From the end of the Introduction: What seems important in it [Fitzgerald's career] now is not the early success and not the neglect and heartbreak of his later years, and not even the contrast between them that lends an easy point to other men's novels; it is above all the struggle against defeat and the sort of qualified triumph he earned by the struggle. Fitzgerald remains an exemplar and archetype, but not of the 1920's alone; in the end he represents the human spirit in one of its permanent forms. -- Malcolm Crowley