As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” But…
Most self-help gurus say we do have more, maybe even three, with additional modules available for download.
The melancholy Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It counts seven acts. If we’re to go with Fitzgerald’s take, that would leave us Americans, per Jacques’ monologue, perpetually “mewling and puking.” That generally ends in college, but I’ve met some lifetime learners as well.
So, who do we trust in this regard, Fitzgerald or Shakespeare? The latter’s been at it 400 years longer than Fitzgerald, so let’s go with him. Besides, unlike Shakespeare, Fitzgerald never had a hit in his lifetime. The Great Gatsby, for example, only became one after its author’s death, when it was issued as a paperback Armed Services edition, read by GIs when not getting shot at.
Notably, Fitzgerald died before finishing The Last Tycoon, the novel in which his second act supposition appears. At least two subsequent writers “finished” the book for him 50 years apart, not to mention the film and TV adaptations, which also, miraculously, had not just second acts but endings too.
That said, the titular tycoon’s inspiration, film producer Irving Thalberg, only made it to 37—Fitzgerald a scant bit longer. Broke, drunk and dead at 44—naturally, when his career really took off.
As a dead American, Fitzgerald’s second act has seen his literary star posthumously rise into the canon, with Gatsby alone selling 500,000 copies a year.
American lives and/or deaths are all about second acts. I submit to you that second acts are perhaps the most defining feature of American lives, our knack for reinvention, pivots, redos. It seems the best way to fail in America is not to try again. The whole place is one big second chance waiting to happen. Why, one can even wash out as a reality TV star and become president of the United States—twice.
Pro tip: Start your second act before you’re dead. If the question is when, the answer is now. Most of us are too old to die young as phenoms and too green in our accomplishments to rest on our laurels (besides laurels, wreaths are made to wear on your head, not cushion your ass).
Your second act should be uniquely your own, a projection of your own wild heart, because I can guarantee, like Shakespeare’s Jacques, that the finale is the same for all of us: “second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
And then maybe you’ll have a bestseller.
Daedalus Howell is editor of this paper, host of ‘The Drive’ on 95.5 FM, and has a second act as the director of ‘Werewolf Serenade’ and a newsletterist at dhowell.com.
