre and pessimistic essays in The Crack-Up or On booze, which mainly contains essays written towards the end of his life.

The writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald is funny and lively, and these autobiographical essays are an easy read to breeze through. Scholars and readers interested in a complete overview of the autobiographical writings of the author, will probably prefer to refer to Fitzgerald: My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940, which is sold at the staggering price of $122 US dollars. A short autobiography is available at less that 10% of that price. ( )