... Absolution is a penetrating and profound effort to articulate life in primal and dark conflict."
-The New York Times (1926)
Absolution (1924) by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the story of adolescent Rudolph Miller, a romantic dreamer who attempts to escape his small, Midwestern town through the lies he tells and the alter ego he creates. Rudolph's revelations in the confessional to his priest, Father Schwartz reveal his character flaws, however, he receives "absolution" through the story's events. First written as the prologue for The Great Gatsby (1925, also available from Cosimo Classics), Fitzgerald intended to reveal Jay Gatsby's childhood, but scrapped the idea, changed the names, and published it as a short story. This moralistic and romantic tale is for all who love Fitzgerald and fiction of the early twentieth century.