Penelope Fitzgerald

I learned that she had been inspired and heartened to realize that even if brilliant achievements go unrecognized early on they can be acclaimed and rewarded much later, sometimes only after a person’s death.

My genius, for what he is worth, does not work on human time and he certainly doesn’t arrange his schedule around my convenience. Sometimes I suspect that my genius might be moonlighting on the side as somebody else’s genius—maybe even working for a bunch of different artists, like some kind of freelance creative contractor.

That winter Fitzgerald expressed his anguish in a long article entitled “The Crack-Up.” It appeared in three monthly installments in Esquire.